[sf-lug] Linux show demos (was: Linux podcasts)

[Rick Moen]

Quoting Kristian Erik Hermansen (kristian.hermansen at gmail.com):

> That's an awesome idea!  But, who needs VNC when OS X has
> Xforwarding?!!?  We could just forward the windows via SSH, right?
> That would be cool to see something like Final Cut Studio or Adobe
> Creative Suite 3 running :-) 

Um, no.  The problem is that those application you mention are not X11
applications.  They're "Carbon" applications, using OS X's Quartz
display engine (based on Display PDF).  That's an entirely different
imaging technology.  (Probably a smaller minority are technically
"Cocoa" applications, compiled to use the NeXTStep/Openstep programming
interfaces, but still using Quartz.)

OS X does include, I hear, X11 libraries and some sort of integrated X11
server, such that you _can_ run X11 applications compiled for Darwin /
OS X, and image them either locally or remotely using X network calls,
either raw or tunnelled over ssh.  However, none of the common,
commodity proprietary-software OS X applications are X11 apps.

The reason I mentioned VNC is that it's a completely platform-neutral 
network protocol for graphical applications.  But, when you show
InDesign imaging onto a Linux box from a headless OS X machine, the
point isn't to prove that it's flawless and lightning-fast, but rather
to show that it can be done at all.

(Remote X11 would be the right way of doing the same trick with, say, 
Framemaker for Solaris.  However, I would _not_ tunnel that over ssh for
just a local-LAN connection:  You would be encountering a lot of
computational overhead for no gain worth having.)

> >  How about a client-server setup of MythTV stocked with episodes of
> >  Doctor Who and Torchwood?
> 
> Good idea.  Has anyone played with LinuxMCE too?

I mentioned Doctor Who and Torchwood because I happen to have a large
number of recent episodes in AVI (mostly) and MPEG / Quicktime format.
(How, you ask?  Because, er, I have awesome aerial reception of BBC3 in
Menlo Park.  That's my story, and I'm sticking to it.)