Re: newcommer
Re: newcommer
- Subject: Re: newcommer
- From: Gareth Eason <email@hidden>
- Date: Fri, 22 Aug 2003 17:07:46 +0300
Hi,
Good answer from Dominic :)
One other feature which I think really deserves a mention is the fact
that the design of X11 seperates the GUI layer completely from the
underlying layers, and so can be (and generally is) transported over
some network. On Linux, Solaris, etc. a loopback network device is used
between the X11 client and server even though both are residing on the
same physical computer.
So what does this mean?
In practical terms, it means that if your Apple Mac lives on a network
which also has Solaris, Linux, HP-UX, etc., etc. boxes on it, you can
run applications on the remote machines, but have them appear on the
screen of your Apple. This means that the CPU power of the remote
machine is being used to actually run the software, but the interface
of the program appears on your Mac screen and responds (obviously) to
keyboard and mouse input from your keyboard and mouse.
This is a great solution for people like myself who work in an
exclusive Mac environment in one place, and then on another network
with a mix of Linux, Solaris and Apple equipment. None of my linux
servers have keyboards and mice and now, thanks to this development of
X11 on Mac, I can use my iBook to administrate them all!
Of course, this works the other way aswell. Once applications are
ported for X11 on the Mac, that means I can use them over a network on
my Solaris boxes, Linux boxes, etc., etc... Anything that can run an
X11 server in fact - even Windows (with extra software.)
Imagine the concept of having one keyboard, one mouse and one screen,
but yet working on 5, 10 or 28 different computers at the same time!
Some of the computers are running OS X, some running Linux, some
solaris, some HP-UX, etc. - it doesn't matter. That's what it's all
about! :-)
Hope this helps to explain some of the design ideas behind X11 for you.
Best regards,
-->Gar
On Friday, August 22, 2003, at 03:34 pm, Dominic Dunlop wrote:
On Friday, Aug 22, 2003, at 11:07 Europe/Brussels, Isabelle Marie
Collas wrote:
Please, excuse my stupid question, but what is X11 for?
Hmmm. Not a stupid question, but introductory texts are difficult to
find: X Window is sufficiently ancient that we're all supposed to know
what it's for by now. But how about
http://news.com.com/2100-1002_3-5065494.html (in French)?
Until UNIX-based Mac OS X came along, if you bought a UNIX
implementation (Solaris, Linux, AIX ...) the windowing system was X
Window. Consequently, all UNIX software that needed windowing
facilities used X Window. If you want to port that software to Mac OS
X, you can either rewrite it to use Mac OS X's proprietary Quartz
windowing system -- a task that, for example, the OpenOffice
developers have recently said will take them until 2006 (see
http://porting.openoffice.org/mac/timeline.html) -- or you can install
X Window client libraries and an X Window server on Mac OS X, and
(usually) get a working application simply by rebuilding from the
source code. This list is for people who have taken the second route,
either using Apple's own X port (currently in beta, but to be a part
of the forthcoming Panther release of Mac OS X) or the
freely-available XFree-86 distribution.
--
Dominic Dunlop
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--
Gareth Eason, Euterpe Oy.
http://euterpe.dnsalias.com/
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