X11 beta version 0.2

Darnit, there's something wrong with the hqx they posted. I'll try again tomorrow.
 
Im not even getting that far. When I double-click, it just opens Expander breifly with no dialog, then closes it. I put it on my OS9 machine elsewhere to give it a try and got the same results. Is it somehing I can set in the Epander prefs?
 
Aha, When i tried to get it with Safari, it came in as a dmg.
I must have something in IE set wrong.
 
Can somebody throw out a list of cool, useful apps that would make X11 worthwhile?

I'm not being a smart aleck, I'm just not familiar with it.

I have tried GIMP through OS X and was thoroughly unimpressed. It cannot touch PhotoShop with a ten foot pole, but at least it's only $25.

For me, for X11 to be worth my trouble, I would need to see apps that can match or beat commercial apps. GIMP ain't it.

Still, it seems very exciting to have all these options and the support of yet another whole underground community.
 
So far, I've been impressed with GIMP, simply because I didnt buy it. I downloaded/buit it from source. It works fine, and saves me from opening Classic to get to Photoshop.

The other apps I've tried so far are BlueFish and Nedit. Both are text editors, and Im using them for HTML. BlueFish is a bit more focused on HTML, but Nedit looks far more elegant.

Im still learning about he X11 environment, and there are a couple of things that would make me tell someone to wait before getting it. IF you are an old-school Mac person, you will want to wait until the modal windows problem (where windows stay in front, so you dont have to click on a window to get it active, then click again to select whatever you wanted to do there), and the keyboard mapping issues - the apple key is still basically ignored.

If you are coming from the *nix world, the key thing probably isnt an issue since you use Control all the time anyway.

I think the modal windows thing is supposed to be fixed in the new beta.

Bottom line -->
If you are from *nix, get it and enjoy the programs you already know and love
If you are from Mac, get it, but dont buy anything until the system is more refined...its still in development.
 
Plenty of KDE and Gnome apps. Pan is a great newsreader. Abiword is a pretty decent word processor. OpenOffice, Gimp, Nedit, gnumeric, evolution, gftp.

There are equivalent OS X apps to these, but the OS X are for the most part not free.

The biggest reason to run X is for its remote desktop capabilities. I'm running Linux on my desktop at work. I could, theoretically, connect to my desktop from home, and run my work desktop on my iBook at home.

No, the Gimp is not Photoshop. But I challenge you to find another open source, free graphics software that can do what the Gimp can. No, the Gimp doesn't support CMYK yet. But it isn't because the developers don't want it. CMYK is covered by stupid software patents in which the owners of those patents want royalties.
 
I hate to poo-poo something that is so inherently cool, but I'm still not sold on X11.

I can buy a full version of PhotoShop and have it pay for itself in about three days, so the economics still work in favor of the full blown apps.

The other apps sound fine, I guess, but there's like a million shareware versions of text editors, FTP apps, etc., so again, the X11 draw isn't so appealing necessarily.

Which brings me to my next question, what exactly IS the appeal of X11 other than free apps? Or is that the whole point? I really don't know.

I'm not trying to bash X11, it sounds cool, I just don't GET IT yet.
 
I tried to get OpenOffice.org to work with X11 but it just crashes on startup (OO). It would be cool if I could try it out but I guess I'll have to bite the proverbial bullet and purchase MS Office.
 
Remember, this is still beta. As far as I can tell, 0.2 is much faster, and fixed all the bugs that I noticed. I use it to ssh into campus servers and run remote X apps. I REALLY needed this ability in OSX. Plus it's free and doesn't require any setup. I'm sure a lot of other people feel the same way.
 
Originally posted by mindbend
I hate to poo-poo something that is so inherently cool, but I'm still not sold on X11.

Which brings me to my next question, what exactly IS the appeal of X11 other than free apps? Or is that the whole point? I really don't know.

I'm not trying to bash X11, it sounds cool, I just don't GET IT yet.
Click to expand...

The cool thing is that it works. A user of OSX now has another range of new applications they can run on their Mac.

It also dramatically increases the number of people that can use x11 apps. Will that lead people who develop x11 a tool to port apps to OSX? I don't know.
 
Hmm, has anyone else found X11 0.2 "reverts" to twm? Under version 0.1, I had a nice, but plain, terminal window which resembled the Terminal app. Under 0.2, I have the appearance of the original XDarwin installation I performed many months ago.

Is this related to my installation of Virex 7.2? (I saw the warnings about Fink after the installation... :rolleyes: )
 
Quick update: no sooner had I posted than I found the "Customize" option during installation allows the user to add one more item ("X11 config") to the list, and this then defaults it to the Quartz based window manager as with version 0.1!

Sorry for the redundant post! :eek:
 
Ok, I fit the catigory of "old skool mac user" Why would you want to start up a seperate window manager (I dont know if this is the right term here) to edit a TEXT file!! It seems rather pointless to me. So really, bescides some of the software being free, why would someone use X11?
 
other than the fact that i too would like to try out gimp and some of the office alterntives, i don't get it either. and i'm still hesitating about getting it at all. i am old school mac but the clicking on windows and then on what you want to do doesn't really bother me i don't think. seems plenty of os x apps already act that way.

my big question is - how will this be effected by or effect defragmenting and repairing with 3rd party apps? i've heard that this linux stuff and mac maintenance programs don't always get along.

oh and bbloke - thanks for the info about the custom install - it wouldn't have been intuitive to me to think that the thing a beginner like me would want would be in custom install. that would be the beginner's choice, right?
 
With regards to why X11 is a useful thing, I'd say there are three things that are most of interest to me:

1) the ability to run ported UNIX software (with their native GUI) under OS X

2) the ability to run software remotely from a UNIX server (using its GUI) on my Mac

3) theoretically, the ability to let OS X run ported UNIX applications and "forward" the windows to other machines located elsewhere (that is, multiple users could see their own work on their own monitors, though the work is being done remotely by OS X)

Points 2) and 3) rely on the fact that the X Window system can be used to forward displays to other machines. That is, the window associated with an application being run on a UNIX machine is projected, as it were, on to a remote computer. As of yet, OS X and its GUI (Aqua/Quartz) cannot natively do this. Using things like OSXvnc, you can indeed display the image on your monitor remotely on someone else's machine, but this is not the same as each user having their own, unique display, acting independently of one another.


edX: phew, glad my blushes were spared as my experience could be of use to someone else! ;) I was perhaps too quick to associate the Fink incompatibility with this issue, as it never occurred to me Apple would go back to a relatively ugly window manager after making the first release of their X11 app rather more attractive! Anyway, using the installer was the quick and easy way of doing things. The "less friendly" way of would have been to go to:

/private/etc/X11/xinit

and then edited the xinitrc file so that "exec quartz-wm" is used instead. For instance (WARNING: only proceed if you are comfortable with the command line, as you will temporarily assume root privileges):

(1) sudo pico /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
(2) add a # symbol in fron of the line with "twm" in it (i.e. "twm &" becomes "#twm &")
(3) add the following line below: "exec quartz-wm"

Hope this is of help to someone. :)
 
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