iBook THIS THREAD MUST DIE NOW

[Gerald Davies]

this is a new thread though - you changed the subject ;-)


On Tue, 4 Jan 2005 14:53:11 -0000 (GMT), Jon Mercer
<jon.mercer at achean.com> wrote:
> 
> >> collection. Unlike Mac, where to run OOo you need to set up X11 to run.
> >
> > Umm, not sure what OOo is either - am going to make an educated guess
> > that it's OpenOffice.org though ? [I googled :-)]
> 
> Yeah, I'm just a lazy typist.
> >
> >> Fink is a toolchain comprised mainly of GNU apps for Mac, so if you want
> >> something like Gimp or Scribus you need it AFAIK.
> >
> > Are you sure that your basic problem with OSX isn't simply that you are
> > trying to turn it into an X11 workstation running OpenSource apps ? Thats
> > bound to be difficult and extremely painful - any time to try and shoehorn
> > stuff into a place it wasn't designed for then you are going to get a bad
> > impression of it.
> 
> Not entirely; my hope was that being BSD based it would manage the FOSS
> apps without requiring too much in the way of shoehorning. It doesn't,
> which is a shame but not a fatal flaw for what my parents _mostly_ use it
> for.
> >
> > I think you'll find that if you use it as a Mac and run Mac stuff then
> > you will have a far easier life and like it a lot more than if you try and
> > turn it into FreeBSD.
> 
> Yes, but that requires money - perpetually in short supply. If money was
> no issue they'd probably be running all MS apps on Windows, protected by
> proprietory stateful firewalls, et al.
> >
> > I bought my powerbook as a nice tool to wirelessly browse the web, use ssh
> > and write code (in 'vi', in a terminal window). It does an excellent
> > job at all three of those, and works much better as a laptop than the
> > Windows machine I had to get my girlfriend. I'd recommend it to anyone
> > with normal web/email requirements. However, if someone said they wanted
> > to run
> > loads of Open Source X11 apps then I'd probably recomend that they get
> > an Open Source X11 based operating system instead oddly enough...
> 
> I would also recommend that after playing with OS X. That's not a
> criticism of OS X BTW, just an observation.
> 
> In terms of coding, surely you can get Eclipse working on OS X if you
> wanted it (not saying you do)?
> >
> > -bat.
> >
> > PS: If it's any comfort, the amount of stress I have to go through to run
> >     open source apps designed for OSX/Cocoa on FreeBSD/X11 is probably
> >     far more unpleasent than this 'fink' thing you hate so much. :-)
> 
> I don't hate Fink, I'm plenty familiar with that sort of thing from
> running Cygwin. Although there do seem to be a few problems with it
> judging by what I read in the mailing list forums. The issue is that it
> has to be there at all. As said above, what I want is a simple secure OS
> for my parents to run that allows some FOSS apps to be added in. That
> doesn't quite seem to be what OS X is.
> 
> We're really just agreeing on most of this stuff. I'm just saying I want
> an all singing all dancing no admin workstation for my parents to use
> without hassling me. You're more realistically saying that's not what it
> is.
> >
> 
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> | Jon Mercer                               jon.mercer at achean.com |
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