Date: Sun, 7 Jul 1996 17:57:10 +0200 (MESZ) From: "Hr.Ladavac" <lada@ws2301.gud.siemens.co.at> To: flaq@synwork.com (Mike K.) Cc: questions@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Netscape & FreeBSD Message-ID: <199607071557.AA088435030@ws2301.gud.siemens.co.at> In-Reply-To: <Pine.BSI.3.94.960707103128.5794A-100000@synwork.com> from "Mike K." at Jul 7, 96 10:32:49 am
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In his e-mail Mike K. wrote: > On Sun, 7 Jul 1996, Hr.Ladavac wrote: > > > In his e-mail Mike K. wrote: > > > > > > > > > > Do you need to be running X in order to use Netscape with FreeBSD ? > > > > > > > > > > > The answer is YES > > > > The answer is WRONG :) > > > > /Marino > > > > P.S. They don't even have to have Xlibs installed as Netscape is > > statically linked. As to the X server, it need not run on FreeBSD. :) > > > > > > You mean to tell me that Netscape will work from a command prompt without > running an Xserver? I haven't seen this done. Of course it will work. That is the whole idea behind X11 being a distributed windowing system. Namely, *all* X11 applications take the display address from the environment variable named DISPLAY. Also, all Xt applications honor the -display command line switch. NB, your DISPLAY variable has to point to some working X11 server, but that server can be on another planet, as far as X11 is concerned, as long as some supported transport protocol and channel exists between the two machines. One of these transports is TCP/IP. As a matter of fact, a rather typical situation at bigger companies (e.g. here, at Siemens) is that they have a couple of big multi CPU unix servers and a whole bunch of X-terminals (an x-terminal is basically a diskless machine running an X server). One indeed logs into the unix machine, gets a prompt there, and starts any X11 app which then displays on his X-terminal (completely different machine.) Naturally, if one forgets to set the DISPLAY variable, one receives an error message from the Xlib telling that the Xlib cannot connect to display. Now, if you have a personal workstation you will normally run the X server locally, but you do not have to :) /Marino P.S. Okay, I admit I was picking a nit. One indeed needs to run the X server *somewhere* for netscape to work. But the point is that they do not need to go to the hassle of installing all of X libs and servers to their machine: they can use any of Xservers for Windows, for instance.
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