UNIX Envy

[psyjax]

Ahhh this was a fun endevour that kept me up all night!

http://www.xfree86.com/

Basically it's an X windows server for OS X. After reading thrugh the forums and being impressed by all the StarTrek technobable coming from the likes of VoidMain and other Unix types, I wanted part of the archaic action myself.  

This stuff is incredibly cool! I can run X11 unix apps on my mac without a hitch! they run native, and the windows float over, and between your OS X windows as if they were normaly there. You can even boot your computer into X11 if your so inclined.

The basic window manager for X11 is way primative, and that's all I got so Id be nuts to run it full screen    ... I went ahead and located apps for download (BTW Unix and GNU sites are incredibly hard to navigate! I know you guys are technical types, but please get someone with some design sense (more on this later)! Minor note from an artist   ), I got AbiWord, a near exact clone of M$Word, that eats only about 30MB. Pretty nice little program I was impressed! A deffinit keeper, snaged a copy of the GIMP. Impresive for a two man show, but I'm getting PS7 OS X, while cool the GIMP is still no Photoshop-killer.

I downladed GTK and windowmaker but couldent get them to run. I'm sure this is only a result of my limited UNIX skills (I have basically tought myself thrugh trial and error and various FAQ's), and with time I'll be more adept at getting things to work how I want them to.

Now, this all brought me to an interesting realization. Now that the *NIX community has us Mac people on their side (though many Mac people don't know it yet), they should start catering to them a little. I mean we have been using GUI's exclusively for years, perhapse a simple step by step site and the like. I mean even the Mac *NIX/XDarwin sites were written by tech heads.

Then again, I suppose this sort of simplification and popularization may be the legacy left up to the new Mac comunity joining the *NIX comunnity. If we bring our design savey, ease of use, and elegance, to the technical, diverse, and software resplandant UNIX universe there is no telling were we will go!

I mean seriously, taping the power of UNIX in OSX pretty much makes the Mac, one of the platforms with the MOST software available for it. This is incredibly promasing stuff, I can't wait till this stuff starts getting more popular amongst users.

Once I get better versed in using *NIX\Darwin, and am able to start programing for it (yes, I program C, for the older MacOS's), I think I may be starting a site devoted to educating the common user about the power underneath the GUI    . Making apps, to make things simpler, and generaly make using *NIX stuff and MacOS stuff pretty darn seemless. And seeing how easely portable between flavors it all is, perhapse some of the Mac magic will fall on the other UNIX types, those who once calld our little machines Beige toasters   .

Pretty cool stuff. Im all too exited about it!

[voidmain]

Bingo! I think MAC graphics people and UNIX technurds can compliment each other greatly.  I am excited about it (when it comes to desinging web graphics I have a full frontal, but I feel that I am pretty good with the underneath stuff, wish I were capable of both but if it hasn't happened by now it will never happen).

And BTW, http://www.xfree86.org is not just for MACs (I'm sure you know this but your post made it sound that way).  XFree is what Linux has always used and most/all of the open source *NIXs use. And I even ran XFree on OS/2 way back when. And it works on Windows as well (cygwin).  There are non free X servers out there as well that really outperform XFree but they are expensive. If you happen to have a video card where the XFree version of Xwindows supports in Accelerated mode then life is better. I hope more people like you will get interested in cross development. We can all benefit from it. And who knows, maybe take down the empire one day?

[psyjax]

I belive the Mac version is hardware Excelerated. At least that's what the documentation implied. Ya I knew it was for more than one platform, the other one I found was XTools which I think is Mac only, it's a bit more userfriendly but I think it's for pay, and I don't think you can hack into as much to get stuff to run. None the less it is quite exciting and I cant wait till it all stats picking up!

How do they get it to run on Windows if windows doesen't have a unix core or file system? Oh well, I guess putting it on Stans OS can only be a good thing  

[voidmain]

You don't need a UNIX core to run Xwindows.  Just like you don't need a UNIX core to run most any other application. It just has to be ported to the alternate core (Win32 for Windows).  The key is, Xwindows is a "Server" or "Graphics Server", and really nothing more than that. It's not a window manager, it doesn't have any menuing built in, etc. It's just an interface to the hardware. On top of X you run the window manager of your choice (WindowMaker, KDM, Gnome, fvwm, twm, motif, etc). The window manager is what gives Xwindows the "look & feel", menus, widgets, etc.. Applications are written to use the server regardless of video hardware or operating system.  Once the server is ported (of which there are many XFree ports), the applications are easy. The applications just make calls to the Xwindows libraries and don't care about the physical hardware or OS (the apps *do* have to be ported for the OS level differences and recompiled of course, but the graphics part is the same).

Xwindows was designed from the beginning to run on more than one OS (there were many different UNIX vendors) so the graphics server made the most sense and why it is still around, and why there is an OSX port so quickly.

And, the nice thing about X is you can run your Xwindows application under Darwin and tell it to display on your Linux server (or your Windows Xserver) across the network.  Or in your case you might want to remotely log in to your Linux box and run an X application and have it display directly on your Mac Xwindows. Local and remote apps both look the same on the local X display.  You may have a graphical app that requires a huge amount of resources, you just log into the server with huge resources and launch the app and display it on your puny workstation (not saying you have a puny workstation, but if you did).

In fact I have ICONs on my desktop the lauch graphical apps from remote machines and automatically display them on the local desktop and you would never know that the application wasn't launched locally (ssh makes this a very simple process but ssh is not required, you can use telnet, rlogin, rsh, etc.. I prefer ssh as it is more secure).

[ March 19, 2002: Message edited by: VoidMain ]

[psyjax]

Oh the power, the possibilities! Too much for a mear mortal to handle