What applications to use with X11? Suggestions and reviews

[Giaguara]

Which applications should/could one run with X11 (on 10.3)?

What is interesting, on Apple.com site about the X11 there were no list of suggestions of what to use with X11. So suggest and review something here (and give the relative links please).

What do you use, and for doing what? How do you like the applications?

Which of the apps need Fink, and which work without? Have you had problems with Fink in 10.3, or does it work seamlessly?


I have right now only www.OpenOffice.org (1.0.3) installed, and I like it. I think I will install GIMP (www.gimp.org) soon, and was considering Bluefish (http://bluefish.openoffice.nl/) an interesting tool to play with as well.


OpenOffice is easy to install when you get the right version. It works without Fink, and seems to do fine what I need of Office applications. I have apart from OpenOffice also AppleWorks, but the main idea of OpenOffice is to keep the mac M$ free).

I have used GIMP on Linuxes. On OS X it seems to require Fink. Anyone mind to post their GIMP (and any other X11 application) experiences, reviews, suggestions, annoyances, incompatibilites etc here?

[voice-]

I've only tried running Wolfenstein: Enemy Territory Linux Version, it didn't work. If anybody made that work, please tell me how...

[Pengu]

voice, you know you cant just run a Linux executable and expect it to run, right?

[voice-]

Of course I don't know that. I don't have a clue about what X11 is, I just figured it was something which would let me run any UNIX/Linux program in OS X without porting. Yes, I thought they had found a way to do that.
The way I tried running it was by drag/dropping the Linux executable on the X11 app.

Please, tell me what X11 is then, and how to use it...

[Pengu]

X11 is an implementation of the X Windows System. For it work, it first has to be at the very least, re-compiled for the appropriate processor-type/OS.

[Koelling]

I highly recomend setting up Fink if you want to play with X11. It may be a bit of work to get fink running (although good faqs exist) but once it is running, everything else is much easier. The only X11 program I didn't install with fink was OpenOffice.org.

I use GIMP regularly, and Abiword is a nice lightweight alternative to OpenOffice (although with .doc compatibility in TextEdit there isn't much reason to use that.) I use Dynagraph which is a 3D graphing calculator and xmms is a kickin' mp3 player.

I've used other programs (in the KDE and Gnome suites) but there weren't any show stoppers. I'm looking forward to a stable version of sodipodi, the vector art program.

[Darkshadow]

You don't have to use Fink to get the GIMP working, but there's a lot you have to compile yourself if you don't. I happen to enjoy compiling code myself, so I don't have Fink installed.

Hmm, I have the GIMP, GKrellM (it's a stat monitoring utility, there are plenty OS X native ones but I really like GKrellM.), xmms...hmm, that's all I have at the moment, though I'm sure I'll add to it.

I also compiled the newest gtk+, though that's not really an app.

I'm thinking of seeing if I can get KDE to compile, and then checking out Konquerer. I've heard it's a pretty dang good web browser.

I had also compiled X11 myself, but I decided to go ahead and delete that and install Apple's X11.


Just to note, I had been using Linux for the 5 years previous to the release of OS X 10.0 (I skipped the public beta), so I'm very used to compiling code. Heck, I'm kinda missing compiling the kernel.

[scruffy]

I mostly use X11 for somewhat more obscure things, like nessus, the vulnerability scanner. I'm taking an info security course, though, so that's a bit of a special case...

The real killer though is if you have ssh access to a Linux computer (like I have access to a couple at school), then you can 'ssh -X me@the.linux.box' from an xterm window, then you can run graphical apps on the Linux machine and have the display on your own screen.