MacOS X X-Windows compatible?

[Alan Fox]

One thing I have been curious (and concerned and excited) about is this... Will MacOS X (consumer edition) be X-Windows compatible? That is, will I be able to open windows from my Sun onto my Mac?

[visigothe]

Currently there are X clients for the Mac OS that will allow you to connect to a remote X server [Sun, SGI, Linux, etc] I don't see any reason why not. Let it be said however, that the gui server for OSXServer is not X11. It is it's own odd mash of QD and DPS technologies... Also, because of OSX's Mach/BSD/UNIX layer, you could prob. run an X server as well. [I still wanna be able to supplant the OSX gui with windowmaker]

[laird]

There are/were a number of X/Windows implementations available for NEXTSTEP, so I'd expect MacOS X Server ports. I vaguely recall some announced X/Windows server products for Rhapsody...

[dcoyle]

I've been reading all the hype about OS X and it all looks like pretty exciting stuff. The one thing that seems to be missing (at least to me) is built-in X support.

I'm starting to think that X should be an extension to Extended QD (I think that's what they are calling the new imaging model), with both client and server support built in. There are at least 3 reasons I can think of off the top of my head:

1. Like Alan, a lot of people have to administer X-capable machines. In my case, it's Digital VMS where I currently run X-sessions for the Alphas and Vaxes I'm responsible for on my NT workstation. This is so cool and makes my life so much easier. The time saved is enormous vs. having to run to each machine to do one simple thing.

2. Apple's open-source initiative is supposed to encourage lots of programmers to spend time improving the foundation code and (I assume) porting lots of open-source software to the OS X platform. Since a lot of the open-source software expects to interface via X-windows, it would be incredibly easier if Apple's GUI handled X natively. For one thing, if X was built in, developers would not have to worry about what particular X-server was installed. As a bonus, it seems fairly easy to make X widgets and gadgets look really good if X was just an extension of QD.

3. It would really differentiate OS X from NT if you could log in remotely from any X-capable machine to OS X Server or Workstation and get a desktop with all the GUI tools where you expect them to be. Any administrator, especially those with little or no Unix experience, would prefer this over a telnet CLI session. X-windows would be the ideal mechanism because of its platform independence. Again, if Apple really wanted to shine, they could extend X-windows so that if the workstation doing the remote login was and OS X machine, the interface could be prettified to look like the remote machine was local.

Dan

[mactropolis]

No, X11 isn't natively supported. You'll have to use a VNC client

[gorgonzola]

You can download Xfree86 for Darwin, and then just run X instead of Aqua (you login through >console, so CoreGraphics is shut down and the X Windowing system starts up). WindowMaker, fvwm, etc all works in this, but here it's all X, no Aqua apps.

You can buy something called Xtools from Tenon <www.tenon.com> that lets you run X apps in Aqua (through a normal GUI login). Go to their website and see the shots -- you can get Gimp running in an Aqua window, which is cool. It's not actually Aqua compliant, but the standard X-style window runs inside an Aqua window, so it's pretty good. This, unfortunately, you have to pay for (for the time being).

It's on Apple's to-do list to get X Windows running as a client of Quartz so that this Xtools functionality is built into the Core OS. That'll be *slick*!

I suspect (someone else on these forums posted this earlier, so credit to him, not me) that there's preliminary X Windows support in the Beta itself. Try this -- login normally, then close all the windows and put the dock on auto-hide. Then launch Terminal. The terminal window should be the only one open. Then type "javadt" (no quotes) at the prompt, and you get a very X-like window...

Anybody know why it looks like this and what the heck is going on?

looks interesting...

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it's only after you lose everything that you're free to do anything

[strobe]

I hope OS X never ships with built-in X11 support unless it's only available in it's own window like an emulator. X11 apps are in total chaos, it clashes with itself, never mind the mac.

Most X11 freeware stuff is useless anyway. Those few X11 apps which are genuinely useful can be ported proper instead of merely recompiled. Once GNUstep becomes usable there will be greater incentive to port X11 stuff to Cocoa since everybody can gain from a better UI.

My opinions extend to GTK+ as well. Better to run GTK within X11, it'll suck just as much if you make a native version which merely adopts the Aqua look, and yet doesn't behave like a mac app.

I can only pray Swing won't be too popular |-p

[strobe]

While we're on this subject I'd like to remind everybody it's possible to run the Linux kernel on top of Mach 3. This is essentially what MkLinux did. Then you can run LinuxPPC apps without recompiling with minimal speed differences. I find that solution a lot more attractive.

[mactropolis]

I find that solution a lot more attractive also! I didn't think of that. MkLinux IS Linux over the Mach kernel...
this would be so amazing. someone has to start this project on sourceforge.net

anyone up to it??

[strobe]

Sorry, too busy trying to carbonize a CMM (and getting nowhere). Anyway this may become a non-issue after gnulibtool and some other crap is ported.

[mitchell_pgh]

Strobe,
It doesn't matter if X11 is part of the standard install or not. The only people that will understand it will be people that appreciate it. OSX could be in serious trouble. I hope that Apple remembers to pay some attention to the least common denominator when designing it's foundation software applications. Remember, I'm the guy that has to teach my grandmother about the new OS. We don't want OSX to be a Unix, even though it's built on one... We want it to be nice and behave itself (let the power users hack the hell out of it)

My $.02

[nuckin futs]

amen to that mitchell!
i am having a hard time converting my wife to be an OS X user.She converted from a PC to a MAC user in 2 hours, but she doesn't like the way OS X feels. I'm not running classic because i don't have OS 9.

[strobe]

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Date: Wed, 3 Jan 2001 15:14:10 -0800

A free version of XFree86 running side by side with the Mac OS X Aqua desktop is now available at http://mrcla.com/XonX/. (This code will eventually find its way into the XFree86 CVS repository.) Thanks go to Gregory Robert Parker for the original concept and implementation.

This is a full screen implementation. The user can switch back and forth between the X window desktop and the Aqua desktop with a key combination. The support is still very preliminary and is missing many features such as multibutton mouse support and copy and paste interoperability with Aqua applications. It does seem to be stable, however, and is faster than Xvnc.

XFree86 for Aqua shares as much code as possible with XFree86 4.0.2 for Darwin. The new Xdarwin server can be made to run side by side with Aqua by specifying the -quartz command line option. In this mode the framebuffer is provided by CoreGraphics instead of the IOKit and the events are read from a controlling Carbon application instead of the IOKit.

--Torrey
XFree86 Developer - Darwin/Mac OS X Support
"Action figure sold separately."
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Now shut the hell up!

[blanalex]

Originally posted by gorgonzola:
Then type "javadt" (no quotes) at the prompt, and you get a very X-like window...

Anybody know why it looks like this and what the heck is going on?


I just tried your trick. What you are seeing there is Swing's Metal Look 'n Feel. (Swing is an API for graphical interfaces). Metal is the default theme in Swing and it's cross-platform. The 'real' Unix L&F is the 'Motif' library, which was the standard for writing X applications before GTK+ or Qt were popular.


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#define (2b)||!(2b)
-- Shakespear

[bleen]

Apple's Darwin site has a To Do list ( http://www.opensource.apple.com/projects/darwin/todo.html ) on this site it has listed work on the X-11 port and having it run in Quartz, so you can acutally run it in OS X itself and not Darwin's Commandline

[jswhit]

This has already been done - see http://mrcla.com/XonX/. It requires you compile XFree86 yourself though, which is no small chore.

-Jeff

[Juggler]

A precompiled binary version of XFree86 for Aqua was made available by the end of January, making things much easier. Go to http://mrcla.com/XonX/.

[gorgonzola]

Either you can run X apps rootless, or you can use Xvnc to use sessions of X windows remotely (in a single window).

It's pretty good, does what you need it to do. While the support may not come in Darwin for a little while, you'll be able to do it yourself pretty easily. The main problem is not getting X11 to run, it's getting apps to compile properly.

I long for the day when gcc runs properly. It will come, but not soon enough!

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[sordid]

this is a 2 year old thread.. who in the hell dug this up?