# Apple X11 server beta out



## btoneill (Jan 7, 2003)

Apple has jumped aboard and has a beta of their x11 server with a quartz window manager for download as of today:
http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/

I'll let you know how it works when i get home and install it

Brian


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## tk4two1 (Jan 7, 2003)

where are some good places to get some x11 apps?


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## karavite (Jan 7, 2003)

Am I correct in assuming this will not affect my X-windows install via fink (all in /sw - right?). What about XDarwin - any conflicts?


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## karavite (Jan 7, 2003)

Uh, I downloaded and installed it - now what? Where the heck is it? How/where do I run it or apps or install apps and tool kits... Apple's site has ZERO information or links on using this! http://www.apple.com/macosx/x11/ - and excuse me if some of us are without a CS degree! 

Would it be as simple as launching an app from terminal? Nope. I can run Emacs, but I think I could do this before. It launches within a terminal window and without menus - it not in an Aqua window that is for sure. Gimp results in:

Gtk-WARNING **: cannot open display: 

Of course, I did not expect this to be this simple or to really work like this, but some instructions or information would be a no brainer. No offense, but I cannot stand rummaging through the various XFree and OpenDarwin sites - they seem to thrive on making things hard to find and hard to understand. What is about *nix that makes everyone say it is the greatest thing since the wheel yet keep such basic information on running it so convoluted! WHY can't Apple have some information detailing how to use this to install and run apps? All it would take is someone who can write a few clear paragraphs and a couple of screen shots. Jees oh Pete!

Forgive my venting, but I think this is completely absurd - especially for Apple.

P.S. After the install Orobus OS X and XDarwin still work (full screen and rootless).


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## Lazarus18 (Jan 7, 2003)

I feel your pain. I too have no idea where it went or how to start it.

Let me know if you figure it out.


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## davidbrit2 (Jan 7, 2003)

Here's what I've found so far:

Run /Applications/X11. You'll get an XTerm. Run X apps from this, since they won't find the X server if you use Terminal. The X term shell doesn't run /etc/csh.login, so your path might be screwed up. It uses /etc/csh.cshrc instead.

So far, that's about the only ugliness I've come across. This seems much faster than XDarwin, too.


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## wiz (Jan 7, 2003)

@@@


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## Eckhart (Jan 7, 2003)

Alright, here's what I know at the moment: 

First to my own confusion, there are two different packages on the apple.com web page:

1. It's the SDK package, which exclusively contains includes, libraries and manual pages. So, no binaries that one could run. I first blindly tried out this packages. Trying to run my old XDarwin binaries and hope that the libraries would do something, but - of course, without success!
After resignation, I went back to apple.com and found the second package.
Oh, btw, as I realized afterwards by simply looking at the name of the package, I figured that it was just the Sun Java Support...

2. The second one is significantly larger, around 40 something megabyte and it seems to contain the whole thing based on XFree86 4.2.1 (the complete rootless server implementation aswell as the client libraries)
I'm not yet finished with the download. And I won't check it out today -> It's late here, but I think the problem boils down to the fact, that the software is by now not sufficiently documented and Apple does not mark the different packages on their web page well enough.

So, watch out that you get the right package, the second one should contain all the binaries you need. 
Good luck and see you tomorrow,
Viktor


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## wiz (Jan 7, 2003)

WOW!!!!

unbelieveable SPEEED, try it out.

launches 100 times faster then XDarwin


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## Hydroglow (Jan 7, 2003)

Man what a great app. I had to delete my .xinitrc file to use the OS X window manager. I can't wait for updates for this app.


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## Lazarus18 (Jan 7, 2003)

Now that I got the right file it does seem nice. I just need to figure out how to personalize it (especially the terminal colors).

-Rob


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## btoneill (Jan 7, 2003)

This thing flies. Loads in one bounce on my g4/450. Everything seems to run much much much faster...

xterms are quick example:
time ls -l /usr/X11R6/bin
in xterm:
real    0m0.133s
user    0m0.030s
sys     0m0.000s


in terminal.app:
real    0m0.613s
user    0m0.000s
sys     0m0.010s

thats 4x faster... gimp loads in seconds too. I must say this is by far the best app to be released today. 

Brian


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## wiz (Jan 7, 2003)

eh btoneill, i don't get it what exactly are u tryin to say, could you rephrase that?


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## Lazarus18 (Jan 7, 2003)

Any idea where it looks at startup? For example what tells it to load one xterm? How can I change that and change the default colors? 

I would assume that it is possible to alter this user by user, but it doesn't generate  a .xinitrc in ~/, and the com.apple.X11 in Preferences just sets your "Applications" menu in X11 and your preferences.


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## Lazarus18 (Jan 7, 2003)

He's just saying that it's faster. If you type "time" before a command *nix spits out how long it took to complete that command. He's showing that it's faster to ls -l everything in X11R6/bin under xterm than under the standard terminal. My results were even more dramatic than his. Interesting. I hope some of what makes xterm so fast can be applied to Terminal.app.


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## btoneill (Jan 7, 2003)

laz:
To run apps on X startup you need to create an .xinitrc by hand, and at the end list /usr/X11R6/bin/quartz-wm for the window manager, ie:

```
PATH=$PATH:/sw/bin

xterm -font 9x15 &
Eterm --font 9x15 --scrollbar=0 &
gimp &

/usr/X11R6/bin/quartz-wm
```

I have the path set so the X server knows where to look to find all the fink installed X binaries, otherwise you need the full path. and what do you mean by changing the default colors? You mean the default colors xterm uses for foreground/background?

You also might want to make sure you have /usr/X11R6/man in your man search path. There is a _very_ brief man page for quartz-wm, and also one for Xquartz which is the X server that is run (as opposed to Xdarwin which is what the xonx project runs). Hopefully they will have better man pages in the future 

wiz:
as laz said time is a command that times how long a command takes to complete giving how much time the command takes to run in user space, system space (system space being things going on the kernel like disk io) and the total time it took to run. Basically what I was testing was the scroll speed of xterm vs. Terminal.app scrolling the ls output of /usr/X11R6/bin which is 136 lines on my box. Scrolling speed in terminals is an issue on just about any box and is a great test to see how the X server is working.


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## element (Jan 7, 2003)

I just downloaded the beta, and I think it's incredible. I use a remote x-window connection to my linux machines in the basement, and it works flawlessly, and much faster than XDarwin did it. Gimp works much faster over the network now, and everything else just zips by. I'm really impressed, and partially surprised, with this.


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## karavite (Jan 7, 2003)

Duh - I can't believe I downloaded the wrong file - but since I am not alone in this error, this was a complete bubble head mistake by whoever wrote this page for Apple.


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## Koelling (Jan 8, 2003)

btoneill, I love you.

I had problems with not seeing any aqua window manager thingie. Aparently it was because I already had an .xinitrc which didn't have that quartz-wm command. Now it works great.

OpenOffice.org is usable! It's incredible how much faster this is and to be able to actually use that program. I'm having trouble with xmms but everything else rocks. This is better than safari!


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## jrod7350 (Jan 8, 2003)

Tryin to run dselect with Fink (installed fink after installing X11beta from apple), and I'm getting an error code of 100 on the install script from the system-xfree86 placeholder in Fink.  Not quite sure what's wrong here.  BTW, I also have the X11 SDK from apple installed also.  Thanks for any help you can give.

--Jason

P.S. X11 beta really rocks though


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## jrod7350 (Jan 8, 2003)

Here's what it's telling me:

Reading Package Lists... Done
Building Dependency Tree... Done
The following NEW packages will be installed:
  system-xfree86 
0 packages upgraded, 1 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0  not upgraded.
2 packages not fully installed or removed.
Need to get 0B/2152B of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
(Reading database ... 3700 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking system-xfree86 (from .../system-xfree86_4.2-1_darwin-powerpc.deb) ...

dpkg: error processing /sw/var/cache/apt/archives/system-xfree86_4.2-1_darwin-powerpc.deb (--unpack):
 subprocess pre-installation script returned error exit status 1
Errors were encountered while processing:
 /sw/var/cache/apt/archives/system-xfree86_4.2-1_darwin-powerpc.deb
E: Sub-process /sw/bin/dpkg returned an error code (1)


Hope this helps

--Jason


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## strobe (Jan 8, 2003)

I really wish quartz-wm would have the option of using non-Aqua window dressing. No X11 apps will ever behave like an Aqua app, having them appear like Aqua only makes the interface confusing.

Back to the slower Oroborus I guess


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## Eckhart (Jan 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Lazarus18 _
> *Any idea where it looks at startup? For example what tells it to load one xterm? How can I change that and change the default colors?*



I wondered about that, too, so I examined the "X11Config.pkg" as given within the whole installation package and I found out that it is so far just a type-o which simply installs a blank file into your tmp directory. Hence there aren't yet any fancy configuration files. (But as the existence of the config-package suggests, there are files to be found in later versions...)

I assume, the startup of the xterm is hard-coded into the "quartz-wm" binary (the windowmanager as such), so that you can automatically launch apps from the xterm.

I also found a few general information in /usr/X11R6/README, not much anyhow, except for the fact, that Apple provides a script to run X11-Apps from your Terminal.app. The script's located in /usr/bin/open-X11. Anyways, I would recommend to simply add 'setenv DISPLAY :0.0' to your ~/.cshrc and then you don't need the extra script...

These are my two cents, so far. I'm now working with it for half an hour and it's quite impressing, although I'm having trouble changing the keymap. That's my old everlasting problem with MacOSX, in Aqua I have the correct keymap and if I run a shell other than in the Terminal.app, it gives me the wrong keymap and I cannot adjust. Haven't found anything useful about this issue...


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## Eckhart (Jan 8, 2003)

Alright, I just saw btoneill's post that appeared while I was typing, forget my about the hard-coding  The rest still fits...


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## karavite (Jan 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Koelling _
> *btoneill, I love you.
> 
> I had problems with not seeing any aqua window manager thingie. Aparently it was because I already had an .xinitrc which didn't have that quartz-wm command. Now it works great.*



Can I share the love here for btoneill too? He answered the exact question I was coming here for today! Apple should hire YOU to write technical information on their site!


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## karavite (Jan 8, 2003)

P.S. Using btoneill's .xinitrc also seems to result in making X11 somewhat dual dislpay aware - no longer do I have apps opening up (like Gimp) in the middle of my two monitors.


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## btoneill (Jan 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by karavite _
> *Can I share the love here for btoneill too? He answered the exact question I was coming here for today! Apple should hire YOU to write technical information on their site! *



Hey, I only have so much love to share 
Not sure if I could deal with living in Cali and working for jkh  (if you have clue no who jkh is, don't worry about it, and j/k jordy if you ever read this forum) They also probably wouldn't pay me enough 

Brian


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## Eckhart (Jan 8, 2003)

Btoneill, do you know what jkh is specifically doing at Apple? Since he left 'his' project behind, I haven't heard anything about him...


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## btoneill (Jan 8, 2003)

> _Originally posted by Eckhart _
> *Btoneill, do you know what jkh is specifically doing at Apple? Since he left 'his' project behind, I haven't heard anything about him... *



His role is now overseeing development of Darwin and increasing Apples participation in open source groups. So basically it appears he kinda has his hands in all the unix side of development.

Brian


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## karavite (Jan 10, 2003)

> _Originally posted by btoneill _
> *Hey, I only have so much love to share
> Not sure if I could deal with living in Cali and working for jkh  (if you have clue no who jkh is, don't worry about it, and j/k jordy if you ever read this forum) They also probably wouldn't pay me enough
> 
> Brian *



Ah, I think I understand. When will people learn that being a boss or manager does not = being a jerk? Perhaps when they face their own insecurity in being a boss? 

I have had some fantastic bosses and many more less so. The best are always those who are comfortable with their position, skills, background... and this seems to result in them being supportive and acknowledging everyone elses contributions.

Any way, we still love you here!


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## celeborn (Jan 11, 2003)

Wow, this is fast. I've never installed X11 on OS X before, and this was really a no-nonsense install. Window resizing is really fast, ie. what it should be! If only it was as fast in Aqua...


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