Questions about X11.app
Questions about X11.app
- Subject: Questions about X11.app
- From: Kevin Veroneau <email@hidden>
- Date: Wed, 23 Feb 2011 01:07:39 -0600
Hello everyone,
I come from a heavy Linux(Debian to be exact) background and have used X.org for many years. I have a few questions regarding the implementation of X.org in Snow Leopard.
Does the X.org server support the following extensions: GL, Xdamages, and Xcomposite? I know it doesn't support XRendR(or at least remotely).
Is it possible to run a specialized X Nested server within X11.app such as Metisse or Compiz?
Does X11.app support the XDMCP protocol over a private subnet? If so, how does one send special Xorg command-line arguments to X11.app? Is it possible to create a custom launcher bundle with these specialized commands to automatically connect to a specific system and is using a chooser possible?
Will applications such as x2x or x2vnc work on OS X using X11.app, or would they act strange?
Why doesn't Apple ship with any default toolkits for X.org, such as GTK and Qt4? This would make porting software from *NIX much more easier. At the moment, I need to use MacPorts to manually compile GTK and/or Qt4 before I can compile my GTK/Qt4 app natively. The other fault to this, is if I download Gimp(which uses X11.app) it comes with it's own copy of the GTK libraries. Then I go download another program which also uses GTK libraries. I am now using twice the space for two copies of the GTK libraries. Apple needs a native package management system to install system-wide *NIX binary libraries.
At the moment, to run custom *NIX software, I am using VirtualBox with no X.org server installed. I then connect the X clients to the X11.app, which mind you works great with no performance issues seen thus far. In fact, I am astounded by the performance that I run many applications this way, and avoiding the entire MacPorts routine. I even got an entire KDE4 desktop working under X11.app with very little performance issues, that's incredible! Of course the performance would be better if KDE4 were running natively on Mac OS X. It works both in the full-screen mode, and out of full-screen mode. If full-screen is not enabled, the plasma desktop takes over the Mac OS X desktop and wallpaper while X11.app is shown.
At any rate, I am very impressed with X.org on OS X, and hope it has continued development and support by Apple. If only there was support for changing your default Shell from Finder to say X.org and KDE4 at Login. If Mac OS X had full session support, as does the many X Display Managers, it would make your Mac more friendly to geeks and power users. I don't have anything against Finder, but KDE4's desktop is much more customizable and featureful for power users. I tend to use KIOs quite a lot, mainly the FISH protocol, and wish OS X apps had native access to this functionality.
Kevin.
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