Apple: In praise of XQuartz

As with many things Apple, The Jobs and crew like to bless a lot of common projects before distributing versions on the Mac. Recently, however, I came across some problems with the Apple distribution of X11 (an optional component on the OS disk) on 10.5.4. When launched, the App would appear in the dock, then disappear, then reappear again a few times. Checking the running processes, it started then entered a zombie state almost immediately-- before any logs get written.

The first system was a fairly modern MacBook Pro, but had a user profile that was migrated from a PPC Powerbook. Thinking this may be the problem, I uninstalled and then reinstalled X11 to no avail from the OS disk. I stepped through all kinds of diagnosis, running updates, clearing caches, checking all the config and shell profile files with no luck. I finally stumbled on a suggestion to try the XQuartz version of X11. Apple uses the XQuartz project as a basis for building their X11 distribution, but apparently don't do a good job all the time. The XQuartz version dropped right in and works great. The only downdside was that it requires a logoff.

The problem occurred the very next day for me on a PPC Mac running 10.5.4, so the problem may be something in the OS or configs we use. It doesn't appear to be platform-based. The same fix worked like a charm.

As some further notes, Apple may overwrite X11 with their point-releases of their OS, so reinstallation may be necessary at a later date. The X11 version, however, was last changed at 10.5.2, and was unchanged with the 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 releases.