Oh, well. Just my luck. I'm re-installing OS X 10.2 (just in case I missed it.) What the heck, I can't mess anything up; I can't find programs to run.

It wasn't included with 10.2. 10.3 and later.

HeHeHe-well, I got nothing better to do

do without ice cream bars for a while


Noooooo not the ice cream bars. Find something else.

Okay, if you feel like getting your geek on. The X11 for 10.2.8 was called beta 3 by Apple, make sure you update to 10.2.8. It was based on XFree86 4.2.1. Click here ftp://ftp.xfree86.org/pub/XFree86/4.2.1/ A Finder window will eventually open. Go to binaries and drag FreeBSD to the desktop, it will copy.

Open Terminal.app. Type in sudo {space} sh {space} and drag the Xinstall.sh file to the terminal window, hit Return, enter your password when prompted. {space} = space, don't type {space}.

Here's the page I got it from http://www.xfree86.org/downloads.html

Here's the install notes, http://www.xfree86.org/4.2.1/Install.html I simplified the Terminal instructions above.

The XFree86 4.3.0 version may work, don't know, but I found that Apple's version for 10.2.8 was XFree86 4.2.1.

You may need this http://www.finkproject.org/doc/x11/run-xfree86.php to start X11 after installing. Read 4.2 Mac OS X + XFree86 4.x.y

Reboot the machine after installing XFree86.

Since you don't seem adverse to reinstalling the system you really can't break much.

Well, after spending HOURS last night following the instructions to the letter, and again this morning, I'm still getting the same error: "You need to download the 'extract' (or 'extract.exe') utility and put it in this directory." It's already in that directory, but after several attempts to make it work, I decided to put it in the Utility directory along with Terminal-but it still didn't help.

I guess I'll just have to learn to live with TextEdit and whatever little other "office-like" programs I can find on the "freebie" Mac software sites.

Thanks anyway

(Thankfully 10.3 is on it's way )

Usually, a .exe file is Windows only, isn't it?

I woulda thought so, but not being that familiar with Mac, I wasn't sure. Anyway, I put BOTH of them in the Utility directory with Terminal (just to cover all bases-after all, it said to download "the 'extract' (or 'extract.exe') utility") but it didn't do any good.

I got that too, I'll look into it in the next day or so, busy today and tomorrow.

No, welcome to the dirty underbelly of Unix.