A small collection of tools for the X Window System, some more and some less
obscure. For cool terminal tools, see Kristof Kovacs’
Cool, but obscure Unix tools.
All applications have been tested on FreeBSD but should run on other Unix-like
operating systems as well.

3D Pong

3D Pong
is three-dimensional version of the first arcade game, “Pong”, for the X Window
System.

# pkg install games/3dpong

To play against the computer, run:

$ 3dpong :0 --computer --sound

Angband

A roguelike game derived from Moria, based loosely on the books of
J. R. R. Tolkien. The ultimate aim of the game is to advance in
skill and strength, collecting better and more powerful magical items until you
are ready to face the Master of the dungeon: Morgoth himself! Start the
X11 mode with angband -mx11.

# pkg install games/angband

AppRes

Prints the resources seen by an application. It can be used to determine
which resources a particular program will load.

# pkg install x11/appres

ASClock

AfterStep clock with some language extensions.

# pkg install x11-clocks/asclock

Battalion

Battalion is a 3D game from 1994, originally written for the Silicon Graphics
Indy UNIX workstation. The player controls a monster to blow up a city. The
author dedicated a
website to the
game.

Depending on the perspective, the controls are a little awkward. You may
want to change the camera with key 1, 2,
3, or 4. Use the mouse to rotate and to move
forward/backward. The arrow keys only work if the mouse cursor is placed in the
center of the screen. Shoot with the left control key or the left mouse button,
and tilt the head with A and Z to target helicopters
and jets. The camera can be rotated with I, J,
K, and L. Alter the rendering details with
D. Press G to grab the mouse cursor and
P to pause the game.

I made a quick & dirty
FreeBSD port based on the Linux
version (no sound). Build and run Battalion with:

$ tar xfvz battalion1.4b-freebsd.tar.gz
$ cd battalion1.4b-freebsd/
$ gmake battalion CC=gcc
$ ./battalion

Free42

Simulation of the HP-42S scientific calculator and HP-82240 printer.

# pkg install misc/free42

FSV2

A 3D filesystem visualiser, like
fsn for SGI
IRIX. Prone to crashing (perhaps, UTF-8 issues).

# pkg install x11-fm/fsv2

GLXGears

A simple OpenGL tool for testing your graphics adapter.

# pkg install graphics/mesa-demos

GMixer

Audio mixer for X11, based on now deprecated GTK+ 1.2.

# pkg install audio/gmixer

GVIM

Improved version of the vi editor. The graphical front-end can be compiled
with either X11, Motif, Xaw, or GTK+ 2/3.

# pkg install editors/vim

HP-15C

Emulator of the HP-15C programmable calculator, written in Tcl/Tk.
The source-code is available on the
official website.

$ unzip HP-15C_4.1.00_Source.zip
$ wish8.6 ./HP-15C.tcl

Ico

Displays wire-framed rotating polyhedrons.

# pkg install x11/ico

Mgdiff

Motif-based front-end to the Unix diff command. The appearance of
mgdiff is based upon a program called gdiff, which
runs only on Silicon Graphics workstations and for which source code is not
provided.

# pkg install textproc/mgdiff

MxIco

Maho’s eXtended Ico is a simple demo for X, rotating polyhedra
in the window. See
this table
for reference and start MxIco with, for example,
mxico -sleep 1 -obj n65.

# pkg install x11/mxico

Micropolis

Open-source version of the famous computer game SimCity. Available on
GitHub.

$ git clone https://github.com/interkosmos/micropolis

NEdit

X11/Motif GUI text editor for programs and plain text files.

# pkg install editors/nedit

Plan

Plan is a schedule planner based on X/Motif.

# pkg install deskutils/plan

Sunclock

A fancy clock for the X Window system, providing local time (legal time and
solar time), sunrise, sunset and various geographical data through a point and
click interface.

# pkg install astro/sunclock

Ted

A simple RTF editor for X11. Can either be compiled with Motif or GTK+ 2. The
binary starts with an upper-case letter (Ted). Prone to
crashing.

# pkg install editors/ted

TiEmu

Emulator for Texas Instruments TI-89/TI-92 (Plus)/Voyage 200 graphical
calculators. ROM files not included. TIGCC is a compatible C compiler, based on
GCC, and available as a FreeBSD port as well.

# pkg install emulators/tiemu3

WMY2K

Dock app that simply counts down the days, hours, minutes, and seconds left
until 00:00 January 1, 2000.

$ fetch http://www.cs.mun.ca/~gstarkes/wmaker/dockapps/files/wmy2k-2.0beta1.tar.gz
$ tar xfvz wmy2k-2.0beta1.tar.gz
$ cd wmy2k-2.0beta1/
$ make CC=gcc
$ ./wmy2k

WordNet

WordNet is a lexical reference system that combines aspects of
dictionaries and thesauri with psycholinguistic theories of human lexical
memory. It is developed by the Cognitive Science Laboratory at Princeton
University.

The graphical WordNet browser wnb depends on Tcl/Tk:

# pkg install x11-toolkits/tk86 textproc/wordnet

X026

X026 is an keypunch emulator, simulating the
IBM 026.
Perfect for writing FORTRAN code on Hollerith punch cards and getting a clearer
picture of how laborious data input back then was. The default character set is
BCD-H.

# pkg install deskutils/x026

X48

Emulator of the HP 48GX graphing calculator. ROM image is included.

# pkg install emulators/x48

XAbacus

Simply an abacus for the X Window System.

# pkg install games/xabacus

XAntfarm

Ant hill simulation on the X11 root window.

# pkg install x11/xantfarm

XArchiver

XArchiver is a GTK+ 2 front-end to various archiving tools (tar,
zip, 7z, …).

# pkg install archivers/xarchiver

XASCII

XASCII displays the ASCII table in hex, decimal, and octal.

# pkg install x11/xascii

XBiff

XBiff shows a small mailbox with its flag raised when new mail arrives in
your inbox. It simply monitors the size of a given file. For instance, the
cache of the Sylpheed e-mail client can be watched with:

$ xbiff -file $HOME/.sylpheed-2.0/imapcache//
/INBOX/.sylpheed_cache

You can change the pixmap in ~/.Xdefaults:

xbiff*flip: false
xbiff*fullPixmap: mailfull
xbiff*emptyPixmap: mailempty
xbiff*fullPixmapMask: mailfullmsk
xbiff*emptyPixmapMask: mailemptymsk
xbiff*shapeWindow: true

Install it with:

# pkg install x11/xbiff

XBill

XBill is an arcade game from 1994 in
which the player has to prevent an evil computer hacker named
“Bill” from installing a popular operating system on
various machines. The OS can spread over networks and purges existing systems
(BSD, Solaris, SGI IRIX, …). A contemporary modification of the game is known as
XLennart.

# pkg install games/xbill

XBoard

XBoard is a graphical front-end for chess engines like GNU Chess. Start it
with xboard -fcp 'gnuchess --xboard'.

# pkg install games/xboard

XCalc

A simple and clean scientific calculator for X11. Additional colour styles
imitating the Texas Instruments TI-30 and the Hewlett-Packard 10C are listed in
the file /usr/local/share/X11/app-defaults/XCalc-color. Just copy
one of the styles into your ~/.Xdefaults.

# pkg install x11/xcalc

XCalendar

A calendar with an integrated notebook.

# pkg install deskutils/xcalendar

XCHM

Microsoft Windows
help file
viewer for Unix.

# pkg install deskutils/xchm

XChomp

Clone of the famous arcade game Pac-Man for X. See also the
unofficial homepage.

# pkg install games/xchomp

XClipboard

A client for clipboard management in X.

# pkg install x11/xclipboard

XClock

An analog and digital clock for X.

# pkg install x11-clocks/xclock

XClock/Cat Clock

A Motif-based variant of MIT xclock from 1990 that features a
“cat” mode. Available on GitHub.

# git clone https://github.com/BarkyTheDog/catclock

XColorSel

Grabs the colours of X windows.

# pkg install x11/xcolorsel

XConsole

XConsole shows system console messages.

# pkg install x11/xconsole

XCrySDen

XCrySDen is a crystalline and molecular structure visualisation program
aiming at display of isosurfaces and contours, which can be superimposed on
crystalline structures and interactively rotated and manipulated.

# pkg install science/xcrysden

XDiary

XDiary will help you keep track of your meetings, appointments and plan your time.

# pkg install deskutils/xmdiary

XDigger

Boulderdash-like game for the X Window System. Originally written for the
East-German KC 85/3 and KC 85/4 computers in 1988 (see also the author’s
website). Unfortunately, the game
suffers from a major bug that prevents the rocks from falling.

# pkg install games/xdigger

XEarth

Renders the earth in 3D on the root window, making itself an animated
backdrop. To show it inside a window, run:

$ xearth -geometry 800x600 -shade -nolabel -wait 1 -timewarp 50 -noroot -twopix

Similiar tools are XWorld,
XGlobe and