Free software and the Mac

[Thomas Milne]

On Wed, Apr 24, 2013 at 12:01 AM, Stewart C. Russell <scruss-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org>wrote:

> 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.
>

Ha, that looks really cool. Thanks for the tip :-)


>
> 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.
>

Got that, thanks!


>
> 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).
>

I will still use Linux for myself, this is more of a 'family' computer. I
wanted my kids to have access to something really simple and powerful that
can run anything they are likely to need, and isn't Windows. With Crossover
there is almost nothing that is 'incompatible'. I can't believe Crossover
Mac is like $60 though! Jeez...



>
> cheers,
>  Stewart
>
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-- 
Thomas Milne
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