Re: x11 instead of aqua
Re: x11 instead of aqua
- Subject: Re: x11 instead of aqua
- From: Patrick Coskren <email@hidden>
- Date: Thu, 10 Jun 2004 13:03:29 -0400
On Jun 10, 2004, at 7:56 AM, Gareth Eason wrote:
Yes - vnc is a remote desktop system - not a multi-user graphical
interface like X11. But you've got to remember that the Mac OS X GUI
is intrinsically a single user system, merely sitting on a
multi-tasking, multi-user BSD-type platform.
Yup, I know. I'm not knocking VNC, any more than I was knocking X11 in
my previous post. But my comment was in reply to someone who pointed
out that X11 would let you run multiple copies of, say, MATLAB, running
on different machines, but running on one powerhouse in the back room.
He's right: Aqua (which I find preferable, personally) can't do that,
and neither can VNC. That's not to say VNC doesn't have it's uses.
And given Apple's predominant target market, it doesn't make a huge
amount of sense (at the moment) for Apple to work on X'ifying
Carbon/Cocoa, since X11 is already out there and well supported for
the rare people who wish to use Apples for distributed graphical work
environments :-)
Who said anything about X-ifying Carbon?! My God, man, the horror!
The sheer UI unpleasantness of X11 is one of the main reasons that, as
I told the original poster, I'll generally pick an Aqua application
over an X11 one if it's available. The only exception is, as pointed
out, those times I have to run something on the monster SGI in the
server room. I'd much rather see Apple put the effort into
re-supporting NXHosting, which allowed Aqua to do the sort of per-app
multiple-machine goodness that X11 does, back in the NeXT days.
VNC can be used by multiple people, but they share a common view,
pointer, etc. While this is useless for multi-user, multi-tasking, it
is a superb teaching tool - since you can force people to log in
'read-only' - so they can see the screen but keyboard and mouse input
is ignored. This means I can let multiple (remote) people SEE my
screen, SEE exactly what I'm doing on it and SEE the exact results I
see. And best of all, it's just a window on their monitors so they can
try what they see out on their own machines and see if it works on
their machines too.
Like I said, not knocking VNC.
-Patrick
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