The X-Files

Unix systems all now support the network-based windowing system called "X-Windows". These were developed at MIT in the mid-1980's with the goal of creating a hardware-independent operating environment. By "network-based" it is meant that you can sit at one computer and display X-windows that are actually running on a remote machine. This is in contrast to the generic version of Microsoft Windows where you must be sitting at the PC that is running the windows. X-Windows work pretty well in meeting the goal of being machine-independent. Almost any of the X-Windows programs we now have on Bama will run on almost any of the many X-Windows display servers available for PC's or on other Unix machines. The one area where X-Windows has failed is that there are a variety of window managers that have sprung up. Not all X-Windows programs will run with all the different window managers. We'll talk more about this in later, though.

What Do You Need to Run X-Windows?

Everything needed to "launch" X-windows is running on Bama. From your, the user's, point of view, you must have software on your PC (or remote Unix machine) that can display the X-windows. Unix machines have this capability by default. For PCs there are several vendors who provide X-Windows software. Two examples are Exceed from Hummingbird and PC-Xware from NCD. At the Seebeck Computer Center we are experimenting with a third program called X-win32 from Starnet. It seems to support all X features with the added benefit of being very inexpensive. Since we have started a site license for X-win32 you should contact the Help Desk for more information about this product.

In order for the X-windows program to display its window(s) the remote machine must already be running the X-windows emulator and the host machine must know where the remote machine is located. To tell the host machine where to display the windows you would type

DISPLAY=my.ip.address:0 export DISPLAY

where my.ip.address is the name of the remote machine. There may be issues to resolve on the remote machine, such as giving the host permission to display there or local windows configuration, but configuring these varies from program to program and is beyond the scope of this Tipsheet.

Window Managers

The window manager is the software which lets you move, resize, close (iconify), and otherwise change your windows, and it handles many of the x-windows commands that come from computer where the main software is running. It is what controls the "look-and-feel" of the windows. The number of window managers has increased greatly from the early days of "X" and now, not all managers are created equal. There are some programs that have a built-in window manager dependence that will keep them from running on all X-windows displays. Even when standards are proposed, vendors want to impose their own variations.

We have a several window managers to choose from and others can be added, per request.

OpenWindows: Sun Microsystem's version of the Open Look interface.
CDE: Sun Microsystem's version of the Motif windows.
Twm: Either Tab Window Manager or Tom's Window Manager, take your pick. This is an early X-windows manager.

Software

We already have a variety of X-Windows software on Bama. Here is a sampling of what is available and what can be done with these programs:

Netscape: The popular Web browser will run directly on Bama. When you download software with this version, goes directly to your account on Bama.
SAS: This statistical analysis program has an X-windows interface. This is very similar to the PC interface, making its use more familiar across platforms.
Workshop: This is a graphical source code debugger for the Sun compilers. It will help you develop large software projects and analyze its operation for speedier execution.
Java Workshop: A Java equivalent of "Workshop".
Xv: An image viewing and manipulation program. You can do file format conversions and edit color maps, along with other image manipulation.
Acroread: View Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf) directly on Bama.
Xterm: the X-windows equivalent of a telnet window. Some programs enable the mouse in xterm window. Pine will allow you to do this, for instance.
Snapshot: Grabs an image of a window and saves it for later use. Results can be viewed with "xv" and other programs
Textedit: A mouse-based text editor (point-and-click to get to where you want to edit, etc) but not WYSIWYG.
Calctool: A calculator. This has financial, scientific, and logical modes.
Ghostview: Display postscript on the screen. Ghostview can be set up as the default postscript display for Netscape, making it possible to display postscript files from the Web.

There are more programs than these available. The ones listed here are not very picky about the window manager. With X-win32, for instance, they can all be run using Windows95 as the manager! Others require more support and prefer to be run in one of the window managers. Some examples are xman (man pages in xwindows), filemanager (it's like Windows Explorer), and mailtool.

Programs That Fail

There are a few programs that will fail when run remotely because of some system specific software that Sun has relied on. One such program is "pageview", a Postscript viewing program. It requires that display Postscript be running on the remote machine. Since this is a required add-on, it probably isn't there. The alternative is Ghostview ("ghostview"). Another program that will not run is the X-Windows version of SPSS. It requires the true Motif Window Manager. On the Sun we have CDE, which is similar, but is not close enough to Motif. Also, programs on SGI Unix computers that use the SGI version of the OpenGL library will likely fail on remote machines.

© 1998, The University of Alabama. The information included here is for the University of Alabama central computing facility as it was configured on the document date. It may or may not apply to other Unix systems.

November 15, 1998 Vol. 2 Index Back to Vol. 2, No. 11 Ahead to Vol. 2, No. 13		Search:

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	The X-Files Unix systems all now support the network-based windowing system called "X-Windows". These were developed at MIT in the mid-1980's with the goal of creating a hardware-independent operating environment. By "network-based" it is meant that you can sit at one computer and display X-windows that are actually running on a remote machine. This is in contrast to the generic version of Microsoft Windows where you must be sitting at the PC that is running the windows. X-Windows work pretty well in meeting the goal of being machine-independent. Almost any of the X-Windows programs we now have on Bama will run on almost any of the many X-Windows display servers available for PC's or on other Unix machines. The one area where X-Windows has failed is that there are a variety of window managers that have sprung up. Not all X-Windows programs will run with all the different window managers. We'll talk more about this in later, though. What Do You Need to Run X-Windows? Everything needed to "launch" X-windows is running on Bama. From your, the user's, point of view, you must have software on your PC (or remote Unix machine) that can display the X-windows. Unix machines have this capability by default. For PCs there are several vendors who provide X-Windows software. Two examples are Exceed from Hummingbird and PC-Xware from NCD. At the Seebeck Computer Center we are experimenting with a third program called X-win32 from Starnet. It seems to support all X features with the added benefit of being very inexpensive. Since we have started a site license for X-win32 you should contact the Help Desk for more information about this product. In order for the X-windows program to display its window(s) the remote machine must already be running the X-windows emulator and the host machine must know where the remote machine is located. To tell the host machine where to display the windows you would type `DISPLAY=my.ip.address:0 export DISPLAY` where `my.ip.address` is the name of the remote machine. There may be issues to resolve on the remote machine, such as giving the host permission to display there or local windows configuration, but configuring these varies from program to program and is beyond the scope of this Tipsheet. Window Managers The window manager is the software which lets you move, resize, close (iconify), and otherwise change your windows, and it handles many of the x-windows commands that come from computer where the main software is running. It is what controls the "look-and-feel" of the windows. The number of window managers has increased greatly from the early days of "X" and now, not all managers are created equal. There are some programs that have a built-in window manager dependence that will keep them from running on all X-windows displays. Even when standards are proposed, vendors want to impose their own variations. We have a several window managers to choose from and others can be added, per request. OpenWindows: Sun Microsystem's version of the Open Look interface. CDE: Sun Microsystem's version of the Motif windows. Twm: Either Tab Window Manager or Tom's Window Manager, take your pick. This is an early X-windows manager. Software We already have a variety of X-Windows software on Bama. Here is a sampling of what is available and what can be done with these programs: Netscape: The popular Web browser will run directly on Bama. When you download software with this version, goes directly to your account on Bama. SAS: This statistical analysis program has an X-windows interface. This is very similar to the PC interface, making its use more familiar across platforms. Workshop: This is a graphical source code debugger for the Sun compilers. It will help you develop large software projects and analyze its operation for speedier execution. Java Workshop: A Java equivalent of "Workshop". Xv: An image viewing and manipulation program. You can do file format conversions and edit color maps, along with other image manipulation. Acroread: View Adobe Acrobat format (.pdf) directly on Bama. Xterm: the X-windows equivalent of a telnet window. Some programs enable the mouse in xterm window. Pine will allow you to do this, for instance. Snapshot: Grabs an image of a window and saves it for later use. Results can be viewed with "xv" and other programs Textedit: A mouse-based text editor (point-and-click to get to where you want to edit, etc) but not WYSIWYG. Calctool: A calculator. This has financial, scientific, and logical modes. Ghostview: Display postscript on the screen. Ghostview can be set up as the default postscript display for Netscape, making it possible to display postscript files from the Web. There are more programs than these available. The ones listed here are not very picky about the window manager. With X-win32, for instance, they can all be run using Windows95 as the manager! Others require more support and prefer to be run in one of the window managers. Some examples are xman (man pages in xwindows), filemanager (it's like Windows Explorer), and mailtool. Programs That Fail There are a few programs that will fail when run remotely because of some system specific software that Sun has relied on. One such program is "pageview", a Postscript viewing program. It requires that display Postscript be running on the remote machine. Since this is a required add-on, it probably isn't there. The alternative is Ghostview ("ghostview"). Another program that will not run is the X-Windows version of SPSS. It requires the true Motif Window Manager. On the Sun we have CDE, which is similar, but is not close enough to Motif. Also, programs on SGI Unix computers that use the SGI version of the OpenGL library will likely fail on remote machines. © 1998, The University of Alabama. The information included here is for the University of Alabama central computing facility as it was configured on the document date. It may or may not apply to other Unix systems.
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