Free software and the Mac

[Stewart C. Russell]

On 13-04-23 07:36 PM, Thomas Milne wrote:
> 
> I was happy to see a lot of free software is available for Mac same as
> on Linux, especially Transmission and Gimp. I saw that there are even
> package managers for Mac to install these apps, namely Fink and MacPorts.
> 
> Anyone have any experience with these on Mountain Lion? I am still so
> new with the Mac I suppose I have a greater fear of making a mess of it.

Fink is a little old; my last experience was that it was like running a
slightly stale Debian Stable. What was there, worked, though.

MacPorts requires you to build everything from source and do large-scale
source tree syncs. That might float your boat. It sank mine.

‘Teh nu h0tne5s’ is brew; http://brew.sh/. While it's source based, too,
it has some very up to date packages and a simple build and dependency
system, which mostly works. It will cause most folks here screaming
habdabs as it expects you to make all of /usr/local world-writeable.

If you need to build stuff, register as an Apple developer, then
download the (colossal) XCode dev system. It includes a full GCC command
line build system. Pretty much anything (up to a point ...) that uses
autoconf or traditional Makefiles will just build. Look for it in the
App Store.

Curiously enough, in the last couple of weeks, I've switched back to
Linux after using Macs as my primary desktops since 2005 ... Very little
pain so far, except for iPhone support (grumble).

cheers,
 Stewart

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