Yet another...

X Windows is a graphical front end to Unix. Apple built Aqua on top of Unix, but nearly every other unix uses X Windows as it's GUI. Linux, BSD and even Darwin use it.
 
Originally posted by zerologic
X Windows is a graphical front end to Unix. Apple built Aqua on top of Unix, but nearly every other unix uses X Windows as it's GUI. Linux, BSD and even Darwin use it.

What are tha advantages of using XWindows. I really prefer GUI than command line, and I'd like to be able to start using the power of Unix, but is it fully compatible with OS X beta or you need to have Darwin seperately, and run it above that. And finally, where can we get it and to what degree it is possible to run Unix apps on OS X?

I have one last question: what is the command to display processes in the Terminal. Apple's utility is nice (ProcessViewer), but the Terminal seems to give more info than the other app.

Thanks!
 
lato --
There have been a couple of lively threads here about how to get X windows running on top of / along side of OS X. There have also been a few threads about porting UNIX applications -- you need some programming knowledge, though on many occasions, not much.
So please search (at least on macosx.com) for the answers to your questions before posting them.

As far as getting X windows (as opposed to CLI) apps ported to OS X, there are additional difficulties. Many X windows apps rely on "widget" libraries like GTK and QT, which may or may not already be ported to OS X and which are/were/will be difficult ports to do. (Does anyone know about the status of these libs?)

The commands from the terminal like "processviewer" are "top" (live update of top resource hogs, or you can sort differently) and "ps" which lists the current processes. Type man top or man ps for an explanation of the options. (Free hint: "ps -aux" shows the long list of all processes running.)

All of this information and more was already posted here. The search functionality was added for a reason. use it!

Zach
 
Zach - grump not, and the world grumps not with you :rolleyes:

latourfl - The first big advantage of X Windows is that you can run apps that are on another machine. You just get a telnet or (preferably) ssh session with the other Unix machine, and run the apps there, but have them display on your screen. It\'s great - I don\'t have to go to campus to use the $5000 software that is only available for the Solaris OS, I can run the program on the Solaris machine, but have the GUI interface on my monitor at home.

The second advantage is of course that people have been developing for X Windows for many years, and for OS X for some months, so there is far more software available for X Windows.

zerologic - That doesn\'t look like WindowMaker. ;) I assume you are using Tenon Xtools - does it really matter in that case what window manager you use (since all the windows look just like OS X windows anyway)? Or are there benefits beyond the appearance of the windows that twm wouldn\'t give you?

[Edited by scruffy on 01-07-2001 at 12:46 PM]
 
It sure is WindowMaker. I have it running via VNC with Xvnc. As far as how it compares to tvwm, I couldn\'t tell you. I haven\'t had the patience to play with tvwm. :)
 
Ha! I must have looked at the wrong screenshot the first time. The reason they all looked like OS X windows, was because they were OS X windows.

mm. I like the look of that prefs dialog. Maybe I\'ll drop afterstep for now. Off to look for WindowMaker.
 
X Windows is a windowing system for UNIX, really nothing more. No inherent file management system. You start out with two terminals, a clock, and the window manager. It`s ugly.... The only good thing about it (besides remote running) is being able to use the programs that support it. The process command in UNIX is ``ps``, typing in ``ps -aux`` should give you enough information (CPU time, Memory consumption). If you have to quit Classic and it seems like the Classic enviroment is still running, you can kill -9 the pid for TruBlueEnviromen. This is one of the more useful things you can do quickly in the Terminal.
 
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