[kstor]

Hi guys!

I'm about to switch to a mac (waiting for my albook 12" to ship...) and had a couple of questions about how Unix and OS X interact. Obviously, the terminal window allows me to type text commands, like any Unix terminal. Then there is:
-X11, which lets me run graphical Unix apps
-fink, whose purpose is to port Unix apps to OS X
-KDE, GNOME which are desktop environments

From the existence of Fink I gather that I can't run any Unix app natively on Os X, without porting. Also, I understand that the os x terminal is somewhat limited, doesn't include all the commands.
So here are my questions:
-are my descriptions of x11/fink/kde decent? Can you give a better explanation of their roles?
-say I want to run a graphical unix app on Os x, xemacs for example, how would I do it? what software do I need? etc.
-why would we need kde or gnome? Doesnt't x11 already provide the windowing and os x the desktop? The apple site seems to show the gimp running directly in x11, in an aqua window. Is there any reason to have another desktop environment on the mac?

Hopefully you can clarify all this,
Thanks,

KStor

[Arkham_c]

Originally posted by kstor:

-X11, which lets me run graphical Unix apps
-fink, whose purpose is to port Unix apps to OS X
-KDE, GNOME which are desktop environments

X11 is a Windowing system, like Aqua. Many UNIX apps use X11 to draw their graphics on screen. Having X11 on OSX means that these apps will compile and run on OSX as well.

Fink is a project that ports apps to OSX. The software just compiles and/or downloads precompiled versions of the apps. You don't have to do the porting of these apps -- the work has already been done for you.

KDE and Gnome are desktop environments on UNIX systems. They are also windowing libraries and widgets that make writing graphical clients on UNIX easier. KDE/Gnome sit on top of X11, so having X11 makes running KDE/Gnome apps possible.

Originally posted by kstor:

From the existence of Fink I gather that I can't run any Unix app natively on Os X, without porting. Also, I understand that the os x terminal is somewhat limited, doesn't include all the commands.
So here are my questions:
-are my descriptions of x11/fink/kde decent? Can you give a better explanation of their roles?
-say I want to run a graphical unix app on Os x, xemacs for example, how would I do it? what software do I need? etc.
-why would we need kde or gnome? Doesnt't x11 already provide the windowing and os x the desktop? The apple site seems to show the gimp running directly in x11, in an aqua window. Is there any reason to have another desktop environment on the mac?

1) You only have to port an app once. When it is compiled it is running natively. If someone has done the porting before you, all you have to do is compile it. All prominent open-source apps already have MacOSX as a build target, so the porting effort has been done already. All you have to do is "./configure; make; sudo make install"

2) The OSX Terminal is not at all limited. It's a full UNIX environment, and it has all the standard POSIX commands. If you install the developer tools and fink, you have all the GNU and other obscure commands as well.

3) To run XEmacs, you would double-click X11.app, then either in a terminal, an xterm, or in the X11.app menu run xemacs.

4) KDE and Gnome sit on top of X11. They are higher-level APIs that let you as a programmer not have to do "draw a square here filled with red, when the square is clicked change the look like this, and do that", instead doing "create a window, put a text box here, put a button there, when the button is clicked do this". As an end-user (non-programmer) all you need to know is that you need the KDE libraries to run KDE apps, and you need the Gnome libraries to run Gnome apps (like Gimp).

[kstor]

Thanks, that makes it a lot clearer. So, if I've got this right, I can install the KDE and Gnome libraries without the KDE and Gnome desktop environments and all the software and stuff that comes with them. Then unix apps can then use KDE and Gnome APIs, but they will run in X11 windows. Is that about right?

[Simon]

Originally posted by kstor:
Thanks, that makes it a lot clearer. So, if I've got this right, I can install the KDE and Gnome libraries without the KDE and Gnome desktop environments and all the software and stuff that comes with them. Then unix apps can then use KDE and Gnome APIs, but they will run in X11 windows. Is that about right?

Yeah, that sounds right.

If you use fink to install X11 apps that require special APIs to work fink will even tell you that. It gives you a nice dependancy list that shows you what additional stuff is needed.

[kstor]

Thanks! I'll try it when I get my mac...