🚀 go-pugleaf

henrich@crh.cl.msu.edu (Charles Henrich) writes:
>
>duca@binah.cc.brandeis.edu (Karen Duca, a.k.a. Rocky) writes:
>
>>My group is considering getting a NeXT as a client machine for an RS/6000.
>>Seeing as the RS has been such a "delight" to use since we got it several
>>months ago, I want to make sure that this mating is compatible before we
>>go ahead.  Any suggestions from people who are working with these two
>>machines now?  What software is the best for running X-Windows on the NeXT?
>
>
>The next is the *worse* machine in the world to do Xwindows on.  (IMHO).
>Your better off going with something like the Sun ELC, or Sun Classic.  The    
>reasons for NeXT doing a bad job are fairly straightforward, first of all 
>the mouse is only two buttons, secondly the resolution of a NeXT is much 
>less than a Sun doing X.
>
>My experiences are with the PD X implementation and Co-Xist
>

I strongly disagree with the answer given by Charles above. IMHO this info
is outdated. Anyway, the real information requested regards the _performance_
and _compatibility_ of X on a NeXT.

I recently took advantage of the demo offering for Cub'X Windows on the NeXT,
and was pleasanlty surprised at both the speed of display and interoperation
with other X machines (we use SGIs as our main servers). Cub'X is plently fast
(comparable with our 486s with ISA accelerators) and has had no problem with
8-bit pseudo colormaps with our main application (Patran). As far as the third
mouse button, Cub'X allows the use of the ALT key as a modifier to get the
third mouse button -- which I think works fine. I use a 25 MHz Colorstation
with 32 MB of RAM. I don't understand the above comment on resolution --
unless 1280x1024 is what Charles is used to. I really think the days of
unacceptable, even pathetic, X performance on the NeXT are over.

Check out Cub'X and/or the new, speedier Co-Xist 3.0. If you like the NeXT
for things other than just X, then I think the NeXT will work fine for most
things. CPU performance aside (that's a rather important aside I admit) the
NeXT works very acceptably as an X-terminal, IMHO. Of course, if you desire
to customize your X environment, be prepared to delve deeply into several
X configurations files as usual...

Michael McCulloch
Huntsville, AL