5 ms·

Wow. The previous release was in 2016, so I was sure that XQuartz was dead for good. Nice to be pleasantly surprised! I occasionally use XQuartz to run graphic

Wow. The previous release was in 2016, so I was sure that XQuartz was dead for good. Nice to be pleasantly surprised! I occasionally use XQuartz to run graphical programs over SSH using X forwarding, although I’ve mostly moved on to other approaches due to a combination of: 1. Bad support for HiDPI displays (theoretically fixable in XQuartz - curious if they will tackle it now). 2. Annoyingly high input and redisplay latency (probably not fixable, just an inherent property of the very chatty X protocol). Still nice to have the option.

jcelerier 6y ago
hm, I'm using X11 forwarding when I'm on my mac box to control my music player and there is pretty much no latency (and text isn't a blurry mess like rdp / vnc but crisp and sharp). I'm on a gigabit network though.
- cbm-vic-20 6y ago
  X11 was designed at a time when local networks carried only a few megabits per second. But apps back then didn't depend on sending lots of bitmaps over the wire, just mostly drawing primitives.
- mleo 6y ago
  Local network of VPN? My first attempt at running IntelliJ across VPN last year was using XQuartz and it worked, but latency was terrible and when changing connectivity it would die. Using VNC allowed the process to keep running in the server session over periods of weeks.
- tom_ 6y ago
  Depends on the program! - I've never minded using Emacs that way, even just over wifi, but a lot of more modern stuff is basically unusable. (I assume these programs draw everything to a local buffer, and then copy that to the screen. Probably fine locally, and I'm sure you do get more control, but it's a lot of data to go over a network!)
  - jcelerier 6y ago
    in my case it's Strawberry which is a modern Qt 5 app. I also tried retroarch that way and it works surprisingly well.
coldtea 6y ago
>The previous release was in 2016, so I was sure that XQuartz was dead for good. Why though? It's not like the XWindows protocol changes that much (or at all). Having to do a new release for a new architecture like Apple Sillicon, sure, but that's another thing.
- colejohnson66 6y ago
  Not sure how XQuartz works, but Apple does like to deprecate APIs when a new one comes out. So if XQuartz relied on any deprecated ones, that would be an issue when they get removed.
zymhan 6y ago
Indeed, I was amazed when I installed it today and it popped up the Beta update dialog when I launched it. Happy to see it's not abandoned.
jd3 6y ago
> Annoyingly high input and redisplay latency (probably not fixable, just an inherent property of the very chatty X protocol). Unless there's a program specific to your environment that is causing this, I would say that this is partially fixable. There's some kind of bug/weird implementation detail in the macOS vsync driver that causes massive lag in XQuartz.app and macports' X11.app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaPh4tc0_B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaPh4tc0_B0 If you use XQuartz regularly, I would highly recommend you install Quartz Debug.app so you can disable vsync before you hop into X. https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_12/Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_12.dmg https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Additio...

jcelerier 6y ago

hm, I'm using X11 forwarding when I'm on my mac box to control my music player and there is pretty much no latency (and text isn't a blurry mess like rdp / vnc but crisp and sharp). I'm on a gigabit network though.

cbm-vic-20 6y ago
X11 was designed at a time when local networks carried only a few megabits per second. But apps back then didn't depend on sending lots of bitmaps over the wire, just mostly drawing primitives.
mleo 6y ago
Local network of VPN? My first attempt at running IntelliJ across VPN last year was using XQuartz and it worked, but latency was terrible and when changing connectivity it would die. Using VNC allowed the process to keep running in the server session over periods of weeks.
tom_ 6y ago
Depends on the program! - I've never minded using Emacs that way, even just over wifi, but a lot of more modern stuff is basically unusable. (I assume these programs draw everything to a local buffer, and then copy that to the screen. Probably fine locally, and I'm sure you do get more control, but it's a lot of data to go over a network!)
- jcelerier 6y ago
  in my case it's Strawberry which is a modern Qt 5 app. I also tried retroarch that way and it works surprisingly well.

coldtea 6y ago

>The previous release was in 2016, so I was sure that XQuartz was dead for good. Why though? It's not like the XWindows protocol changes that much (or at all). Having to do a new release for a new architecture like Apple Sillicon, sure, but that's another thing.

colejohnson66 6y ago
Not sure how XQuartz works, but Apple does like to deprecate APIs when a new one comes out. So if XQuartz relied on any deprecated ones, that would be an issue when they get removed.

zymhan 6y ago

Indeed, I was amazed when I installed it today and it popped up the Beta update dialog when I launched it. Happy to see it's not abandoned.

jd3 6y ago

> Annoyingly high input and redisplay latency (probably not fixable, just an inherent property of the very chatty X protocol). Unless there's a program specific to your environment that is causing this, I would say that this is partially fixable. There's some kind of bug/weird implementation detail in the macOS vsync driver that causes massive lag in XQuartz.app and macports' X11.app. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaPh4tc0_B0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IaPh4tc0_B0 If you use XQuartz regularly, I would highly recommend you install Quartz Debug.app so you can disable vsync before you hop into X. https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_12/Additional_Tools_for_Xcode_12.dmg https://download.developer.apple.com/Developer_Tools/Additio...