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Spencer Smith
spencera@oregon.uoregon.edu
When Apple brought out its new operating system, Mac OS X, I was ecstatic. The
OS was based on Unix, an operating system I've been playing and working
with for several years. With its Unix roots, OS X would be all things to all
people: strong, fast, and flexible with its Mach kernel and BSD underpinnings,
and elegant and easy to use with its well-designed Mac interface. Brains and
brawn! Style and panache! Mork and Mindy! Well, sort of. . .
The OS X interface is very clean and well thought out, designed to be relatively
intuitive and uncluttered. Its Unix base has made the OS powerful, clean, and
stable. But I missed the Unix tools I'd become used to: a terminal window
I didn't have to search for, Xemacs for text editing and coding, and
redirection of X Windows applications from other hosts on campus and abroad.
Now that the Xfree86 Project (http://www.xfree86.org)
and the XonX project (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/)
have released a binary distribution of X11R6 that runs as an application under
Mac OS X, we really do have the best of both worlds.
Installing X11R6. X11R6 installation is relatively simple if you have some
background in Unix and an understanding of how X Windows works going in. But
if you've never worked with a Unix command prompt or opened an Xterm window
on an X terminal, then this installation may not be for you.
(Disclaimer: Installing X Windows or any other software may cause your computer
to perform erratically--up to and including not working at all! Before
installing software, it's always advisable to back up your documents, programs,
graphics, and other work. Also, because this installer file is so large--52MB--it
can take a considerable period of time to download. Home users should think
twice before attempting to download it.)
You can download the installation file from http://telia.dl.sourceforge.net/sourceforge/xonx/XInstall_10.1.sit
On campus, you can also get it from CC Public Domain at
ftp://ccpd.uoregon.edu/CC%20Public%20Domain/Macintosh%20System%20Software/MacOS%20X%20software%20(unsupported)/Install_X_Windows/XInstall_10.1.sit
Running the Xinstall application will prompt you for your root password. In
most cases, if you are the only user on the computer, that password will be
the password you defined for your account on that computer. Once you've provided
root authentication, the application will proceed to install the Xfree86 4.2.0
package on your computer. When installation is complete, an X icon will appear
in your taskbar.
Those of you who have installed Linux or some other OpenSource Unix implementation
may be anticipating several hours of configuration, tweaking, massaging, and
cursing trying to get the X environment working. But with Mac OS X, this is
just not the case. The developers who ported X Windows to the Mac had the advantage
of a stable, well-defined hardware and software platform. My experience with
the Darwin X package was that it worked immediately, with no tweaking involved.
The initial installation provides your X Windows environment with the twm window
manager. (A window manager is an application that provides the services for
graphical user interface. It wraps the windows in menu bars, adds buttons, pop-down
menus, and all the other graphical elements that create the look and feel of
a graphical--as opposed to command-line--environment.)
You can run X Windows either rootless (with the windows coexisting with your
Mac OS X Windows) or full-screen in an environment that takes up your whole
desktop. Allowing your X Windows and Aqua interface windows to coexist gives
you more flexibility, while the full screen environment offers more functionality
from the X Windows window manager.
Even in full-screen mode, you can switch easily to the Mac OS X Aqua environment
with a quick key combination (Cmd-Opt-a).
The initial distribution comes with only the standard and traditional X Windows
applications: xterm, xman, xeyes, and oclock, to name a few. These applications
provide a bare minimum of functionality to the X Windows environment, just enough
to test the installation. For more options, you'll need to get more software.
The Fink project (http://fink.sourceforge.net/)
is engaged in actively porting Unix software to Mac OS X. They have ported the
Debian Linux's dpkg and apt-get for distributing software, and are offering
a growing shopping list of applications. Many of the most popular X Windows
applications have been ported to the Darwin kernel, the underlying Unix implementation
of Mac OS X. Many of the utilities are command line applications, which will
work just as well from a Mac OS Terminal session, but there are also a number
of X Windows applications provided by the installation. The Gnu Image Manipulation
Program (GIMP) is one of these (see the article on page 16 for more information
about The GIMP), as well as Xemacs, TCL/Tk, Eterm, and a host of alternate window
managers for X Windows.
SPSS on Mac OS X? In addition to allowing X applications to run natively
on Macs, when you run an X11 server on your Mac you can also display X windows
output from applications running elsewhere. Redirecting the display from another
Unix host with X Windows is very straightforward and can allow you to use resources
on the remote host that you might lack on your local Mac OS X computer. (Use
ssh to connect to the remote server from a local Xterm to automatically incorporate
the X11 authentication information.)
SPSS users are often interested in redirecting SPSS X Windows output. SPSS on Darkwing runs fine with X Windows output redirected to the Mac OS X server. This should allow SPSS users to do their analysis and visualization work from Darkwing on their Mac OS desktop (see the example below).
Example of Mac OS X in rootless mode, running SPSS
As time goes on, more and more Unix applications should be ported to the Darwin core of Mac OS X, and to X Windows running on that Darwin core. If you're interested in getting involved in the porting efforts, or enjoy open-source development, visit the web page at http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/ for more information.