[kevingillette]

Hello,
As you can probably tell I am new to panther. While looking at the apple website it says you can run X11. Is that like KDM? Why would you want to run something like this. Also it is cool that unix is working behind the scences but what are some of the productive things you can do with it. Heck I will settler for cool things. I am really happy with my new iMac 20 LCD and would like to get the most out of it. Any help would be great.
Kevin Gillette

[SueG]

Apple's X11 page
Apple Developer's site X11 page
Source Forge
Source Forge X on X
XFree86
Mac OS X Hints on Unix
OS X FAQ on Unix

[Praxis]

Well, theres also OpenOffice (OpenOffice.org). It's a free office suite like Microsoft Office. There's no real Mac OS X port yet, but since they already had an X11 version, they made one that will run in OS X under X11. If you can't afford Microsoft Office and don't mind the slow loading speeds of OpenOffice under X11, you can download that.
Also, if you install a C compiler (gcc) from the developer tools CD (or download them) you SHOULD theoretically be able to install most Linux programs from source code...am I right? Anyone?

[drmbb]

X11 is not like KDM. X11 is Apple's name for, essentially XFree86 (X11's core code), which is the open source version of the UNIX X window system (a graphic display interface engine - see X.org and XFree86.org ). Apple's X11 is mainly distinguished by including code to specifically enhance XFree86 for OS X's built in graphic acceleration (i.e. quartz). KDM, in fact, relies upon the X system in order to display it's content.
X11 allows you to run UNIX/Linux graphic based applications, like KDE, OpenOffice (as mentioned), NEdit, AbiWord, games, etc,. etc. These in turn though either need to be ported to OS X binary form, or made available as source code so they can be recompiled in OS X. An excellent place to get both source code and/or ported binaries, as well as tools to manage their installation, is the FINK project , also, the Darwin Ports project (I prefer FINK).
As mentioned, theoretically any UNIX/Linux source code should be compilable under OS X. The difficulty comes from how UNIX savvy you are, and whether things like make and header files need to be altered (they can be challenging to navigate and edit if you know nothing about programming or the language being used (eg. C). Things like the FINK project take care of that, by providing source code packages pre-configured to compile under OS X.

[kevingillette]

Ok now that was some help. One question how do I install x11? Do I install this stuff from the delvolper CD. I think there is a lot of powerfull stuff here but people need to learn how to use it. I would like to find a page that tells you what to do and why it's good. I know a little about unix. But I would like to know more. Any help would be great.
Kevin Gillette

[drmbb]

The developers tools are needed to compile source code. They should be on a separate CD that came with your Panther set. X11 is on CD #3 - just put that CD in and launch the package installer for X11 (you'll also want the X11 SDK package, most likely).
The FINK web site has good instructions for installing FINK, and how to use it. It's also nice in that it creates a new directory on your HD , "/sw", and keeps everything in there - source packages, installed apps, dependancies, and so on. If you ever want to get rid of FINK or anything you've installed via it, just delete /sw.

[kevingillette]

Thanks for all your help. I do love the apple support I get. I love that I can write something down on this forum and get a reply. I know the some of my questions may sound stupid but I would like to learn as much as I can. The CD I got are the restore CD's. They are the ones that come with a new computer.
Kevin Gillette