why X11?

[js62]

I was wondering why many people use X11 and fink to get unix apps to run on OS X. I use Yellow Dog Linux and mac-on-linux(enables you to use OS X at native speeds). No need to reboot into one or the other as OS X runs on top of YDL. Much like Virtual PC except that it is very fast.You get a full linux distro with YDL and you have all the great iApps from Apple at the same time. I don't see the downside to my setup other than you need a decent size hard drive. I certainly don't see the upside to using X11. What am I missing?

thanks,
Joe

[yellow]

Hmm.. Unix emulation on Unix? Why run BSD (OSX) on top of Linux? Seems like 1 too many steps and a bit of a waste.

Fink is a wonderfully useful package building kit that has prebuilt/config'd/ported UNIX packages that puts a lot of binaries in the reach of UNIX newbies/younglings. It also makes life so much easier for experienced *NIX users who miss their beloved binaries from other flavors of UNIX. No more fiddling with code to make it compile. Thanks Fink.Sourceforge!!

X11 is the traditional window GUI for *NIX. There are a lot of UNIX apps out there that don't run in aqua (the Apple Gui) and require X11. The vanilla XEmacs leaps to mind. For me, we use it with treatment planning software. Now instead of having a Solaris box, we can use a Mac. Sweet! So many corporate, research, and educational facilites use apps that require X11, think of it as a nice move by Apple to take a little market share from Sun and a chunk outta the opensource *NIX groups.

BTW, There's no rebooting involved to use the X11 server in OS X.

[hayne]

Originally posted by js62 What am I missing? I think you are missing the fact that, even among those that have fink and X11 installed, most OS X users spend the majority of their time running native Aqua applications. And they don't want to have to maintain a Linux OS in addition to OS X (keeping up with security patches, drivers for new periperals, etc.).

[sao]

js62,

Let's remember that the X Window System is the de facto standard graphics system in the Unix world.

Some of the advantages of using Apple's implementation of X11 for the average Macintosh user:

(let's not forget that Apple's X11 is still a Public Beta and that the final version will come out by the end of the year and although the current Beta corresponds to XFree86 4.2.1, Apple is working to synchronize with XFree86 4.3)


1- Is easy to setup as it combines the display and client libraries into a single download and install. You can be up and running in no time.

2- Is fast, as it is optimized to take full advantage of Apple's Quartz graphics system which translates into hardware-accelerated 2D and 3D graphics (fast scrolling speeds for text, live drag and resize of windows, etc) and 3D animation through OpenGL Direct Rendering.

3- Is completely integrated with the Aqua user interface. You can minimise X11 windows to the Dock. And you use the Aqua window controls to close, minimise, and zoom X11 windows.

About Fink, well not much to say, except thanks, thanks and thanks! If you are a beginner or not with X11, it will make your life a lot easier. And then, for those who want to stay away from the CLI, there is "FinkCommander" (made by Steven Burr), which provides a GUI front end to Fink.

[occjph]

js62 wrote:
I certainly don't see the upside to using X11. What am I missing?

X11 is essential if you work in a large computing environment. Where I work, we have dozens of large servers, hundreds of workstations and thousands of PC's and macs. Many of our most important applications run on Sun Solaris machines (like E10K's, 6800's, 3500's, etc.). These machines -could- be accessed via VNC, but it's much easier to display the apps I need on my Mac desktop via X11. I often have 10 different apps from 10 different machines displayed on my Mac desktop at the same time - things like network managers, system monitors, rendering controllers, etc. The apps themselves run on the big iron, but the user interface exists on my Mac and takes very little CPU away from local Mac apps.

There is a push to deliver applications via HTTP and many programs do this well (the Netscape/Sun ONE email/LDAP servers, for example) but nothing will replace X11 for pure speed and crossplatform interactivity, IMHO.

X11 runs so well on MacOSX I finally gave up my darwin (Sun Ultra 10 workstation) and do everything from my Mac. Many of our Sun programmers have done the same. Few think KDE or CDE are superior to Aqua as far as UI's go. The Mac is simply a MUCH nicer machine to work with.

My $0.02 worth

[js62]

first of all thanks for the replies,
but I was asking why use X11 when you can use Yellow Dog linux with Mac on Linux and have the best of both worlds. With my YDL and OS X setup I can instantly switch between OS's.

With YDL I have a full linux distro, with X11 you need to build as you go. Installing programs is easy as apt-get install program.

So I still don't see why X11 is used rather than YDL. Is it because most mac user don't know about YDL and mac-on-linux?

Joe

[yellow]

Doesn't YDL use an X11 Windows server?

[hayne]

Originally posted by yellow
Doesn't YDL use an X11 Windows server? Yes - of course it does. All Linux distros include X11 and it is used for all Linux GUIs.

js62's question is why not use YDL (which automatically gives you X11 capability) with mac-on-linux to get access to Aqua OS X apps.

js62, I thought I had answered this question above - I isn't worth the trouble for most OS X users for whom X11 apps are a sideline, the main show is Aqua.

[yellow]

Maybe I'm misunderstanding the question then.. to me the question was why not use YDL so you have LINUX and Mac OS X instead of using Mac OS X and X11? To me this is reinventing the wheel.. I guess I don't understand the point of installing LINUX on a machine that comes with BSD. Either way, I'm going to want/have X11 & Aqua.

[serpico]

I have been reading and researching what the best way was to tackle this for myself. Being a switcher from windows and a little time with linux, I love OSX but want to learn more about it's core unix foundation.

I read about XDarwin, X11, Fink and all the PPC linux offerings. First I thought I would install a linux os beside OSX and use mac-on-linux, but reading this forum, I can understand why not to do this. If BSD is there along with OSX already, why load another, that's like having 3 OSes!

When I come back from my trip next week, I'm going to dive right into this.

[sao]

s62 wrote:
Is it because most mac users don't know about YDL and mac-on-linux?
I think most mac users know about Linux right now... :)

Many of them (except the ones that use Linux) perhaps, don't know yet about 'mac on linux' .

I think the answer to "why X11 is used rather than YDL" is another similar question "why to go through the whole trouble of installing YDL, when you can have Apple's X11 which integrates completely with the Aqua user interface?"

I really looks as "reinventing the wheel", like Yellow said above.

[Jacques]

Isn't speed an issue?

What I've gathered is that YDL is very fast, compared to Apple's X11 implementation. For instance, using KDE via YDL vs KDE via Apple's X11 by way of Fink.

Jacques

[dji]

Originally posted by occjph
X11 runs so well on MacOSX I finally gave up my darwin (Sun Ultra 10 workstation) and do everything from my Mac. Many of our Sun programmers have done the same. Few think KDE or CDE are superior to Aqua as far as UI's go. The Mac is simply a MUCH nicer machine to work with.

I just came here looking for an answer to a burning question, and luckily this thread was right on top.

As a programmer who had been happily (?) going along working under CDE, and a long-time Mac user and fan, I must admit I'm having difficulty learning to work under OS X (they switched out my workstation on my request :rolleyes: )

The main problem for me is that X11, Terminal, etc are Mac applications, and as such all their windows remain tied together like a chain gang. I'm used to working in a standard X11 environment where every single window is a separate application, and they can be made to act separately. And I really like being able to put input focus in a window while leaving it on the bottom of the pile.

This is one reason that (I think) no one has mentioned yet why js62's idea of running OSX on top of YDL might be better: so that X11 apps can live free while still getting the benefits of Mac.

So this brings me to my question: is there any way on earth to get OS X to imitate this aspect of standard X11? I'm dying to know!

Dave

[NavySEAL]

Well, Yellowdog won't even install on my computer, so I use x11.

[nankuei]

mac-on-linux is new to me... I just checked their website and found this in their FAQ session:
___
Q: Does it run on i386 hardware?
A: No, MOL can only run on PowerPC hardware since no emulation is performed. However, adding a PowerPC emulator for x86 is under consideration.
___

If they actually make a "ppc emulator for x86" available, I will be interested in installing the mac-on-linux on my i386 pc... running OSX on my pc will be cool.

[JayBee]

Originally posted by nankuei
mac-on-linux is new to me... I just checked their website and found this in their FAQ session:
___
Q: Does it run on i386 hardware?
A: No, MOL can only run on PowerPC hardware since no emulation is performed. However, adding a PowerPC emulator for x86 is under consideration.
___

If they actually make a "ppc emulator for x86" available, I will be interested in installing the mac-on-linux on my i386 pc... running OSX on my pc will be cool.

<offtopic>
For that reason alone, I'm sure the emulator will remain "under consideration" - Apple's lawyers will no doubt be paying a visit if it moves off that stage ;)
</offtopic>

[DoubleEdd]

Originally posted by dji
The main problem for me is that X11, Terminal, etc are Mac applications, and as such all their windows remain tied together like a chain gang. I'm used to working in a standard X11 environment where every single window is a separate application, and they can be made to act separately. And I really like being able to put input focus in a window while leaving it on the bottom of the pile.

This is one reason that (I think) no one has mentioned yet why js62's idea of running OSX on top of YDL might be better: so that X11 apps can live free while still getting the benefits of Mac.

So this brings me to my question: is there any way on earth to get OS X to imitate this aspect of standard X11? I'm dying to know!


It isn't a matter of having a 'standard' X environment. All of that is handled by the window manager, not X itself. You need to install a different window manager - I expect you could find windowmaker, sawfish, fvwm2 etc if you look in Fink. (If you don't know what your current window manager is then you should check your non-Mac's xinitrc file - see below)

Then edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc and change the exec quartz-wm line to start the WM of your choice instead. This will affect X11 for all users who haven't got their own config, the alternative being making a copy of the above file as ~/.xinitrc and editing that instead just to change the behaviour for your own user.

As for the YDL-w-MOL v MacOSX-w-X11 I use the latter solution (despite running my own Linux box and using exclusively Linux or commercial Unix machines at work) because I prefer the OSX user interface and because I find it much easier to administer the system from OSX. Also most X11 applications I use tend to be run over a network - I think I only have xemacs as a local X app, so it is even more pointless to run Linux just to get X.

[AHunter3]

is there any way on earth to get OS X to imitate this aspect of standard X11?

Of course. Instead of installing Apple's X11 environment, install XFree86 and X Darwin. Then you have a "regular" X11 environment with a window manager of your choice (I like WindowMaker) running a separate screen from your Aqua environment. You use a keystroke to switch environments. You can also run it rootless if you don't want or need the X11 Desktop, and then you have Aqua windows that behave like Mac Aqua application windows do, and you have X11 windows that behave like X11 windows do, intermixed on the same screen.

You can install XFree86 using Fink and Fink Commander, same as any other ported Unix s/w.

[Jacques]

Originally posted by Jacques (who?)
Isn't speed an issue?

What I've gathered is that YDL is very fast, compared to Apple's X11 implementation. For instance, using KDE via YDL vs KDE via Apple's X11 by way of Fink.


Have any of you noticed ^^? Is speed a factor in choosing?

Jacques

[dji]

Originally posted by DoubleEdd
It isn't a matter of having a 'standard' X environment. All of that is handled by the window manager, not X itself. You need to install a different window manager Thank you. Now that you mention it, it seems perfectly obvious :) I will certainly explore this path.

To AHunter3: what you're suggesting sounds like something that requires more control over one's machine than I have. This is my work machine, controlled by the "IT guys", and I don't have administrator privileges. But I'll keep it in mind in case all else fails.

[AHunter3]

I should point out, since it is far from obvious from the name, that "X Darwin" is nothing but a GUI-environment launcher, the equivalent of typing "startx" for all practical purposes. X Darwin is an Aqua app with a button to start up the X11 environment with the option of full screen or rootless mode. It is NOT the separate OS called "Darwin" and does not require installing a separate OS. (It DOES require that the developer tools be installed, but I think that is true of anything you attempt to install via Fink).

If you have Fink functionality the rest of it (installing XFree86) should be pretty simple. Fink Commander and X Darwin are both just little Aqua apps that control underlying Unix processes, and XFree86 is compiled by Fink from source code and installed where it belongs (Fink knows how).

[dji]

Originally posted by AHunter3
I should point out, since it is far from obvious from the name You're right to think that I might misunderstand, because I did :) Thanks for the clarification.

[freimacosxheit]

One major hurdle for switching to Linux on Mac hardware is the driver availability for new devices. Good knowledge and commands in Unix network and system administration is the pre-requisite in solving unexpected problem in the smooth operation of Linux on Mac. Hence it is good for those who want to get themselves familiarised with Linux OS and are willing to spend time in tweaking the system

Having much experience with Linux from the darkside's hardware, it drives me crazy to solve the driver problem of Aten PS/2-to-USB converter for my Kensington Expert Mouse for 3 months when I installed Mandrake 9.1 on my G4/350 machine. Eventually, I gave up the idea of having Linux on my Mac.

With fink and Darwin, KDE desktop on X11 can co-exist with OS X desktop without rebooting to Linux. You can start testing and using KDE based application at ease while waiting for the porting of other X11/Linux applications from fink and Darwin communities.

[sastofugi]

I was wondering why many people use X11 and fink to get unix apps to run on OS X. I use Yellow Dog Linux and mac-on-linux(enables you to use OS X at native speeds).

This is not true it is very fast but not native speed.

[sastofugi]

Isn't speed an issue?

What I've gathered is that YDL is very fast, compared to Apple's X11 implementation. For instance, using KDE via YDL vs KDE via Apple's X11 by way of Fink.

Jacques

You are comparing apple and oranges.
KDEis a windows manager running on XServer ontop of YDL (Linux) kernels
X11 is a windows manager running ontop of aqua windows manager running on quartz "server" ontop of darwing (BSD) kernels.

It would be better of a comparinson: KDE via YDL vs Aqua via Apple Mac OSX
...or...
Aqua ontop of KDE ontop of XServer ontop of YDL vs KDE ontop of X11 ontop of Aqua ontop of Apple Mac OSX

Then you would see that they render at the same speed.

My 2c

[sastofugi]

Have any of you noticed ^^? Is speed a factor in choosing?

Jacques

Wrong comparison as I explained previously.

[re_re]

i have never used MOL, but i am quite familiar with it as i have used linux pretty much execlusively for the last 3-4 years on my x86 boxes. One thing i am curious about is, do i have full use of dual monitors with MOL, do i have full keynote/powerpoint dual monitor functionality with mol?

If i don't have this, why would i use YDL?

don't get me wrong, but most of the reason i bought a mac is for the multimedia applications and it is absolutely necessary that i have fully functional use of a second monitor in ppt and keynote and beyond that even VLC

[yellow]

You are comparing apple and oranges.
If i don't have this, why would i use YDL?

Gentlemen (and/or ladies), the thread you are replying to is nearly 3 years old.

At this point much has changed with YDL/X11/OS X. So it's not quite worth replying and refuting people claims, as times have changed drastically.