BASIC X11 Questions

[chief]

Thanks ahead of time to anyone who will take the time to answer some of these basic questions. X11 is a whole new world.

OK. I have been purusing the X11 threads and, honestly, have not found some basic answers to some basic questions. Doing a search on Google really confuses me, because it isn't specific to the new X11 package that Apple released and a lot of the tutorials assume you run Linux or some previous Macintosh Linux installation or XDarwin or OroboOSX.

So, would people using the new X11 package from Apple help out with some BASIC answers?

1. What's a window manager? It seems like Apple's X11 has its own? Quartz-wm?

2. Can I run WindowMaker on Apple's X11? And if I do, does it undo the ability to minimize windows to the Dock and cut and paste between native apps and X11 apps? Honestly, I got Gimp up and running under Apple's X11, but the menus are these ugly grey things. Can that be overcome without undoing the ability to minimize windows to the Dock and cut and paste between apps or is it something built into the Gimp package?

3. What is KDE and this Desktop thing I am reading about? What are themes? I want to run some of this open source stuff, but I LOVE aqua, and do not need anything to replace what Apple provides.

4. Where do you get X11 apps, and how do you get them to run with Apple's X11. I got Gimp from OpenDarwin. I also got AbiWord and OpenOffice. Where are more and is there something special you have to do to get them to run on Apple's X11?

[wiz]

1: Well the X11 display server is (the client) uses window managers to manage the user interaction with X11 apps.

2: WindowMaker, quartz-wm, fvwm, twm, sawfish, and more, are all window managers. You can run the wm of your choice. But it is only the quartz-wm that actually completely integrates with aqua, hence you can minimize in the dock etc... Other wm such as blackbox support their own style/method for such activities. Most of them can be configured to use the gnome-panel instead.

3: KDE is a desktop environment, that uses its own wm. It supports themes to change its look and feel. Its pretty cuztomizable. It is an easy-to-use desktop environment. The other one is GNOME.

4: You can download/install X11 apps through fink. To run them just open Apples X11.app, then in the xterm, type in the name of the app, to start them.

to run gimp type "gimp"
to run OpenOffice type "ooffice"


well there is more... But thats a brief intro

[chief]

Thanks. That really helps a lot. So, I can't use the Aqua interface stuff and get rid of the hideous grey menus in Gimp. That's good to know.

Second, what if I didn't want to use Fink? I don't know that I am completely against it, but I tried it a long time ago with 10.1 and it didn't work very well for me. It installed a bunch of things in strange places and required me to move stuff around and change permissions. I ended up just downloading the things I wanted like lynx and such and compiling them myself. My problem with trying that with X11 stuff is that I don't understand X11 and where things need to go for it, and I also don't know where to look for apps to see if there is anything I would really want. Is there a Web site like Versiontracker for X11 stuff. When I search for X11 stuff, I get a whole complicated mess of responses that don't make much sense to me. Maybe I just need to download Fink.

Thanks again, that's really the basic stuff I needed to know.

[wiz]

well you could manually download the packages and install them!!

http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/index.php

but fink automatically resolves the dependencies

[chief]

Actually, I think I will try that. I just tried using Fink, again, and I can't do it. There is too much information for a terminal program. I would try to download some X-something or other and it would squawk about needing the xfree86-base EVERYTIME. But since I have Apple's, X11, I don't need that. It was truly confusing to me. I thought I had repeatedly turned off that huge xfree86 download, and when I started to download packages, low and behold, it was downloading that gigantic xfree86base thing.

However, downloading manually sounds good. Fink isn't the only list of X11 stuff, right. It's just that they have ported everything over to Darwin, right?

[chief]

I went to the package list at Fink, and I don't see anyway to download Mac versions. All I find when I click is a description with a link to the developer's page. And those people didn't seem to have any Mac versions. Am I missing something?

[wiz]

hold on there, stick to fink!!

just install the system-xfree86 placeholder package for manually installed xFree86!!!

everything should work

[wiz]

you might also want to install finkcommander , makes life easier