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Apple Businesses Operating Systems BSD

MacOSX and X11 188

Posted by CmdrTaco from the one-step-closer-to-the-gimp dept.
kono was among the hoards of folks who noted that Tenon is gonna be releasing a tightly integrated X11 Server for MacOS X, which should greatly increase the potential for those of us hoping have a desktop that we could conceivably share with our graphic designer MacOS fanatic girlfriends.
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MacOSX and X11 More

MacOSX and X11

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  • Ask your graphic-designer girlfriends (Score:5)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:41AM (#924611)
    to suggest new color for this page.
  • This is great. I'm not a big mac fan but sometimes I have to work with it. Now at least it's tollerable.
  • It claims that there will be an integrated Aqua like widget set and window manager... is their "Widget Set" simply a further hack on Xaw3D, or is it a GTK theme, or what? And where can we get the source to that window manager?

    On the plus side, Open Motif is legal to use with MacOS X. Hmm... with Motif and OpenGL, I can see the possibility for quite a few *NIX graphics programs making the Mac jump...

  • Wow (Score:1)

    by slycer ( 161341 )
    The new X will support OpenGL, a full range of X extensions, use of a three-button mouse, CDE (Common Desktop Environment) fonts, and will be XDM (X Window Display Management) capable. It will also support Web-based display of X client applications via "Broadway," an X Window extension to allow remote X applications to be invoked and displayed with a browser.

    Cool, a three button mouse!
  • Tenon. Not Apple. Tenon. I.e. a third-party company. Ok, I can almost understand not reading the article, but can you at least read the SUMMARY?

  • Re:Huh? Please explain (Score:5)

    by Golias ( 176380 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:47AM (#924616)
    This is like putting a Yugo engine in a Ferrari.

    Or like putting an old Beetle body on a VW Gulf. Oh, wait... they're doing that.

  • If you read carefully, he says that only local X applications will have the Aqua feel. What this says to me is that they've made their own widget set, which you can use to develop your own applications. This widget set would then have the Aqua feel to it.

    As for the window manager, well, that wouldn't be too difficult I wouldn't think.
  • Sorry, that was careless of me. Still, my question stands. Whether it's Apple or Tenon doing it, I'd like to know why.

  • the curse of slashdot? (Score:4)

    by streetlawyer ( 169828 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:49AM (#924619) Homepage
    I've always thought it was pretty bad luck to mention your girlfriend in a public forum when nobody else had brought up the subject. Did you ask her whether she was cool with a) having her site slashdotted b) the no doubt vast array of charming comments about her which our friends the AC's will generate and c) your randomly revealing personal facts about her?

    Without some fast footwork, I'd say that the express train to Dumped City may be nearing Holland Michigan, and someone we know may have at least a provisional booking in the first class carriage.

  • Behind every Linux Geek... (Score:5)

    by t0upsie ( 183318 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:49AM (#924620)

    we could conceivably share with our graphic designer MacOS fanatic girlfriends.

    Behind every Linux Geek, is a smarter Girlfriend that uses MacOS...

    See ya at Macworld NYC!!!

  • Well, ok. Basically, it's so that people can run X apps without having to rewrite them, or waiting for them to be rewritten. It's not going to be something that everybody'll use, but it'll be nice for, say, emacs, and things of that nature. Mr. and Mrs. John Q. Macuser need never know it exists.
  • I think this will probably fit right up there with PCXware in cost. Looking at their page it seems that they have some rather spendy products for the end user. If they have a variant for the "average" consumer then I may just be interested.

  • You have to work with Macs but you also have to work with X11 applications? Sounds like an odd assignment :). Unless that's the case, I don't see how an X server could make using a Mac any more tolerable.
  • No, to carry on the dumb analogy, it would be like having both a Ferrari and a Yugo engine in a Ferrari. This would make it useful for the times when you have a Yugo-only passenger. Really, though, it sounds like it's going to be well-integrated with the Mac OS X desktop, so the only place this would come in handy is when you have to run one of those X-only applications.

  • I wonder (Score:1)

    by jjr ( 6873 )
    If someone created an open source clone of the Mac OS X desktop Apple will have a hissy fit. If they put in a country the won't hold up their coptright they can not do a thing.

  • John Carmack already did this (Score:4)

    by Kiwi ( 5214 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @06:53AM (#924626) Homepage Journal
    The first port of X11 to OsX was done by John Carmack [omnigroup.com]. In fact, I would not be surprised if he has something informitive to say about this X11 port.

    - Sam

  • Then they should just be installing Linux or BSD, or at least dual-booting, yes? I've never seen one of these Swiss Army computers actually function well.

    Besides, OS X is meant for the server market, so what the hell do you need a GUI for in the first place? And what server software exists for the little gumdrops that would actually out-perform the tons of stuff already available for BSD?

  • The interesting thing about MacOS X was that it was the power of Unix "under the hood" with the (supposed) power of the MacOS GUI on top. If you remove the Mac GUI and replace it with X, don't you end up with just plain BSD (with non-standard config files)?
    --

  • either you are very ignorant or good at getting people to flame you :) either way, funny...

    i'm developing the next-gen apple GUI,.. there will be a big red button at the top of your monitor, heavily padded... things on the screen will highlight, one at a time, the selection will change every couple seconds,.. when the thing you want is highlighted, you smack your head against the red button.

    it'll be a hit.
    ...dave
  • ha!! all my girlfriends are dumb EX mac users!
  • Are you trying to be funny? The X-Windows System didn't exist in the early 80's. Jobs et al. actually based their GUI on something from Xerox PARC.
  • >Then they should just be installing Linux or BSD, or at least >dual-booting, yes?

    No. Why dual-boot if you don't have to? This is not an emulator, it's an X server integrated into the Aqua environment.

    >Besides, OS X is meant for the server market, so what the >hell do you need a GUI for in the first place?

    No. It is intended for the consumer market. Although certainly it will be used for servers as well.

  • Re:Huh? Please explain (Score:4)

    by mikpos ( 2397 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:00AM (#924633) Homepage
    Okay can you just shut up if you've never tried it? Have you never tried one of those X servers for Microsoft Windows? THEY ARE USEFUL. No one's forcing you to buy this X server, but believe me, sometime, somewhere, somebody (or more accurately, a few hundred or thousand somebodies) will want to run an X application on Mac OS X. Keep in mind that X11 is not so much a windowing system as it is just a remote display protocol. Would you be so upset if someone made a VNC server for Mac OS X? Making an X11 server is really no different.
  • Interoperability, plain and simple. This isn't like putting a Yugo engine in a Ferrari, this is more along the lines of someone who speaks both English and Spanish. Sure you can get along pretty well if you only know one language, but you can talk to a larger market if you speak two.
  • I kinda' doubt it... have you looked at Apple's sales figures recently?

    .technomancer

  • Tenon, not Apple, is giving a way to run X on OSX (Score:4)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:02AM (#924636)
    OS X, in case you've been asleep or dead, is a BSD/Mach based OS with a PDF-based windowing system (Quartz).

    Since it's a BSD-based system, it makes sense that someone out there would provide a way to display X apps, to give more choice to those wanting or needing to run/port them.

    Anyhow, it's not going to be a cheap product if Tenon's traditional pricing scheme is followed; I'd expect $500-$600 for a single user. This isn't a consumer product.

    -Isaac

  • Server my six-colored hairy butt! MacOS X Server was intended for the server market and is little more than NeXT software with a different logo. I've messed around with a copy, and it's ok, but no replacement for day to day work.

    OS X is intended to be a consumer OS. (with handy server functionality, but that's secondary) For us Mac users, that means a GUI which is at least no worse than what we have now, and finally a stable OS.
  • Development on the Lisa UI started in 1979; the Macintosh was released in 1984. X was invented in 1985. Get the picture?

  • Re:OSX - UI = ?? (Score:3)

    by mikpos ( 2397 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:04AM (#924639) Homepage
    No. There is NO replacement going on. Either read the article or ... well read SOMETHING that might give you clue as to what's going on. They are *not* replacing the Mac OS X interface. They even say explicitly that X11 applications will co-operate and communicate well with native Mac OS X applications. This is *not* a replacement; it is an addition of a remote display protocol.
  • Hey, that's bull... wait a minute, my wife uses a Mac DOAH!

    .technomancer

  • now all we need are girlfriends. oh and macs (Score:3)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:05AM (#924641)
    Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying all slashdot users are gay or anything. Just huge losers :D

    just kiddin', love y'all :D

  • The proper order is read, then write! (Score:5)

    by isaac ( 2852 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:09AM (#924642)
    The interesting thing about MacOS X was that it was the power of Unix "under the hood" with the (supposed) power of the MacOS GUI on top. If you remove the Mac GUI and replace it with X, don't you end up with just plain BSD (with non-standard config files)

    I'd normally write this off as a troll, but I'm feeling noisy today.

    The whole point of *TENON* (not Apple, a 3rd party developer) writing this X server/wm/widget set is that it allows an easy way to display X apps and even have them integrate as smoothly as possible into the OS X look-and-feel. This means rootless display where the X clients coexist with the Quartz (display PDF) desktop and windows.

    A similar product was popular under NEXTSTEP (and it was actually called Co-Xist), which allowed rootless display of X clients atop the NeXT display-postscript system.

    -Isaac

  • practically doesn't mean they did invent the GUI. Beyond that X is not a GUI.

  • I have to agree with you on this one :)


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man

  • Re:Widget set? (Score:3)

    by happystink ( 204158 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:12AM (#924645)
    This is not a flame, I love unix + mac, but I think the graphics programs jumping to Mac might be pretty unneeded since EVERY mac user I know has a copy of photoshop.

    But why did you think that'd be interesting? (not rhetorical). Do you think that might get more Mac developers behind OSS or anything? That'd be wicked, but I'm not sure if having *NIX graphics programs on mac is going to really be a big thing, is it? (again, not rhetorical)


  • i educated her, now she uses linux as much as possible, and windows otherwise... too bad she went insane. :P i don't know anyone personally who prefers macs over Linux. everyone i've met who does, converts after enough discussion. i've been told i'm persuasive :P
    ...dave
  • Then they should just be installing Linux or BSD, or at least dual-booting, yes? I've never seen one of these Swiss Army computers actually function well

    well good thing that its not made by the swiss(jk). seriously, its not like this isn't a 3rd party tool, WTF are you complaining about?

    Besides, OS X is meant for the server market, so what the hell do you need a GUI for in the first place?

    uhm, i believe they are talking about OSX the CLIENT PLATFORM ok so now we know you don't even read the SUMMARY of the story, and you have NO FSCKING clue about what OSX is.

  • How it will work (Score:4)

    by tbo ( 35008 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:17AM (#924648) Journal
    As a Mac developer, Linux user, and someone who's actually used Mac OS X, I think I can give you a pretty good idea how it will work. There's already a few X11 Servers for Mac OS 8/9. The one I'm most familiar with is MacX (aren't all these X names getting confusing).

    MacX will either let you have one big-ass MacOS window that contains your X-based desktop (with whatever window manager you want), or it can put each X window in its own Mac OS window, giving everything a much more Mac-like feel. I imagine Tenon will adopt a similar strategy: all the window widgets will be Aqua-fied, but the contents of the window will be the same as always, since they're controlled mainly by the application. Tenon's X server will probably also support a "big-ass window" mode, and maybe also a full-screen mode.

    Just to set the record straight, Carmack hacked X to run on Mac OS X server, and the hack was promptly ported to Darwin, seeing as it lacked a GUI.

    My dream system: quad G4s, three monitors.
    Monitor 1: Aqua.
    Monitor 2: X11
    Monitor 3: CLUI
  • Would you please stop posting as such if you are sooo very ignorant on the subject. I wouldn't mind you posting questions, but when you start making statements like the one above, it's time to shut the hell up. I'm not a mac user, but from what I gather the BSD part of Mac OS X will be completely hidden from the user, but will allow programmers access to the POSIX kernel. Traditional BSD directories will exist like /usr /bin /lib but will be hidden by default. Also there will be a terminal app (maybe) that won't be installed by default, so you don't have to use the BSD part explicitly if you don't want to. Sometimes it's hard to tell an idiot from a troll, which ever one you are, you're good at it.


    He who knows not, and knows he knows not is a wise man
  • There's a Katz story in here.

    About how Geeks don't get laid or something, maybe he can even call it Voices from Celibate-mouth or something.

    Geez, it has been a few weeks since the usual how come geeks don't get girls column, what's up with that?
  • MI/X is all you really need... and free (not OSS)!
    www.microimages.com/www/html/freestuf/mix/

    so what if it's the Classic API??

    of course if anybody can get it to do something other than just sit there, PLEASE let me know! :-)

  • mouthfull (Score:5)

    by patreides ( 210724 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:22AM (#924652)
    Pay attention here. The new X Desktop is pronounced "X" as in "X marks
    the spot." But the X in Mac OS X is pronounced "10." Got that? Okay, X
    Desktop will purportedly not only allow remote X applications to be
    displayed on the Mac OS X desktop, but will also include complete set of X
    tools and libraries to support local execution of X applications and X games
    on OS X. Extending Mac OS X with an X Window porting environment
    will enable high-resolution 3D-modeling and animation, graphical
    visualization and image rendering applications to be built directly on Mac
    OS X, says Holmgren.

    Try reading that aloud, and getting all the X's right as appropriate :-)
  • Classic Mac OS has had an X server for years now! I believe the original 1.0 MacX was released in 1995. I'm still running the 2.0 MacX (1997) on my Lombard and it kicks ass!
  • I, for one, will be extremely disappointed if this becomes a sucessful product.

    X has already been ported to MacOS X server, porting it to MacOS X should be trivial. Apple's current distribution of MacOS X includes compilers and other such unix basics. While they might not be part of the default installation, I'm sure plenty of people will be interested in adding them through an additional install.

    In other words, compiling unix software under MacOS X should become a relatively simple thing. I want to be designing graphics in photoshop and flash while working on the back end in mysql and php. All on the same machine.

    Will Apple put any effort into this? No, but they have given us the BSD layer and they fully intend for software developers to take advantage of this.
  • I meant 3D graphics programs, the heavyweights - most of which use Motif/OpenGL, which would then be available for MacOS X... think of the possibilities!
  • They should just change the name to "Mac OS XI" to save us the grief (or, god forbid, "Mac OS 10").
  • Nice cut and paste job from #14...

  • hmm... (Score:1)

    by rbf ( 2305 )
    "www.sarcasta.net is running Apache/1.3.4 (Unix) mod_perl/1.17 on Linux"

    bummer! I was looking forward to /.'n a Mac... Ohh well... :(

    I guess I should be happy they are running Apache on a free UNIX! (even if it is an old Apache) :)

    What would a /.'ed Mac be called anyway? Macinslash? Macindotted? Macinsquash?
  • Isn't nested mode grand? You can rip off comments [slashdot.org] posted 10 minutes earlier, tack them onto an even earlier post as a reply, and get marked as "Insightful." Congratulations!
  • Ah, but it's a new Beetle body (more plastic)... and it happens to be a Golf, not a Gulf...
  • My wife uses a Mac (although now that he's been kicked off the Mac, my 18 month old uses Linux). I'd be interested in seeing stats on what the households of Linux users use. Break it down by status of Linux user (for instance, "man of the house" uses Linux - 80% of "women of the house" use Mac, 95% of "children of the house" use Linux).
    --
  • I _love_ Linux for most things, but for graphics, a Mac still can't be beat. Try printing out slide scans using The Gimp and a Epson Photo printer without getting the colors all f'ed up. Accurate color printing under Linux still has a _long_ way to go (coupled with the fact that most Linux/Gimp hackers are primarily interested only in graphics for the web - unless somebody can show me otherwise). For this reason alone I will use my Mac G3. For everything else, there's Linux. :)

    Windows? What's that?
  • Your household consists of a *man*, some *women* and some children? Only joking.

  • Misguided anti-Aqua sentiment (Score:4)

    by Junks Jerzey ( 54586 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:35AM (#924664)
    The main reason that people run X is not because it is great or beautiful or a wonderful piece of engineering, because it is none of those. It is because it is the only real standard for accessing bitmapped displays under UNIX/Linux. Apple has finally been able to break away from X, and I am thankful. You can put down Aqua all you want, and it seems many people get off on this, but all those people really need is (1) a terminal window, (2) maybe a different file browser. Just because you don't like the idea of icons and pretty pictures and such is no reason to argue for ugly Tk applications and slower video performance.
  • I dissagree - is may be the tenth in the line of increasingly unstable MacOS versions (this one should be a marked improvement, though), but it should be pronounced mak-oh-ess-eks. It just sounds better. Besides, the letter 'X' is just cool by virtue of being 'X'...
  • IIRC, Apple did throw a hissy fit when Aqua look-a-likes (though unfortunately very Aqua un-feel-a-likes) started popping up on themes.org. The problem was the people were using Apple's artwork (e.g. copying widgets directly from screenshots), which was not cool with Apple. If there were people who (god forbid) created their own artwork and wrote their own code, then I don't believe Apple would have any real legal grounds to sue on (not that they'd want to anyway).
  • You're going to have a hell of a time persuading anyone once Mac OS X ships, so enjoy it while you can.

    --
  • damn. I've been working on a kaleidascope theme for a month now to make my mac look like it's running ncurses...

    seriously, though. I was really hoping the crunchy BSD centre would lure *nix-ers to the mac's creamy coating UI.

  • Ah, but it's a new Beetle body (more plastic)... and it happens to be a Golf, not a Gulf...

    Okay.

    s/Gulf/Golf/

    However it's spelled and whatever it's made of, it is still a poor substitute for the Jetta. Let's face it, the new Beetle is a car for people who want to pretend they are still hippies, even though they haven't actually seen a tab of acid since going to a Grateful Dead concert in 1974.

    If only VW had put the engine in the back again... Lift the body and put on a Harley fork, and you had one heck of a chopper trike.

  • Would you have to say "No whammy...no whammy...STOP" when you use it?

    -B

  • give me a break :) it's cute, it's purdy, but it's still on a Mac, and it's lacking. sorry, i am not going to get into a religious war of Mac vs. machine-i-build-myself, because i've never met anyone who takes the Mac side who is educated at all about the subject, they're usually just zealots..
    ...dave
  • Simple, so that System admins could have a X-Windows-Server to use on their desktop computer. So a Solaris admin could sit at his Mac in his office, and connect to the E-10K in the basement and run the Solaris admin utilities (which are not going to be ported to MacOS X) from there. In other words the same reason why X-11 was orrigianly invented (not Solaris specific).

    The porting of the client side is a littel harder to jusify, as most progams would benifit more from being ported to the native Quartz interface, but if you are allready doing most of the work in the server.... And I suppose that it would make (other than swing) UNIX development possible on MacOS X, but this does not seem a big issue to me.
  • Troll or grossly in need of information? I'll assume the latter. All the BSD layer will be hidden from the end users. They'll never once have to deal with UNIX if they don't want to. However, it will still be there. As far as they'll know, it will be just another Mac with a Candyland face lift. If you need more information, why don't you actually look at Apple's site. Surely, if you're actually a Mac owner, you've been hearing about this for 2 years now.

    Tenon's product may not be a tool for porting X code anyway. It's primary purpose is to allow people to run X applications on another UNIX machine and display them on a Mac, much like do with my Windows machine at work. Apple isn't doing this, Tenon is. If you don't like it, then don't buy it and quit spouting nonsense.

  • You missed one big thing (Score:3)

    by chainsaw1 ( 89967 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @07:56AM (#924676)
    Tenron claims that their product will also work as a standard X server to run _local_ binaries also. MacX, etc. have never been able to do this, because there was no UNIX underpinnings to run the apps with. Thus standalone running of X apps could (beforehand) never be done.

    Basically when this does is give a complete Xwindows compatability to the Mac. Tenron is in an excellet position to do this to. They have produced some apazing UNIX and UNIX ports to Macintosh. MachTen, one of their products, was essentially UNIX inside MacOS. it had everything you would expect from the UNIX environment also.. threads, protected memory usage, etc....from an overlying OS that didn't. Plus MacTen included it's own TCP stack which was used when it was active to bypass MacTCP and early OT which had some problems of it's own. I am still amazed at what it could do without having much of the nessesairy structure needed by UNIX in MacOS. It was still affected when the MacOS crashed, but there isn't much one can do about that other than yelling at Apple :)
  • You mean like Maya, who will probably be demo-ing again tommorow at Macworld on MacOS X, just like they did at WWDC? Ie.. someone has already thought of that, and has already announced a product (shipping close to the same time as MacOS X, this comming January).
  • Wow, cool! I want to see it! I heard about asciiMac, from MacHack, which ASCIIfies the whole screen, but it has the side effect of freezing my box :P This sounds cool... when you're done with that scheme, let me know.

  • I currently own and use an AMD Athalon 850 system running linux, a PII 350 running linux, a G3 400 running MacOS, a PowerBook G3 233 running MacOS, a G3 450 running Mac OSX Server, an Ultra5 running Solaris8, and I've got an old NeXT Turbo station around somewhere. I'm really quite sick of the whole attitude that no one intelligent uses a mac. Hey, I'm a system administrator and developer for unix systems, yet I have a mac at home and one on my desk too. Grow a brain, different computers have different uses. I'll never give up my mac because it's the most comfortable system for web browsing, email, writing papers, playing around with graphics. Is it perfect? Hell no, but neither is any OS out there. MacOS works, and it does it without a lot of hassle.

    Get a clue, I'm not going to use a Mac to virtual host 300 websites, and I'm not going to use a linux box to suft the net at home.
  • Carmack ported XFree86 to Darwin, Apple's free distribution of the underlying BSD-based system. This means that you can use XFree86 as a GUI instead of the Aqua environment. The two cannot be run side-by-side, and there is no current way to shut down the Aqua environment in actual Mac OS X developer pre-releases.

    So, Carmack didn't actually port it to Mac OS X. Tenon is porting their existing Mac OS-based X server to Carbon so that it will actually run on Mac OS X, not just Darwin.
  • CmdrTaco: contrary to popular belief, it is not only female graphic designers using the MacOS. I am a (male) software developer and Linux geek, and I use the MacOS for my everyday operating system. I use Linux for all my server-related stuff of course, but for a desktop environment, nothing else compares to the MacOS. I've used pretty much every desktop environment there is -- I used to use Linux with AfterStep/KDE/WindowMaker/etc for a long time, but I finally decided I wanted an environment I could actually use easily and productively. I found your comment to be quite ignorant and narrow-minded. I'm sorry to hear that this is the way you think. That aside, I am quite pleased to hear the news about this X server for Mac OS X. There are still times when there's an X program I would like to tunnel through SSH from my Linux server on to my Mac desktop. There actually is an amazing X server for the Mac OS called eXodus (http://www.powerlan-usa.com/exodus/), which I hope that Tenon trys to match in quality and functionality.

  • Re:Go with Classic! (Score:3)

    by PotPieMan ( 54815 ) on Tuesday July 18, 2000 @08:16AM (#924694)
    I haven't used MI/X, but my guess is that it could serve as an X client. On http://www.microimages.com/fre estuf/mix/macindex.htm [microimages.com], MicroImages says that:
    You may want to use your Power Macs as X terminals in a network environment -- MI/X works fine as an X terminal emulator. You may also want to make your PC a true X Server and run multiple X clients from your desktop.

    I'll try it out when I get my Mac attached to my home network -- I've always wanted something like this.

  • that's my intention, you should try it... the moderators don't mind if you're pompous, just don't be rude... so, this is a good way of venting frustration, make other people frustrated at how egotistcal you are/seem.

    i can do the 'humble guy' act like Woz if i want to... and yes, i am sorry i am not a believer in Saint Woz,.. i think he's probably a nice guy and he is definitely brilliant, but i don't buy into the humility. it seems forced almost at times.
    ...dave
  • Too bad there are no Linux grammer checkers: it's "hordes", not "hoards"
  • Persuade me. Seriously. I produce commercial websites, and need to use tools like Photoshop, Fireworks, BBEdit, etc. which are not (yet) available for an open source OS. I also work with digital photography, involving color matching, like the previous poster. Do you seriously think i'm the only one in my position, and that with enough persuasion i'm going to see that my Mac is worthless? You'd be better off persuading Adobe and Macromedia to port their products to Linux et al.

    Please don't take this as an anti-OSS flame; personally I think the world would be much better off if an international coalition adopted an OSS operating system and blessed it as an International Standard Operating System so we could all get on with our lives (though I suppose the web has in a way become that), I just find it a bit disconcerting that people seem to think that all Mac users are semi-luddite morons. Many of us have damn good reasons for using our Macs; if i'm bored enough i'd be glad to enumerate them for you (and they don't date from the 8.3 vs. 32 filename era).
  • Even at $500, this will probably sell a LOT of copies.

    In the network I run, we are a Windows shop, as we need Office to communicate with the outside world. We are moving our outside hosted websites in house, and therefore are bringing some *nix boxes in (some will be Linux, don't know about all of them yet).

    Our graphic developers use Macintoshes.

    I'm personally ending up with an assortment of machines, Linux for devel, Windows for Office, I'd love a G4, just need a justification.

    Now, with the BSD layer, the Mac Applications (including MS Office), and an X11 Server, I can trash the Windows and Linux boxes, and run a Macintosh.

    This gives me lots of power, an easy interface, and lots of flexibilty. This product WILL sell.

    Alex
  • Then it could either be "Mac OS Nine" (numerical), "Mac OS Zee" (phonetic), or "Mac Os Chi" (Chinese transliteration :-) )
  • 1/5 has dumped me.
  • At least it's not your palm as your wife/girlfriend!!

    (My karma flying past as it leaves at least cools me off a bit.)
  • Thanks for perpetuating the notion that men and only men do all the heavy lifting in the Internet and women just pretty up the place. Thanks for making it just that much more difficult for women technologists to get through life.
  • Really, this is the answer for all those people who whine about, "Hey, no fair, I submitted my story 0.03849 seconds before ThisOtherGuy did, and yet they posted his instead! It's a conspiracy, I tell ya!"

    Didn't get your submit posted? No problem. All you have to do is date the owner. ;-)
  • The main reason that people run X is not because it is great or beautiful or a wonderful piece of engineering ... It is because it is the only real standard for accessing bitmapped displays under UNIX/Linux.

    And the main reason that people run IP is that it is the only real standard for accessing network resources under Unix.

    And the main reason people use HTTP for web browsing is that it is the only real standard for transporting hypertext.

    And the main reason people use SMTP, POP, and/or IMAP is -- you guessed it -- they are the standards for accessing email.

    You say "standard" like it is a bad thing. Believe it or not, there are those of us who prefer interoperability and stability over flashy looks.

    Aqua may be cool and all, but will it run on any computer from an IBM mainframe to a Palm Pilot? No, I didn't think so. But X11 will. This doesn't make Aqua inferior or X11 better, but it is a distinction to be aware of.
  • Want a fun, quirky car with room for four? Get a New Beetle.

    You mean, "Want a fun, quirky car that costs nearly twice as much as the same car without the funky styling? Get a New Beetle."

    Don't get my wrong, VM makes fine cars, and the New Beetle does look kind of cool, but it isn't worth the price premium. They cost as much as a small SUV!
  • OMFG. I knew that. I'm even taking latin in school... >:-(

    The only thing worse than making a mistake like that is posting it at +2 on /.
  • Apple has made a break from X on UNIX, not on its own machines. IE> Instead of going to normal way and using X with UNIX, they used something else. Also, this isn't the closest they've gotten to X. MacOS already has a few X servers.
  • And the main reason that people run IP is that it is the only real standard for accessing network resources under Unix.
    >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
    True. IP is a terrible protocol. It has a lot of overhead, plus it has a lot of connection startup time. Who decided to use TCP/IP for internet anyway?

    And the main reason people use HTTP for web browsing is that it is the only real standard for transporting hypertext.
    >>>>>>>>
    HTTP is also pretty limited. Read the /. article on what they're trying to replace it with.

    And the main reason people use SMTP, POP, and/or IMAP is -- you guessed it -- they are the standards for accessing email.
    >>>>>>>>
    Let's see... never mind, I couldn't care less what protocol my email system uses.

    You say "standard" like it is a bad thing. Believe it or not, there are those of us who prefer interoperability and stability over flashy looks.
    >>>>>>>>>>
    X11 doesn't have more stability than Aqua. However, it is a lot faster and more powerful. Interoperability seems to be the only thing left, and 99% of Mac users couldn't care less about that.

    Aqua may be cool and all, but will it run on any computer from an IBM mainframe to a Palm Pilot? No, I didn't think so. But X11 will. This doesn't make
    Aqua inferior or X11 better, but it is a distinction to be aware of.
    >>>>>>>>>
    I don't own an IBM mainframe or a Palm Pilot. Neither do most MacOS users. And even if they did, the PP doesn't have an X server.

    You have to take this in contex. He is talking about X11 within the context of a desktop OS. In that context, X11 is worse than the Win9x GDI.
  • Oh right, gotcha! That's a cool thing then yeah, those WOULD be rad! Unfortunately I suck at 3d anything so it doesn't directly benefit me, so wait, on second thoughts, I don't care. :)
  • Is't than kind of recursive, X is harder to port because MacOS X lacks X?
  • Okay, we've already got Mach OSSed. We've got FreeBSD OSSed. Now all we need is some one to make a good Aqua clone (DPDF and all that good stuff, not a theme) and I can ditch this blasted Linux box.
  • I prefer more of the unbreakble BSD core to the "crunchy bsd core."

    I used crunchy core as a metaphor... remember when you were 8 and grandma got that box o' assorted chocolates and you winged them, one by one, against the wall? Which ones gished and made a big mess? The caramel centres! Which ones maintained their structural integrity and suffered no data loss? The ones with the crunchy centres! Sheesh. It's amazing how fast we forget the lessons of our childhood.

    In any event, I bought my first computer (a Vic20) from the Calgary Computer Store (current home of OpenBSD) so I'm beholden to buy each new release... even if i don't install it on anything. :)

  • Where to start....

    New imac= $1,000
    new Dell home system with monitor and external speakers= $900. Go ahead, argue with it.

    The iMac has built-in ethernet, built-in FireWire (for video editing), etc, and built-in speakers.

    For years now, the stability of Apple computers has given rise to a wonderful run of cigarette breaks for the people who've sat in front of them. Now, Apple's adoption of BSD/NeXT technology is supposed to solve that by finally (finally!!) making some version of MacOS stable.

    When was the last time you actually used Mac OS 9? They're fixed a lot of stuff. The OS is quite stable now. It's not Unix, but it's worlds better than the Mac OS architecture of 3 years ago.

    not notice that the capability exists to have one of those ultra-powerful G4 machines serve multiple workstations thereby hammering Apple's bottom line.

    Ummm... what? Do you understand Apple's business model?

    Apple is a company that operates in a few niche markets selling its own hardware to run its own operating system in a hothouse market with no direct competition.

    If you consider the consumer (do you realize how well the iMac does?) or entire graphics/publishing industry to be niche. These seem less "niche" to me than development or servers.

    he destroyed all the competition from licensees who were building Apples faster and cheaper

    And worse. The Motorola machines, for example, were an abomination. People would buy what would claim to be a Mac, discover it had all kinds of hardware and software compatibility issues, and get a bad impression of the Mac as a result. This was damaging the brand name. Apple makes the whole widget. This has always been the lure. This is why things like PowerPC, FireWire, the new filesystem and USB were intergrated so quickly. My partner has a W2k machine with USB ports, and hasn't gotten a single USB device to work perfectly yet.

    it's pretty easy to imagine Steve Jobs waking up in a cold sweat from dreams involving people thinking of Apples as application servers with apps running on anything but Apple hardware

    I really don't think you understand Apple's markets or customers. Applications like Excel or Word can operate in a vaccum. They are pretty much self-contained. Publishing or multimedia production, however, requires considerably more infrastructure and support apps -- color management, font management, video support, codecs, etc, etc. You can't do all this stuff on the server side.

    Additionally, how many consumers will buy a G4 as their application server?

    - Scott


    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • or does all the extra flash provided by Aqua and such seem rather boring? i dunno, it reminds me of my old BBS days where we'd go through and change every menu into a big, fancy ANSI piccy,..

    So let me get this straight, you're comparing ascii art to Aqua? :)

    - Scott
    ------
    Scott Stevenson
  • Me? no, but other people have, but they're too new to matter. (IPX comes to mind.)
  • Me? no, but other people have, but they're too new to matter. (IPX comes to mind.)

    IPX?? Novell's IPX?? The so-called Internetwork Packet Exchange? Oh please.

    IPX is crufty, badly designed, overly dependent on broadcast traffic, highly propriatary, hard to route, not subnetable, and basically sucks. And if you think TCP has high overhead, try Novell STREAMS layered on top of SPX layered on top of IPX controlled by broadcast SAP. Even Novell admits IPX is crap, and has moved to pure IP with NetWare V5.

    Again: Go back to flaming people who think Linux beats BeOS for multimedia performance. You're out of your league here.
  • Reading Slashdot lissening to Geeks In Space and reading CmdrTacos website I'd say first and formost Rob Mulda is a prankster.
    If she can't take that level of ribbing I doult the relationship would have lasted long anyway.

    I suspect she got worse many times over AND she got him quite a few times herself (Hay maybe this color sceam was HER FAULT) :)

    Anyway it's not gona distory the relationship...
    How ever it may earn CmdrTaco a pants full of hot gritz...
  • People run X11 because there are lots of tools for it, because the API is standardized and stable, and because it works well for distributed computing. And people run Tk because they need to put together GUIs quickly, not because it's pretty.

    Windows, MacOS OS, and their toolkits may be nice for the consumer market, but they have all sorts of problems for the scientific and engineering market. One size doesn't fit all, and environments (like Win32 and Aqua) that are designed for making the prettiest consumer applications are not the best for science and engineering applications. X11 is here to stay because it works well for lots of people and because there is nothing on the horizon that fills its niche.

  • Uh, no? :-)

    Like I said, we tend to forget the lessons of our childhood :)

  • As a local desktop window system, X11 is both overkill and limited in some areas. That's why we see all these complaints about poor font support, lack of antialiasing, etc.

    But the real importance of X11 is in scientific and engineering environments, as well as large server farms. There, people run GUI-based and visualization software on big machines in machine rooms and display and steer it from their client workstations/PCs on their desktop. Despite the various attempts at providing such functionality on top of MacOS and Windows (CarbonCopy, Timbuktu (?), etc.), X11 is still the best for that: it allows application writers to write applications that are client/server aware and work well across lots of platforms. Having a good, commercial X11 server available for MacOS X makes MacOS X a good desktop client platform in such environments.

    But because MacOS X (presumably) cannot use the X11 protocol for displaying its native applications and administration tools on remote X11 displays, this still doesn't let MacOS X compete on equal footing with X11-based servers. Making MacOS X a client of an X11 display server in that way could be feasible, though difficult. More likely, we are going to see a passable VNC server adaptation, just like we did with Windows.

  • Too bad IP doesn't have connections. It's a stateless, unreliable, unsequenced datagram protocol. I'll cut you some slack -- maybe you meant TCP? Well, true, it does have some overhead, but that's the price you pay for building a reliable data stream protocol on top of an unreliable, packeted-based protocol. I'd like to see you do a better job.
    >>>>>>>
    Sorry, my faux pas, I was referring to TCP/IP, (and I thought the orignal poster was too. You see, you don't see IP mentioned often by itself.)

    The US Department of Defense.

    If you're also wondering why, it's because IP does a damn good job given the constraints it has and had to work with. Again, I'd like to see you do a better job.
    >>>>>
    I couldn't do a better job. But other people have. My point was that even though IP is not the best protocol we still use it.

    HTTP is also pretty limited. Read the /. article on what they're trying to replace it with.

    You mean BXXP? Which is basically TCP layered on top of TCP? And you're complaining about the overhead of TCP? Um, hello, McFly? Anyone home?
    >>>>>
    Again I was just pointing out that HTTP also is a fairly limited standard. I wasn't trying to promot BXXP in any way.

    If you really don't care about all this stuff, why the hell are you posting about it? This is the thing that really gives you away as a troll. Never, ever admit you're not interested in the subject matter, or the whole gig is up.
    >>>>>>>
    Let's see, do YOU care about the protocol your email system uses? TCP pisses me off, but POP3 could be made by MS and still not bug me.

    X11 has been around for how many years? Meanwhile, this is the third or fourth major iteration of the Macintosh graphics interface? Riiight.
    >>>>>>
    How often has X crashed on you? It IS possible to design a stable system the first time around, especially if it is a clean design. Still its a moot point. Aqua isn't out yet, so you can't comment on the stability.

    However, it is a lot faster and more powerful.

    I don't really expect Aqua to be much faster then X11. Perhaps slightly so, simply because it is more limited. But not significantly so.

    As far as power goes, you're dead wrong. Extensibility, network transparency, host, machine, and transport independence are just a few of the things X11 has that Mac OS X's graphics system doesn't.
    >>>>
    Fast? I'd like to see X do those transparency tricks with any modicum of speed. As for power, it depends on your definition. In my eyes, the DPDF and imaging features make for a much more powerful system than simply network transparency. You think anyone uses OpenGL JUST because of the network transparency?

    I don't own an IBM mainframe or a Palm Pilot.

    No shit? Like that makes a whole hell of a lot of difference to my argument. The point was, X11 will go with you no matter where you go, not that you could run it on the IBM S/390 you have in your bedroom.
    >>>>
    I was kidding. I understand your point, but in truth. How many Mac users interact with anything other than Windows PCs? The question is one of the relevance of features. If Aqua had network transparency, it would just go unused. These days, the vast majority of Mac users are home users and graphics artists. The former rarely have *NIX machines, and the latter usually have powerful client machines, rather than a large back-end server.
    And even if they did, the PP doesn't have an X server.

    I've seen one for it, so you're wrong yet again.
    >>>>>
    You're kidding right? My only question is, what the hell? I mean I can understand one for a WinCE HPC, but for the palm pilot?

    Actually, the OP and you are both talking out of your ass, because Aqua is really the UI layer, not the graphics layer like X11 is. It's comparing apples to oranges. The point I was trying to make was that standards are a good thing, which you've missed entirely. Instead, and as usual, you've tried to divert the discussion to a flamewar of Unix vs this mythical "desktop OS" you always bring up.
    >>>>>>>>
    Personal vandetta maybe? My point is that your argueing symantics. What does Aqua mean? Technically yes, it means just the UI layer of MacOSX. In practice, it means the whole enchillada, DPDF and all. This is a comparison between the entire MacOSX display system and X11. And that is a very valid comparison. And where, praytell, did I bring in a mythical "desktop OS?" (BTW> Did you get the apples vs. oranges pun?)

    But, let's indulge you. X11 vs Win9X GDI. At least you got the layers right for that one. The GDI is encumbered with backwards compatability with years worth of things that don't exist anymore. It's tied to Windows. It's tied to the Intel platform. The API changes with each major release of the OS. It's poorly and often incorrectly documented. It's propriatary. It's a pain in the ass to work with. It's limited to a single user on a single machine. In short, it's crap
    >>>>>>>
    Let's indulge you. X11. It's limited by years worth of backwards compatibility. It's limited by things that almost don't exist anymore (like low power clients), it's hard to program for, the API changes with every major release of X :) In desktop space, the comments about Intel, Windows, and multi-user don't matter, because everybody runs winte (which are all single user machines). (Statistically of course.) GDI has some additional things going for it though. Much
    better font handling for one. It's noticably faster (why shouldn't it be, it's in the bloody kernel!) It has and API that is just slightly more complex than X's but has more imaging features. This is the stuff that matters in desktop space. Imaging features and speed. GDI just one-ups X in this respect.

    I do know BeOS, but it had nothing to do with this post. BeOS uses neither X nor GDI. However, I've programmed GDI for awhile now, and it surprises me to see that people who promote X, just don't get the fact that the features that make it so great on *NIX (maturity, extensibility, network transparency, flexibility) just don't matter in consumer-space.
  • Really? I always though Novell backed up because nobody used IPX.
    IPX does have it's problems. Its harder to route for one. But it is just FASTER than TCP. I have a DSL connection, and it still takes ages for a transfer to get up to the full speed. (No, not on BeOS's cruddy TCP, NTs not so cruddy TCP).
    Also, over my local LAN, IPX beats TCP/IP hands down. And this is on NT, which is designed for TCP.
  • DOS isn't UNIX. Most Windows users who reboot to DOS mode were once DOS users or Win 3.11/DOS users who know how to get back. Even if they don't, it's DOS, so there's no harm done in cold-rebooting the machine to get back into Windows.

    However, long-term Mac users and new computer users are not familiar with UNIX as a rule. Dropping them into a UNIX prompt means leaving them lost. Furthermore, they'll be tempted to simply power-off the machine to get back, and this is a big no-no on a UNIX machine. Since most will not know to 'su' to root and type the shutdown command, this is very bad.
  • Are you guys smoking something? Cmdr Topic *specifically* mentioned sharing his computer in the article.

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