XDarwin is an obsolete

X Window System The X Window System (X11, or simply X) is a windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems. X originated as part of Project Athena at Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in 1984. The X protocol has been at ...

(X11) display server for the Darwin

operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware and software resources, and provides common daemon (computing), services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems scheduler (computing), schedule tasks for ...

and early versions of

Mac OS X macOS, previously OS X and originally Mac OS X, is a Unix, Unix-based operating system developed and marketed by Apple Inc., Apple since 2001. It is the current operating system for Apple's Mac (computer), Mac computers. With ...

. XDarwin allows one to use programs written for X11 on those operating systems. XDarwin was ported by the XonX project, an offshoot project created by

XFree86 XFree86 is an implementation of the X Window System. It was originally written for Unix-like operating systems on IBM PC compatibles and was available for many other operating systems and platforms. It is free software, free and Open-source softw ...

developers. It is integrated in the upstream

source code In computing, source code, or simply code or source, is a plain text computer program written in a programming language. A programmer writes the human readable source code to control the behavior of a computer. Since a computer, at base, only ...

of the

and Xorg servers, where it is maintained. Originally, XDarwin required an X window manager to run. For this task, a window manager called OroborOSX was created; this was based on Oroborus, another X window manager, but modified to look like the native Mac OS window manager. More recent versions of XDarwin can also run in rootless mode, which is to say that it integrates with the native window manager instead of requiring such a program specifically for X. Before the introduction of

Apple An apple is a round, edible fruit produced by an apple tree (''Malus'' spp.). Fruit trees of the orchard or domestic apple (''Malus domestica''), the most widely grown in the genus, are agriculture, cultivated worldwide. The tree originated ...

's X11.app, XDarwin was the only X11 server available for OS X. According to the XonX project, X11.app itself contains code from XDarwin. Programs such as OpenOffice.org use XDarwin to run in the X11 windowing environment, either in a rootless or full-screen mode. A version of the program was created for Mac OS X Panther or higher that runs in the native Aqua interface.

External links

X.org
– Official home of the X Window System

from X11R7.0 documentation
XonX projectOroborOSX
{{XWinSys X servers Discontinued software

See also

External links