Series: XFree86OS/2 Author: Lyn St George Homepage: zolotek.net Last revision: 30.11.2001

+ Installation of Xfree86OS/2 + Installation - Christian Hennecke + Why use XFree86OS/2? + Tips and Requirements + The Gimp + Enlightenment + Gnome, ICE, Gimp, tools

There are two main reasons for using XFree86OS/2 - the first is so that you can use some killer app that would not otherwise be available, and the second is so that you can run a remote machine's X desktop on your local machine.

A very good example of a killer app which would otherwise be lost to you is the Gimp. This is now up to version 1.2.1, and available at UnixOS2.org by ftp. Others are ImageMagick (similar to the Gimp), ElectricEyes (similar to PMView, but it lets you set an image as the background with one-click), xPaint - just to mention apps in the graphics field.

The Gimp is an extremely useable and open-source graphics package, with its home at Gimp.org. Like most GNU or Linux based apps, it is very difficult to port the GUI stuff directly to OS/2, but quite feasible to do so to XFree86OS/2. Gnome, Enlightenment, Window Maker and xWarpzilla are some other "heavy apps" that run on XFree86OS/2.

Here is a screen-shot of the Gimp running on a basic setup of XFree86OS/2. This is using all the default settings from the initial installation, except that it uses the Ice window manager instead of TWM. I personally like Ice because it uses native OS/2 style window controls and mouse-bindings, rather than Wind* style. Incidentally, this screen-shot was taken by the Gimp.

Other window managers - Enlightenment, Window Maker - look very pretty (if you like that sort of thing - though I do admit that they're good for impressing sceptics) but use Wind* style controls and give you no more functionality than Icewm.

The background image is the default, and can of course be changed to virtually anything you might like.

The two images are made from built-in scripts ("Script-fu"), which can generate all sorts of complicated results. You can also write your own scripts if you have the inclination, and produce a range of uniform and consistent image sets for your web site or other publication. See gimp.org for manuals and other info on scripts etc.

Note that the font in the top image is not one of those which come by default with XFree86OS/2. This is a standard true-type font, and to run it you need to install a true-type font server. You'll find one at UnixOS2.org as xfsttos2.zip, and if it doesn't have a tt.cmd included then grab this one. What this does is let you run the font server as a standalone daemon rather than having to run it through inetd. You need to put the line ffst 7103/tcp # TrueType X fontserver into %etc%\services, and then copy all your true-type fonts into \XFree86\lib\X11\fonts\truetype. In theory you're supposed to include a fonts.scale in the truetype directory, looking something like this, but you'll notice that this is actually a type1 fonts.scale - apparently it works without it. If you do find that you need to include one, then each entry is found by opening the relevant font in a text editor and finding the values at the beginning of the file.

Some people have compared the Gimp to PhotoShop, though I would be a little more cautious than to go that far. It is, however, extremely versatile and useful, and this one app alone is sufficient reason to install XFree86OS/2.

So, is it a big problem to install? The short answer is no. The longer answer is still no, but with the caveat that you need to RTFM. In particular, you need to know your monitor's refresh rates before you start. You'll get these from the handbook. I wanted to move my installation from one drive to another a couple of days ago, so rather than just moving it I re-installed from scratch so as to remind myself how little trouble it was. And it was really no trouble at all, even though I still remember my "knees knocking" the first time. It seems that most people are overly cautious about installing XFree86OS/2, from a fear of blowing the whole system up. The only thing I found to be a problem originally was what seemed to be a clash with Apache - in fact my 'threads' statement in config.sys was too low, and raising this to 2047 on Holger Veit's advice was the only thing on my system affected by the installation.

Here's another screen-shot, this time running Enlightenment as the window manager instead of Icewm, along with the GTKsee desktop/file manager, Gedit text editor, ElectricEyes, ImageMagick with a boat image opened, xWarpzilla running a page off Apache on OS/2 behind XFree86, gPhoto (a digital camera transfer utility and image manipulator), and the Gimp control panel again. You can't see the background, but it can be set to any of a large number of colours or graphics.

Here is Christoph Vogelbusch's page of Enlightenment screen shots - 9 thumbnails of 6 or 7 Kb, clickable to full screen shots of ca. 100 to 300 Kb.

It's far too crowded for real use, but then in real life you would use the virtual desktops feature and have several desktops, each with no clutter. And if you wanted to use Enlightenment as your permanent window manager, then you could choose from any number of different themes to change its appearance.