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: Moon Draper <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 28 Jul 2004 07:19:53 -0500
From: "Dave Williss" <email@hidden>
We have a product which runs on OS X and _requires_ that the
user have installed X11. I know you can install it when you install
the OS, but you have to go out of your way to "Customize" the install.
[snip]
Yes, you can say we should have wiped the machine first and then
it might have installed, but that would be missing the point: would
your average user think of doing that? Most likely not!
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.
From: Patrick Coskren <email@hidden>
Well, yes, but your average user wouldn't be using an X11 program. X11
users are used to configuration pain. :-)
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.
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