X-Windows?

[AppMan]

Sorry for my naiveness, but is there any reason why most Mac users should care about this?

[RacerX]

Most Mac users? No, not really. If you use your Mac at home this really doesn't effect you that much.

Apple's X11 is a way of getting into the professional Unix market. For a large number of businesses Linux on a PC is just not going to cut it, so they are still using mid to high end Unix workstations from places like Sun Microsystems, IBM, HP and SGI. When you consider that the low end workstations start in the neighborhood of about $9000 and go up from there, Apple's top of the line PowerMac G4 is quite a deal. Add to that the fact that Apple makes laptop systems (which other venders don't), and Apple has a nice way to work themselves into the market.

Up to now the only thing Apple was missing was an Apple supported X Windows solution (that could take advantage of many things that Mac OS X has to offer). When Apple finally releases a stable 1.0 version of X11, they should be in the perfect position to enter into workflows that would never have considered a Mac before (and had rejected Linux/PC solutions in the past).

[ex2bot]

It may be of interest to Mac users who are interested in powerful software, such as OpenOffice. I was able to set up Apple's X11 and OpenOffice without trouble (add the path to OpenOffice to X11's 'Application' menu).

Doug

[Ripcord]

This is also another way to make cross-platform development a bit easier in the consumer space. As desktop Linux grows in popularity, for example (which it's poised to start doing pretty substantially in 2003 & 2004), this helps position OS X better - it will be much easier to port apps generally targeted for Linux.

[RacerX]

Seems to me Linux has been poised to start it's growth as a desktop solution for consumers every year since 1998. Actually I thought 2000/2001 would have been it's break out years... unfortunately those years saw the end of some of the best developers the platform had ever had (I personally morned the loss of Eazel back in May of 2001).

I'll be very happy if it is true, but I've seen nothing from Linux that makes it any more of a consumer choice now than at any point in time in the last 5 years.

[Ripcord]

Don't want to start a Linux war, especially on a Mac board =), so I won't. But just to respond a bit:

I do remember reading articles in 1998, 1999, etc discussing how Linux would soon become a "force" on the desktop. However, at no point, until recently, have I felt that this might be true.

However, there are a lot of things that have been coming together to make 2003/2004 look promising for the arrival of desktop Linux:

- Linux's success in the server market have finally started to provide it respect as a "serious" OS, not just a hobby or OS for geeks
- Development in a wide range of areas is finally paying off towards desktop maturity, i.e. hardware support (I'm starting to see vendors going out of their way to mention Linux driver support, for example), overall GUI (a la KDE and Gnome), mature, stable apps (I'm loving Mozilla lately, and KOffice/Openoffice are actually productive), distributions with a desktop-focus (i.e. Redhat 8, LindowsOS, etc). Overall the technology is finally getting pretty close.
- Wide corporate support. IBM's major Linux focus was a huge plus, but vendors like Sun, HP, Dell, etc are investing some serious resources in Linux and related technologies, and have a vested interest in seeing them succeed. This has really been boosting momentum. (Even Sun is supposed to release a desktop-oriented Linux distro later this year, which could have some serious impact on the industry. Then again, we've all heard this kind of thing before =)
- I could go on, but nobody reads my 4-page posts =)

I don't think we'll really start seeing Linux in the home anytime in the near future (despite companies like Wal-Mart, Dabs, and others marketing home-oriented Linux PCs). Instead, I'm expecting to see Linux start to become a real player in the Workstation market, an area where it has almost no presence today.

And good luck to them. I'm not a big Linux user, myself, I find Windows and Mac OSX infinitely more productive. But anything that helps break the Windows stranglehold is a Good Thing (not that I have anything against MS, either, I just think 95% dominance isn't healthy), and it will be (relatively) very easy to port apps between Linux and OS X, which is also a Good Thing. =)

[AppMan]

Thanks for your insight guys. I see the big picture now.

[jove]

I downloaded Apple's X11
I downloaded Open Office (that talks about XDarwin)
I downloaded a program from versiontracker that is supposed to "link" the two.
Now what do I do?