FreeBSD-13.1 installing mate-base does not install xorg

byrnejb

byrnejb

When I started to install mate-base on a new system I noticed that this package does not install xorg. Is xorg not needed to run the mate desktop?
 
Mate doesn't depend on the full Xorg installation, only on certain libraries. So it doesn't pull in everything you need to run X. That's why you have to install x11/xorg separately. You also have to make sure that X works.

docs.freebsd.org

Chapter 5. The X Window System

This chapter describes how to install and configure Xorg on FreeBSD, which provides the open source X Window System used to provide a graphical environment
docs.freebsd.org docs.freebsd.org
 
Besides Xorg X-11, what other windowing systems can mate use to create a graphical desktop environment on FreeBSD?
 
I will recast the question: Under what circumstance or for what purpose would one install mate and not install X11?
 
byrnejb said:
Under what circumstance or for what purpose would one install mate and not install X11?
Click to expand...
Remote X connection. That doesn't require a fully functional xorg-server on that host.

Nothing in MATE depends on a full Xorg installation. The various parts of Mate do have a dependency on several xorg libraries, so that's the only thing it actually depends on.
 
It's not that uncommon. I use a jail on my server as a remote desktop (like e.g. Windows terminal server, but FreeBSD with KDE instead). Of course it doesn't have a local X server installed, only Xvnc (a virtual X server accessible with VNC).

Any X client with a hard dependency on an X server would be broken.
 
It's better that way. That way, when something needs to be upgraded, it doesn't call for everything to be uninstalled and reinstalled. Some ways dependencies have been set up is complex, that pkg will try to uninstall and reinstall several times. A message saying that it may need xorg is better.
 
I think some clarification may be required. You may think "Mate" is one entity. A so-called "desktop environment". It's not. It's a collection of various applications and components, including a window manager, that makes up what "Mate" is. Each of those components are 'clients' from the perspective of Xorg. It's the Xorg server that actually shows you the screen. The good ol' X11 protocol was made so it was possible for the application (the X client) to run on an entirely different machine from where the monitor and screen (the X server) actually was.

Nowadays it's obviously more common to have your application and (graphical) screen on the same computer. So this whole "remote" thing of X11 kind of gets in the way. That's the 'problem' Wayland, for example, tries to solve.
 
jmos said:
As X11 has network capabilities: None X11 application should have a dependency on X11 - you can use another computers X Window System to display it. If you want X11, you always have to install it
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What I mean is that mate depends at X11 (or another x implementation), not meant as a build dependency, but to be usefull. If X is running on the local machine or remote is not important. It is still X
 
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