X11 Question

[nickn]

Hi everyone..

I'm new to this forum (Actually sub'd yesterday.) and am purchasing a 17" powerbook in the next 48 hours, however I have a few questions.

I'm a FreeBSD user now, and also a windows user, however I'll be completely switching over to os x when I get this laptop.

First and easiest question, shipping wise? Is there a option to get one sooner than 4 weeks if i don't customize?

Second, obviously OSX has a built in GUI, so how does X11 mix in? Does it replace the apple gui, or is it more of a compatiability thing? IE, it makes it familar with gimp and all but does not actually replace the apple GUI, I think mainly I'm wanting to see a screenshot of OS X with maybe OpenOffice or gaim or another bsd app I'm familar with running.

I think that's all for now..y'all are a great reference for me and my powerbook buying experience so far. Thanks again..

[Pengu]

There are several options for using X11 with OSX. I'm using the newly released Apple X11.app. It runs as an application just like any other, and opens by default an xterm session. From there you can open whatever X11 apps for Darwin that you like. Each window is "aqua" but the interface of each app is still X11 style. For instance, OpenOffice.org has the "Windows 95" look by default which is changeable to a few others.

[nickn]

I see....Do you happen to have any screenshots? (or does anyone?) I'm just curious, this is a rather large purchase (and switch for that matter)

[symphonix]

You can see a good screenshot, and some info, here:

http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/

The screenshot shows the Mac OS X desktop with Gimp, Xterm, and another X11 app I don't recognise. The X11 windows appear with the same appearance as their Mac counterparts, sharing identical desktop, controls, and so on. There are a few quirks when switching between windows, as Mac OS X considers all your X11 programs to be part of one program, but you won't notice this much.
If you are running an X11 app like the Gimp, the controls WITHIN the app will be the same as on any other Unix machine, but the windows themselves will have the Aqua title, window buttons, resize, etc ...
It's not as good as their Swing-Java engine, which represents all the buttons and controls within the program with their Aqua counterparts.

I'm sorry I can't help you out with the shipping question. When I ordered my iBook on the day they were launched, it took 8 weeks to reach me in Australia. I doubt you'll have to wait that long! ;-) (it was worth the wait though)

Welcome, Nick, to our little Mac community. If you have any questions, just drop by here.

[Pengu]

It's a little off-topic, but as you mentioned it, have Apple "fixed" their release of java yet? I'm learning Java at tafe, but whenever i took stuff home from, anything that made use of the JOptionPane objects from Swing, they just never appeared. It's a pity Apple's Java implementation is (or was) as suck as Microsofts.