Re: Will X11 ever be installed by default?
Re: Will X11 ever be installed by default?
- Subject: Re: Will X11 ever be installed by default?
- From: lakin <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 17:38:16 -0700 (PDT)
Rich: I think Apple has a challenge going forward as to how to
integrate X11 more beautifully into their OS, and I am willing
to bet they are thinking hard how best to do this.
YES! I have a graphics product that runs under Solaris/X11. When
considering new platforms a year ago, I chose OS X over Linux
because
A. my target graphics market more likely to be Mac users and
B. with Apple inclusion of X11 if not support, I thought OS X
offered a more stable delivery vehicle than the various Linuxes
The jury is still out on whether I made the right choice; it will
require more help from Apple before my graphics-geeks-not-unix-geeks
can get X11 working (and save me the contortions of the Matlab
installer).
I think Rich hit it exactly -- the key word on OS X / X11
integration is BEAUTIFULLY. That's what I bet on: easy, and
elegant, and well ... beautiful. So my graphics-geeks actually
find it fun and kind of cool to start up an X11 app; a plus, not
a minus (hey, I can dream, can't I? Let's get that famous Apple
design know-how focused on this!).
...
Or, I could just develop under some PPC Linux, bundle my app into
my own distro, and then distribute via "live CD" (see below,
Gentoo GnuLinux as an example).
regs,
-f
******************
Cc: Dave Williss <email@hidden>, email@hidden
From: Rich Cook <email@hidden>
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 10:25:49 -0700
Sender: email@hidden
I disagree that it's unrealistic; X11.app can be bundled, installed
and run from an X11 program by a vendor. That's realistic. But I
agree it's unrealistic to think that xv is ever going to come with
X11.app bundled. :-) I think Apple has a challenge going forward as
to how to integrate X11 more beautifully into their OS, and I am
willing to bet they are thinking hard how best to do this.
On Jul 28, 2004, at 9:32 AM, Jim Elliott wrote:
> I don't think it's realistic to target an average Mac user with an X11
> program. If you truly want to get the business and support of average
> Mac users, you're going to need to port to Carbon or Cocoa. X11 is
> just too complex, confusing, different, and frankly geeky. Geeks like
> me put up with it because of the valuable tools we're long accustomed
> to using, and understand the value of installing, caring and feeding
> for it. And we'll already have X11 installed, or will be willing to
> install it before installing your program.
>
> People who shouldn't have to care that X11 is involved should not be
> exposed to X11, at least in today's implementations, I think.
>
> -Jim
>
> On Jul 28, 2004, at 08:58, Dave Williss wrote:
>> But our users are not your average X11 user, they're your average Mac
>> user. They shouldn't have to care that X11 is involved, just as they don't
>> have to worry about whether or not Carbon, QuickTime, or any other
>> component of the OS is involved.
>>
>> -- Dave Williss
In-Reply-To: <email@hidden>
From: Moon Draper <email@hidden>
Subject: Re: Will X11 ever be installed by default?
Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 07:19:53 -0500
To: email@hidden
Sender: email@hidden
Yes, this is true- and most likely a problem for folks developing X11
packages for MacOS. The folks making Matlab have their installer check
for a complete X11 installation and provide a complete X11 installation
of their own, complete with Oroboro. They then include two separate
start scripts- one that uses Oroboro and one that uses the installed
X11.app in /Applications/Utilities.
...
But I think this is a challenge that Apple will need to address. X11
client developers are going to want to expand their user base to
include "average macintosh users". Fink goes a *long* way to helping
with this, but developers could use some help making 'average-proof'
clients.
For example, we have X11 clients in the lab and had to write scripts to
make starting X11, shh -X to the remote machine, and changing the local
X11 server plist settings from rootless to full-screen (and changing
the window manager) all menu driven in order to get intelligent,
fairly-experienced Mac users to be able to start remote clients without
having to give them mini-lessons on the X11 server.
I wouldn't have believed it, but just writing these Applescripts and
putting them under a menubar icon (similar to the classic menubar
status) solved most of our problems.
The things that we check are:
X11 install, X11.app version, X11 forwarding enabled, firewall rules
for ssh ports, fink install, .xinitrc content, window managers present,
and networking status. A pain, but once established- this really
opened the world for grumpy old macintosh users to scientific (and
other) clients available to them on remote machines.
cheers.
**************************
http://baldwinets.tripod.com/darwin.html#Try_Gentoo_GnuLinux_on_your_Mac_without
With this Live CD you can run a trial of Gentoo Linux without
disrupting your present OS. Place the CD in your CD drive and
reboot the machine and it will restart running Linux (hold "C"
while starting). Have a ball, try everything out, reboot the
machine without the CD (don't hold C) and you're back to your
present OS with no installation on your hard drive, no disruption
of your present configuration! How cool is that? Gentoo LiveCD
for PPC, $10.00
BUT
http://www-106.ibm.com/developerworks/linux/library/l-pmac.html Knoppix/PPC never managed to boot quite right
The two distributions that I found less that compelling were
Debian (Woody) and Knoppix. The latter is an interesting creature
that I've found useful on x86 machines. Knoppix uses a "live
boot" CD -- that is, booting from the Knoppix CD gives you a
working Linux environment with KDE, OpenOffice, and a good
collection of utilities. Using Knoppix, there is no need to
create any partitions or boot setup on a PC, and you can carry
the Knoppix CD between various machines to have a uniform
configuration on each. Unfortunately, testing on three separate
systems, Knoppix/PPC never managed to boot quite right: KDE would
not load, and the fallback was a crude TWM shell that did not get
the video mode quite right (colormap and sizing
problems). Networking, including wireless, however, seem to be
recognized correctly; so you can use the command-line tools. Once
Knoppix/PPC gets some more polish to it, it -- or something like
it -- will be a very useful way to run Linux non-destructively on
existing Mac OS X machines. (See Resources for links to full
articles on Knoppix.)
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