Finding The Right OS

[Refalm]

I don't think that's possible because X apps draw their own widgets or use a separate library like GTK+.

Well, they can create something to batch convert the functions of most used widgets to built-in Mac OS X widgets.
And I wasn't talking about GTK+ or QT, I was talking about pure X apps.

[cymon]

I like Apple's X11, it's not bloated with stupid shit like the whole resource sharing thing. Any halfway decent Macintosh is going to run just fine. The Xserver, imo, is just a relic from the old mainframe setup. X11, .NET, just more of the same. How about, instead of some insanely overpowered server, and some ghetto ass clients, we just make a decent computer? Aqua and Quartz are nice and light.

[piratePenguin]

Xorg isn't light?
That's news to me.

According to the Y Windows about page, being network transparent doesn't reduce the speed of the system on local hosts.

[msdos6]

The only pproblem with debian is its not dated enough to work on my 2001 computer. I'm installing OS/2 just to give a dated OS a shot on a dated computer.

[cymon]

Xorg isn't light?
That's news to me.

According to the Y Windows about page, being network transparent doesn't reduce the speed of the system on local hosts.

I've never used X.org, the 200 MHz computer I ran it on would take several weeks to compile it.

[piratePenguin]

I've never used X.org, the 200 MHz computer I ran it on would take several weeks to compile it.

I doubt that very much. I'd be surprised if it took more than a few days. It's not as huge as you'd think, and you more than likely wouldn't need half the stuff.

Why would you wanna compile Xorg anyhow? Why not get a binary?

X11 and it's client/server design, is one of the things I prefer in GNU/Linux over the way things are done in Windows.

[worker201]

My understanding is that simply converting an X11 file to a Cocoa file would not be simple, unless there was a one-to-one widget scenario.  And even then, they access system resources differently.

I don't see what the complaint is.  X11 works just fine.  We all know that teh JimmyJames has a problem with X, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work.

[hm_murdock]

To "convert" apps to Cocoa, they'd have to be rewritten in Objective-C. At this point, you're totally rewriting the app. On top of that, X11 draws using bitmaps, while Quartz draws using PDF and PostScript. Raster vs. vector there. Yeah, that's not so hard to fix... but the Obj-C thing would require the whole thing be redone.

Most X11 apps are C++, so I guess it could be easier to rewrite for Carbon, as that's a C++ API. However...

Carbon carries a lot of legacy Macintosh baggage with it. It's the "modernized" version of the Mac Toolbox API, and therefore would require that certain bits be rewritten to interface with the API. Also, Carbon doesn't support certain things that aren't permitted in Mac OS 8.6/9.x as it was designed as a backward-compatible transition API.

In the end, the easiest and best way to run X11 apps is just to compile the thing for Darwin, and run it in X11

As for my earlier statement, it's not so much a dig on X11, but a statement of the usefulness of it on OS X. There's a lot of good software out there that can be run... but... there's also an equal amount of good software that runs natively on OS X. That's all I'm saying in that regard. If you wanna use UNIX apps, just go with Linux or BSD. No need to spend the $$ on a Mac. Or dual-boot X and Linux!

[themacuser]

Ummm, objective-C is a superset of regular C, and should be able to interoperate. Also, there's no reason why a standard C app couldn't call all the required libraries and everything for AppKit, to use the Cocoa technologies though.

You can port something to Cocoa without rewriting it in objective-C.