Apple Explains How to Run X11 on Mac OS X 375
tuc writes "In this document posted on its Developer Connection, Apple explains how to install X11R6 on Mac OS X, details of the default quartz-wm window manager, how to compile X11 code on Mac OS X, how to install OpenOffice, and the like."
Weird (Score:5, Interesting)
I think I'll wait to RTFA until after I've tried everything on my own first. Nothing like thrashing randomly to help you learn about a system :-)
Why? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why? (Score:5, Insightful)
Like I said, I'm in the middle of the project right now, so I don't know if it will be easy or hard. But I think you're jumping to the conclusion that it'll be a piece of cake just a LITTLE too soon...
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
On the other hand, it requires your end users to have X11 already installed and configured, which might be more of an issue for you, depending on your target audience.
Re:Why? (Score:3, Informative)
It's not backward, and it's not X11 specific. People just tend to have an inaccurate idea of what "client" and "server" actually mean.
The general tendency is to think of server as being "the big machine that does all the hard work for lots of little clients", or "the machine that provides some useful function, of which clients take advantage", and of course the client as the converse of these.
While these
Re:Why? (Score:3, Insightful)
Actually, the X11 version provided by Apple can run rootless OR fullscreen. Personally I use it mainly fullscreen with WindowMaker as WM -- it's quite puzzling for people that see me using WM on my ibook, thinking I'm under linux, when with a mouse stroke I reveal the OSX desktop ;-)
I also used it in Xnest, that can be useful too. Here is the small script I have to run it in Xnest:
Re:Trash your mac? (Score:5, Informative)
It's much less work than, say, porting a UNIX project to run on Windows, but it's definitely much more complicated than just copying the source code to the Mac and typing "make."
Re:Trash your mac? (Score:2)
I was glad to hear that X11 was even better integrated into Panther...but at the same time, the download for X11 for Jaguar silently disappeared, and in fact when I located the few remaining links to it on the Apple site it was really downloaded an Panther-only
Re:Trash your mac? (Score:2)
The real question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:2)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:3, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:3, Funny)
You let me know when the end of the end gets here, okay?
Re:The real question (Score:2, Funny)
Re:The real question (Score:5, Funny)
KeS
Re:The real question (Score:3, Interesting)
"vi" was actually pronounced as "six".
Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:3, Interesting)
I should try submitting "Apple posts technical Q&A on variable arguments in Objective-C methods" as a slashdot article, if every update to the ADC website needs its own story.
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:2)
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:3, Informative)
Depends. If you're running anything in KDE or Gnome, there's quite a few steps that Apple doesn't go into. I was quite perturbed to install KDE, have it start up successful, and get the Quartz WM trying to take it over (imagine KDE dialogs with Quartz close buttons). It took me a long time to figure out exactly what needed to be added to the
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Step 1: Double click X11.app (Score:2)
Actually Step 2 is get Fink or Darwin ports for the applications. While Fink has been pretty good in the past, I've switched to darwinports as its more tested, and multi-platform. Darwinports also has less compile issues on popular ports.
Also nice you can run X apps in a -rootless display in mac by default. I even run VNC with Xquartz on the OSX box, i havnt used my linux box since ive bought the dual cpu mac.
X on windows (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Confised in Canada (Score:2)
Slow news day? (Score:2)
Why is this worthy of comment?
Hey, look! An MSDN bulletin on a strange but useful utility called, um, lets's see, uh, Notepad!
Re:Slow news day? (Score:2)
Not that a bulletin on the existence of a clearly-visible checkbox is news, either.
Really, the most interesting and useful thing in this article for me was the screenshot of XGalaga. I didn't know this game existed. I like Galaga, so I'm going to hunt it down this afternoon so I can install it on my (already incredibly fu
Re:Slow news day? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Slow news day? (Score:2)
Double clicking an icon to start the X server is weird enough on its own.
Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:4, Insightful)
Apple doesn't want people to think they are locked into MS Office (hope it continues to support Mac OS X).
This way, Apple can say commercial grade alternatives do exist.
Apple's products aren't bad... but lets face it, they target home and educational use. Not a business person who wants to occasionally work from home. Microsoft does have powerful software, despite being buggy and insecure.
IMHO Open Office rocks. Wish Apple would invest in an aquafied port.
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:5, Insightful)
Apple doesn't want people to think they are locked into MS Office (hope it continues to support Mac OS X).
This way, Apple can say commercial grade alternatives do exist.
No, this is. [apple.com]
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:2)
I'd still use Openoffice over iWork.
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh, there isn't one? Guess I'll have to wait for version 2, since iWork with spreadsheets every day and I haven't found a decent Mac spreadsheet app besides Excel. OpenOffice's spreadsheet program is non-native, ass-slow, and supports half as many rows as Excel does (32,000 versus 65,536). Gnumeric is even worse than OpenOffice at reading or writing Excel files, and it too is not Mac native.
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:2, Offtopic)
It's fine for kids doing homework, or a casual home user...
but in terms of interoperability... it stinks.
Business people can't afford to spend time dealing with "iWorks doesn't support _______".
End users are *not* geeks. They want simple equvilants. iWork is not an equivilant.
It's a good product. But it's not an office product.
Apple *needs* an office product. It's essential to it being viewed as a productive platform
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:2)
Perhaps do some research before correcting someone.
Also, I believe you're confusing iWork for something else. 'Kids doing homework' is another way of saying that an application is underpowered and lacks serious features. To state
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:2)
Works great for everything I've thrown at it.
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:4, Interesting)
As of OS-X, there is a *LOT* of interest in Apple systems as engineering workstations. That's what I'm using, as are many people I know. This mac replaced my linux box at work.
The big interest in Macs as engineering workstations isn't exactly a big secret.... anyway not to anyone in the engineering field.
Yes, there are also plenty of other platforms used. Still a lot of Sun/Linux/other boxes here as engineering workstations, and that isn't about to change in the near future. The Macs aren't suddenly taking over it all - but they are certainly now a significant player in that market.
eWeek article on "cancelation" with clarification (Score:5, Informative)
Well, as it turns out my update to the timeline was grossly misquoted in a couple of places. The update was really just to put things in perspective as to what was really going on in the various projects as well as to reinforce the importance of the X11 work. It was never intended to "cancel" anything since, well, there wasn't really anything to cancel. The update was just stating how things really are within the project.
Today's article on eWeek [eweek.com] has some much better reporting on the progress towards 2.0 X11 and other issues that had been raised by my update. I highly recommend giving it a read as it's a bit more informative then the old
ed
Re:Reaction to OpenOffice (Score:2)
So, I'm a network engineer who does all his work on a Powerbook. Do I qualify as "home" or "educational"?
Remote Applications (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Remote Applications (Score:5, Informative)
In all seriousness, I guess the deal here is that it's a newer version than what ships as X11.app? 'About' says 'X11 1.0 - XFree86 4.3.0'. I know the '1.0' refer's to the fact that it's *Apple's* 1.0, but can someone who spends more time with X than I do explain the significance of X11R6?
[later]
OK, I just looked at TFA. The title of this summary is a bit misleading--this title is "Apple Explains How to Run X11 on MacOS" but the actual article's title is "Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X" and in goes on to say "X11 for Mac OS X... includes the full X11R6.6 technology including an X11 window server, Quartz window manager, libraries, and basic utilities such as xterm." OK, got it. I think. Still not sure how R6 and 4.3.0 relate, but the main thing is, there is nothing new here. They're talking about the X11 that OS X ships with.
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
I do use SSH to synchronize my Linux-hosted web site with its staging area on my Windows box. But that's done with command-line tools, since I don't have any X-Window support. Can't afford commercial X terminals, and the only free one I know of (X for Cygwin) does
Re:Remote Applications (Score:5, Informative)
4.3.0 is the version of the Xfree86 software that Apple ships with OS X, which implements X11R6.6.
Re:Remote Applications (Score:4, Informative)
X11 is two things, a standard for windowing systems, and a series of implementations of that standard. X11, the standard, is developed by the X.org foundation, at www.x.org. The current base version of that is version 11, release 6, X11R6. Don't let the version 11 thing fool you though, X has been at version 11 since 1987, and likely will never get to version 12, which is why everyone just calls it X11.
As for the implementations
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
Or at least I did, until something broke Fink's install of X11. Dammit.
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
I did a bunch of research on the viability of running the Solaris build of FrameMaker on OS X/X11 when embroiled in a couple large jobs last year. With the frequency of the Classic environment tanking on me--FM being the only app running within it--I figured the Solaris version was a natural alternative. Sadly it's not that easy, being that Ado
Re:Remote Applications (Score:2)
The other people who replie
FINK (Score:3, Informative)
Re:FINK (Score:4, Funny)
XFree86? Why not X.org? (Score:3, Interesting)
Is apple going to switch to X.org, since most everyone else has already? or are they sticking with XFree86 for the long run? What kinds of compatibility issues will develop as a result of that?
Re:XFree86? Why not X.org? (Score:2, Funny)
Because they Think Different (tm), of course.
For the security guys (Score:5, Interesting)
2 points to Apple for doing that, and making my coworkers jobs a little harder (they're penetration testers).
I found Abiword to be much easier than OO (Score:5, Informative)
http://www.abisource.com/ [abisource.com]
I could never get OO to work on OS X, though I use it on my Windows Machine.
Minor OpenOffice.org corrections (Score:5, Informative)
I happily noticed this myself earlier on in the week and was impressed to find the OpenOffice.org related section. Unfortunately there are some inaccuracies in the section, but I couldn't find any address to which corrections should be submitted.
Perhaps the most major omission is that the OpenOffice.org Mac OS X (X11) installer is not limited to 10.3 only. In fact, it supports both 10.2 and 10.3. For 10.2 users it also will automatically install XFree86 and a window manager if the system does not have XFree86 on it. Since Apple X11 is not redistributable under its license, 10.3 users are required ot manually install Apple X11. Ironically, that makes installation on 10.3 more inconvenient then 10.2!
On the trinity forums [neooffice.org] Smokey also noticed the file format "incompatibility" line in the article. It isn't actually true since OpenOffice.org is 100% compatible with StarOffice which, last I checked, is a commercial office suite even if it doesn't run on Mac OS X
Even with the little foibles, it's great to see support from Apple for X11 applications in general as well as a basic introduction that can help open up the entire world of X11 OSS applications for users, not just OpenOffice.org.
ed
Dumb explanation of X 'client' / 'server' (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Dumb explanation of X 'client' / 'server' (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't use X11 OpenOffice on OS X (Score:5, Insightful)
I realize we're stuck with X11 on Unix, but if you're sitting on top of Quartz, might as well use it, no?
great recruitment method (Score:3, Funny)
Bah, silly developer. This is good- any true MacOS X developer who actually tries out OpenOffice under X11 will, after his or her face has stopped twitching enough that they can see again, look for some alternative and find NeoOffice and start helping purely out of motivation to let OpenOffice under X11 die a fast death :-)
XDarwin forums still the best place to get advice (Score:4, Informative)
Woo (Score:3, Funny)
Re:unix? (Score:5, Interesting)
Believe me, you do not want to see what the Makefiles for a piece of software like that look like. We're talking about the era before GNU-style "configure" scripts and Makefile modularity. It's hideous. But it works. And it makes the differences between the various UNIX platforms as clear as day.
Right now, I'm in the middle of porting our main project to run on OS X, so this article is very timely. To be honest, I anticipate that the majority of the difficulty will be in getting the make system to run correctly, and possibly fixing a number of linker issues. I expect that the code itself will work almost unmodified.
Re:unix? (Score:3, Funny)
Re:unix? (Score:3, Interesting)
Some compilers require an explicit "-ansi" switch to properly compile ANSI code. HP7v8 requires the magical compiler flags "+DA1.0 +DS1.0". On Solaris, we need to add a "-Xc" flag.
The situation is complicated by the fact that we do two Solaris builds. One build is done with t
Re:unix? (Score:4, Interesting)
My solution was to have the top-level Makefile set a variable based on running the 'uname' command, and then 'include' the definitions that worked for the platform, based on the variable name (we were running gcc and gmake on all the platforms, although the windows one was cross-compiled under Linux. Believe it or not, this was easier!)
So, CC, CXX, JAVA, LD, RM, AR, RANLIB
etc. etc were all defined within the platform-specific file, and the main Makefile looked pretty clean. All you have then are the #ifdef statements in the source code. It did get to the point where for one project we simply had different source code for the Windows variant, and the platform-specific Makefiles copied the correct file into place before trying to compile the module in question...
Looking back at the posts I'm making on
Simon.
Re:atleast its good to see.. (Score:3, Insightful)
I don't think Apple is embracing it. They're providing compatibility to a clunkier interface but that opens them up to the zillions of unix/linux apps available. Most of the software that runs in X11 wouldn't be considered competing packages.
Re:atleast its good to see.. (Score:2)
Re:atleast its good to see.. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, really? (Score:3, Interesting)
Apple committed to XFree86 long before they changed the license. They may move to X.org as that implementation gets better features.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
Yes, NetBSD imported the latest XFree86 as they had no problems with the license. OpenBSD has changed to X.org for upcoming release, while FreeBSD appears agnostic in this matter.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
FreeBSD switched to X.org in -current in July of 2004. See Eric Anholt's post to freebsd-current here [freebsd.org], or the Slashdot writeup here [slashdot.org]. You can still use XFree86 if you like, but X.org is the default.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
What the original poster probably meant was "the XFree86 project was a popular project to implement the X11 protocol on UNIX-compatible OSes running on x86 machines", with "x86 machines" probably mainly referring to 80386 at the time.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:3, Informative)
But seriously, thanks for clearing that up. All 12 of you.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
Congratulations, guys; you all got it right without stopping to realize that 10,000 other people also knew the same answer but weren't frothing to correct him. I bet you're all a lot of fun on mailing lists, too.
Re:Wow, really? (Score:2)
Re:Do they really need a step by step.. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Do they really need a step by step.. (Score:3, Insightful)
Why shouldn't they? Macs appealed to all different types of users including the lowly n00b that didn't want to know anything about their machines.
A step by step guide (including how to do it all over SSH) is a great way to bring the information to ALL their users.
OS X has been running X11 for quite some time. It's just now that there might be a need for all their users to get access to it.
Re:Apple should... (Score:3, Informative)
If the X11 server was preloaded onto all Apple systems, it would also solve quite a number of distribution problems for OpenOffice.org and other X11 applications. The license for Apple X11 doesn't allow third parties to bundle it and redistribute it. That makes it really frustrating from an installation perspective. Instead of being able to automatically install the X11 server (like we do using XFree86 for 1
Re:Apple should... (Score:2)
Just a thought.
Re:Apple should... (Score:2)
Yes, we could ship a different X11 environment, and this is what we do already to automatically install XFree86 + OroborOSX on 10.2 machines. There are really two problems with 10.3 machines however...
First off, Apple X11 really is nice in that you get your full quartz-wm that allows X11 windows to be minimized into the Dock and used via Exposé. Not many of the other X servers support this type of in
Re:Apple should... (Score:2)
Re:Apple should... (Score:2)
In terms of the looks of applications, I was thinking in terms of bundling versions of GTK, Qt, etc. that have themes which give the apps native-looking widgets, toolbar background colors, etc. That certainly would be within their control.
Re:Apple should... (Score:2)
True. Gimp.app [sourceforge.net] has done a pretty good job of that. Sure, nobody who knows what they're looking at would mistake it for a native application. But it sure blends in a lot better than most X11 software.
There you have it... (Score:3, Insightful)
That's everything that's wrong with OpenOffice (and most other UNIX GUI) software in a nutshell, folks.
Developers generally don't care about Look & Feel, and when you're developing a package that primarily targets Linux, an OS whose desktop use is primarily confined to tinkerers, devs, or people making an ideological statement, most of the people
Re:Apple should... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Is this the same joke as cygwin X11 server? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Interesting move. (Score:2)
They are? Where was this mentioned? (Note: any place mentioning this that uses the word "Pages", with a capital "P", or the string "iWork" needs to indicate why they think Pages is intended as a full replacement for all uses of Microsoft Word, including the more "high-end" ones.)
Re:Interesting move. (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course, they compete with eachother, but what you describe doesn't sound like my interpretation of Apple and MS's behaviour.
The Macintosh Business Unit at Microsoft have a very close relationship with Apple. They're not just some MS developers who've been told to bash out some Mac knock-offs of Windows software. They're all long-time Mac developers who want to make the best Mac software they can. The spin-off of the MacBU to a separate division meant that they could work on making Mac software, not Windows ports. As this [macworld.com] article explains, before the creation of the MacBU, the Win & Mac versions of Office shared 80% of the same technology. The result? Shoddy, un-Maclike software which no-one liked and few bought. The MacBU now works every bit as closely with Apple's technologies as it does with MS's.
Office:Mac (both v.X and 2004) are very nice programs. They're not perfect, but they bring a very usable, feature-rich, Mac-specific Office suite to the platform.
Apple would not benefit one single bit from making the MacBU's software unprofitable for Microsoft. iWork is not a replacement for Office. Keynote's a very nice alternative to PowerPoint, sure. But one app does not an Office-suite make. Pages is clearly not in the same space as Word. If you need Word, you won't buy/use Pages. If you don't need Word or can't afford Office, Pages is a sensible choice. If Pages is aimed at those who don't need or won't buy Office, it's hardly a competitor, is it?
Just as Pages is not a drop-in replacement for those who need Word, any rumoured spreadsheet app will not be a drop-in replacement for those who need Excel.
Apple aren't in the business of making 'temporary, difficult alternatives'. They're about fulfilling user's needs (with the caveat that, like all corps., they don't always get that right!).
Description is from Fink, not Apple (Score:2)
FWIW, the screenshot that appears with that text is actually showing the package descriptions from the Fink project through the FinkCommander GUI and the article text is representative output from a Fink command line. Apple didn't write Fink (and certainly not its package descriptions) nor a bunch of the other software mentioned in the article (e.g. OpenOffice.org, xgalaga).
ed
Re:M$ (Score:2)
No, whoever packaged ximian-connector for Fink spelled Microsoft as M$. Apple just cut-and-pasted the output from the fink command.
Comment removed (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Funny, I read this article earlier today (Score:3, Interesting)
That's it!
Funny thing is I had enabled the Windows Sharing in that same dialog earlier to get samba working, and i hadn't noticed that ssh was in there.
Actually I didn't expect something as arcane as ssh to be so simple, but that's Mac for you.
I just received this machine (A G5 Powermac, the 64 bit one with dual processors) and I can see I still have a bit of "unlearning" to do.
Thanks thesman, very kind of you.