[ism]

Damn these slow forums:

For anyone playing about with X11

I installed it with an existing XFree86 installation and OroborOSX in place. It didn't muck any of that up whatsoever. However, when I first started X11 it wasn't using the correct window manager. I found that deleting (well moving) the ~/.xinitrc file meant that X11 then used the correct window manager (i.e. quartz). X11 is faster than Orobor and seems to work pretty well. There aren't as many options available in X11 as there are in Orobor, but it doesn't really have the need for them, i.e. it will use whatever theme you are running (I assume) rather than fake the aqua look.

I thought that moving ~/.xinitrc might muck up Orobor being that it sorted my X11 problems, but it seems not, so I am a tad confused as to what ~/.xinitrc was doing, but never mind everything is working.

For more expert information there seems to be a good discusiion here

This is far more exciting news than Safari, but no one seems interested. Oh well

[sinebubble]

Originally posted by ism:


For more expert information there seems to be a good discusiion here

This is far more exciting news than Safari, but no one seems interested. Oh well

Real UNIX admin's don't use GUI's

Just kidding, thanks for the tip!

[wingdo]

Yup, the forums are very very slow.

I agree totally on the whole X11 thing. I was just plain not expecting this. I can't get over how freaking fast this thing loads and runs. Now if I can just get printing to work, life would be grand.

Cheers!

[theory]

These forums are slow....

But X11 looks nice, becuase till today we haven't had a good window manager for mac os x (well window maker is nice but that is about it).
Now that apple is working on it we should expect better performance and integration with the mac os. It really doesn't
add anything new just makes using X11 programs more
like using other mac programs.

I wish they release the source code though ...

[clarkgoble]

Regarding the forums. I kind of expected MacNN to go down, given that it is often flaky but is also the most popular OSX forum. However I didn't expect Slashdot itself to suffer from the Slashdot effect!

Anyway, here are a few tips on X11 since people are probably installing it right now.

1. If you had a prior XDarwin or Fink installation you should delete ~/.xinitrc or change the window manager in it to "exec quartz-wm" If you don't it will start up with an xterm with no boundary that is partially under the menu bar.

If you had installed fink, following the directions on the Fink homepage. Over at OSX Hints they have a nice tutorial to get things working. Be aware that for full use of Fink you have to download both the public beta (the download with the image) and the SDK (the small text link under the download)


2. If executing applications from Terminal instead of xterm you have to type "open-x11 program" instead of just the program name. Under Fink and XDarwin this wasn't necessary. To return it to the old functionality add "setenv DISPLAY :0.0" to your .tcshrc.

3. Check you paths in xterm. They may not be reading /sw depending upon how you set your .tchsrc. Also notice that Apple's installed XWindows apps are in /usr/X11R6/bin.

4. You can start up kde under Apple's X11 by typing "open-x11 startkde &" although the mixed interface is kind of goofy. The Fink folks mention that some "hinting" in KDE in particular looks poor.

5. XDarwin isn't gone so you can still run the regular gnome or kde if you need.

6. The "final beta" version of OpenOffice is incompatible with Apple's X11. The slightly earlier version is. There apparently is a library that is incompatible with X11.app. Hopefully they will fix that soon. If you want to run it, run it as "/Applications/OpenOffice.org1.0.1/program/soffice" . You can add that to the Applications menu in X11.app.

7. If you haven't yet, download Fink. It is available at http://fink.sourceforge.net/. Some suggested applications to install are Gimp, AbiWord, or Gnumeric. Make sure you read and follow the note on using Apple's X11 or check the tutorial mentioned above.

------------------

As an aside, I must admit that I don't understand all the software Apple istalled. Yeah some are the standard X11 stuff you find in Solaris or Linux. But why install beforelight that is a screensaver which, as far as I can figure out, wouldn't run in OSX X11 anyway.

[clarkgoble]

It really doesn't add anything new just makes using X11 programs more like using other mac programs.

Cut, copy and paste now work as expected. You had to run a conversion program to move between the XDarwin pasteboard and the OSX pasteboard. That was always a hassle. It effectively made using programs like AbiWord or OpenOffice so big a hassle that they never got used. Further if you were running Maple 7, which is only available as an X11 app, not easily being able to copy or paste really was a big problem.

On the other hand, as I mentioned above you can't easily execute applications from Terminal. (Well, I suppose adding a shell script to do it isn't *that* big a deal) Some odd shaped windows that looked good under XDarwin look a little odd under X11 as well. For instance try running oclock.

[crazyjohnson]

I know this sounds stupid, but: X11 stopped working for me. Trust me, I did nothing. The first few times it started up X with WindowMaker, now, it does not even launch.

[crazyjohnson]

I fixed it. It did not like my old .xinitrc so I trashed it and then reinstalled.

Originally posted by crazyjohnson:
I know this sounds stupid, but: X11 stopped working for me. Trust me, I did nothing. The first few times it started up X with WindowMaker, now, it does not even launch.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
3. Check you paths in xterm. They may not be reading /sw depending upon how you set your .tchsrc. Also notice that Apple's installed XWindows apps are in /usr/X11R6/bin.

Well, mine aren't being read - how was I "supposed" to set up .tcshrc?

[ism]

Originally posted by diamondsw:
Well, mine aren't being read - how was I "supposed" to set up .tcshrc?

Well in my home directory I have:

source /sw/bin/init.csh

in my .tcshrc

This allows access to the fink applications by typing their name in both the normal terminal.app and also the X11 terminal. However, notice that if you add applications to X11 'Applications' menu, you will need to explicity specify the location of the application in the command line, i.e. /sw/bin/gimp

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by ism:
Well in my home directory I have:

source /sw/bin/init.csh

in my .tcshrc

This allows access to the fink applications by typing their name in both the normal terminal.app and also the X11 terminal. However, notice that if you add applications to X11 'Applications' menu, you will need to explicity specify the location of the application in the command line, i.e. /sw/bin/gimp

And therein lies my problem - I would like to be able to specify the /sw directories from the get-go, without using an xterm. Is this possible through manipulating the .xinitrc file?

[clarkgoble]

In theory you can setenv in the .xinitrc file. I don't know how X11.app is using that file though. So I can't promise it'll see everything.

Why is it a problem though?

BTW - it is more "Mac-like" if you create Applescripts to open the X11 apps. I don't much care for menus to launch apps like that.

[diamondsw]

Originally posted by clarkgoble:
In theory you can setenv in the .xinitrc file. I don't know how X11.app is using that file though. So I can't promise it'll see everything.

Why is it a problem though?

BTW - it is more "Mac-like" if you create Applescripts to open the X11 apps. I don't much care for menus to launch apps like that.

I agree, AppleScript launchers was going to be my next thing. However, I would like to get the path set up properly. In essence, I'd like my /sw/bin folder on the same standing as the folder Apple's xterm is in. If I want to add an application menu item for gimp, I don't want to specify "/sw/bin/gimp", just "gimp".

It's picky, but it's also a mini-challege to get it working properly.

[samthecat]

X11 uses environment variables like other GUI apps...(i forget where i learned this)

1. create a directory...

~/.MacOSX

(where ~ is your home dir and there is a full-stop at the beginning of the dir name

2. make a property list file with all your environment variables and put it in that directory (i used the property list editor with the developers tools) called...

environment.plist

i used the sh syntax with PATH as the key and a colon separated list of directories in the value

X11 will append the /usr/X11R6/bin directory to the path anyway, so you don't need it in the list.

hope this helps.

cheers,

samthecat

[Evinyatar]

Does anyone else have the problem where X11 crashes and leaves behind a bunch of zombie processes which block X11 from relaunching meaning I have to (*shudder*) reboot?
Well, anyway, I have and it's a huge pain in the ass. Any ideas of how to prevent this?

Edit: I forgot to mention that one time it caused my system to hang entirely (no more processes), and that these things can't be killed with kill (no such process number).

[Scroot]

When I first started the X11 app it put a window up in the corner so that I couldn't move it. Listening to everyone's advice, I canned my .xinitrc file in my home folder and reinstalled, but it still doesn't launch. This is pissing me off. Perhaps I should have deleted something before reinstalling??

[sahara]

Evinyatar- I've had that problem in a partial sense. I've never had to reboot, and X11 hasn't crashed, but if I run knode and then quit, I have to manually kill the zombie knode process before I can relaunch it. Also, kdeinits are leftover all over the place, and can prevent relaunches of X11 happening until I kill them. (Though now I launch X11 at startup and leave it open.)

[clarkgoble]

KDE definitely doesn't play nice with X11.app. I don't know if it is the theme I have with KDE (an Aqua-like them that uses an Apple like menu). However quite regularly when I click in a menu or the like it kills X11.app but leaves a lot of processes running.

Not a big deal, except that I rather like a couple of the KOffice apps. This happens even if I don't run kdeinit or the like. That's strange as typically you can run KDE apps under say Gnome.

[wingdo]

Originally posted by Evinyatar:
Does anyone else have the problem where X11 crashes and leaves behind a bunch of zombie processes which block X11 from relaunching meaning I have to (*shudder*) reboot?
Well, anyway, I have and it's a huge pain in the ass. Any ideas of how to prevent this?

Edit: I forgot to mention that one time it caused my system to hang entirely (no more processes), and that these things can't be killed with kill (no such process number).

I am having the exact same problem. I've yet toi find a solution though.

[Evinyatar]

Well, I tried going back to XDarwin but now that is broken too. I did properly delete /usr/X11R6 and /etc/X11 and reinstalled with fink, but it keeps segfaulting somewhere during the KDE startup process.
However, I'm very glad to hear that I'm not the only person having this problem.

[ism]

I currently have five X11 zombie processes running, but they aren't doing any harm and aren't eating any resources up, so I don't have a problem with them. These aren't caused by X11 crashing (not having this problem), but just by shutting X11 down. Out of interest does logging out kill these processes? Or do you have to reboot? I can't be bothered to do either right now.

[michael_l]

Haven't checked all the X11 threads, but is there any way to stop that xterm from opening whenever X11 is started?

[clarkgoble]

Modify your .xinitrc