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cellularmitosis

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2010
187
270
I made this post from a PowerPC Mac :)

You can run a modern browser on a remote Linux box and have its display rendered locally on your PowerPC Mac via the X11 protocol.

(I don't know why trying this never occurred to me before!)

The experience is pretty slow on an iMac G3 600MHz, but if you need compatibility with the modern web, this is one way to achieve it.

On your Mac, start the X11 app and start an xterm.

In that xterm, use xhost to add the remote host to the list of machines which are allowed to connect using X11. For me, that's:

Code:
xhost +opti9020

If you don't run DNS for your local network, that might be an IP address instead:

Code:
xhost +192.168.1.3

Alternatively, you can just allow any host to connect:

Code:
xhost +

The "xhost" command might not be in your $PATH by default. On Tiger, run:

Code:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin

Log into the remote Linux machine, set the DISPLAY env var, then start Firefox or Chromium with the "--display" option. (Here, imacg3 is my Mac, and opti9020 is the Linux box).

Code:
ssh opti9020
export DISPLAY=imacg3:0.0
firefox --display=imacg3:0.0
chromium --display=imacg3:0.0

or use IP addresses (here, 192.168.1.2 is your Mac, 192.168.1.3 is the Linux box):

Code:
ssh 192.168.1.3
export DISPLAY=192.168.1.2:0.0
firefox --display=192.168.1.2:0.0
chromium --display=192.168.1.2:0.0

Chromium seems to be a bit faster than Firefox (I guess it uses the X11 protocol more efficiently), but unfortunately renders everything in blue.

Note: it is also possible to do X11 "forwarding" over SSH, but the encryption overhead makes it much slower than using the raw X11 protocol.
 
Last edited:
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This screenshot is actually a bit of a lie: when I tried to attach a file in Chromium, it locked up, and I had to make the post using Firefox instead.

It does show the strange blue issue with Chromium though.
 

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Last edited:
I made this post from a PowerPC Mac :)

You can run a modern browser on a remote Linux box and have its display rendered locally on your PowerPC Mac via the X11 protocol.

(I don't know why trying this never occurred to me before!)

The experience is pretty slow on an iMac G3 600MHz, but if you need compatibility with the modern web, this is one way to achieve it.

On your Mac, start the X11 app and start an xterm.

In that xterm, use xhost to add the remote host to the list of machines which are allowed to connect using X11. For me, that's:

Code:
xhost +opti9020

If you don't run DNS for your local network, that might be an IP address instead:

Code:
xhost +192.168.1.3

Alternatively, you can just allow any host to connect:

Code:
xhost +

The "xhost" command might not be in your $PATH by default. On Tiger, run:

Code:
export PATH=$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin

Log into the remote Linux machine, set the DISPLAY env var, then start Firefox or Chromium with the "--display" option. (Here, imacg3 is my Mac, and opti9020 is the Linux box).

Code:
ssh opti9020
export DISPLAY=imacg3:0.0
firefox --display=imacg3:0.0
chromium --display=imacg3:0.0

or use IP addresses (here, 192.168.1.2 is your Mac, 192.168.1.3 is the Linux box):

Code:
ssh 192.168.1.3
export DISPLAY=192.168.1.2:0.0
firefox --display=192.168.1.2:0.0
chromium --display=192.168.1.2:0.0

Chromium seems to be a bit faster than Firefox (I guess it uses the X11 protocol more efficiently), but unfortunately renders everything in blue.

Note: it is also possible to do X11 "forwarding" over SSH, but the encryption overhead makes it much slower than using the raw X11 protocol.

Will it work from another Mac (with a newer browser) instead of Linux?
 
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