Josh wrote: > Hi, > > I recently switched over to Mac OSX from Windows, and I wanted to know > more about Fink. When Fink is installed on my Mac, what happens? Is it a > background program that runs all the time, or is it like an application > that I can open and quit at my disgression? Also, I was led to the page > mainly through one program, Valknut. Hoping to switch seemlessly from > DC++ to a Mac-able program, I can only get Valknut through Fink? If so > (and I'm assuming that Valknut is a Linux program, and that Fink will > automatically compile it/port it for me onto Mac), will I need to run > Fink everytime I want to use Valknut? Can I uninstall Fink after I have > installed Valknut? Thanks. > > Josh
Fink is a set of tools that lets you manage the installation of programs (packages in the Fink lingo). Some packages are Mac specific programs, some are multi platform, some were originally Linux specific but have been ported over by people in the Fink project. You can see the list of packages available at <http://pdb.finkproject.org/pdb/>. Fink does not run in the background but only when you call it to install/remove a package. The package(s) that you install can sometimes be an always running program (like say the apache web server), but most are normal programs (like games, text editors, drawing programs, etc). Fink can be run either from the command line (type 'man fink' in Terminal.app for all it's options) or with a graphical front end called Fink Commander that then runs the necessary commands in the background. Both do the same thing, just different ways. (Most) everything that Fink installs goes into the folder /sw on your hard drive (unless you changed the default). If you ever want to remove Fink (and everything else it installed), just remove that folder and that's it. One of the FAQs on the Fink homepage go through all the details on how to do it completely. This will, however, remove all the packages that were installed with Fink, not just the Fink tools. As far as Valknut is concerned (I'm the Valknut maintainer for the Fink project), you can install Valknut using Fink which then takes care of downloading, building and installing all the supporting libraries that Valknut requires. This is as easy as installing the package valknut-x11 or valknut-aqua (-aqua looks more Mac like, -x11 looks more linux/unixish but the interface has some less bugs). The underlying functionality is the same. You can install both packages to test which you you like more (just don't run them at the same time!) However, I do have precompiled binaries of Valknut available at <http://www.snaggledworks.com/software/valknut/>, although none are currently available for Intel Macs (which is what I'm guessing you probably have), so if you have an Intel Mac, you currently need to use Fink to install Valknut (which does know how to build on Intel Macs). If you install Valknut via Fink, you cannot remove Fink and expect Valknut (or whatever other package you install with it) to continue functioning because you'll invariably remove something that they require. Also, the aggregate size of the Fink tools is small compared to even a small program that Fink can install, so not much hard drive space is saved if you could just delete the Fink tools. And once a package is installed, you don't use the Fink tools to actually run the program, only to (un)install it. The programs themselves are run on their own as if you had manually done the installation yourself. Hanspeter ------------------------------------------------------------------------- This SF.net email is sponsored by: Splunk Inc. Still grepping through log files to find problems? Stop. Now Search log events and configuration files using AJAX and a browser. Download your FREE copy of Splunk now >> http://get.splunk.com/ _______________________________________________ Fink-beginners mailing list [email protected] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-beginners
