On Sunday 10 August 2003 07:26, David wrote: David and fink-users... > I am responsible for the currently running Logo Contest > (http://fink.sf.net/logo.php) and hopefully I will able to arrange > other such special "things". Currently I am just a curious and I would > like to hear about the experience that our Users have with Fink. I > really do not wish to intrude, but as I am coming from the marketing > sector I am of course curious. I would really love to hear how you feel > about Fink, what it did for you and if it influenced the way you use > your Macintosh today.
This is my story, my opinion, and your mileage may vary... but when the Mac was pre-OS X, I swore I wouldn't use it. I used DOS/Windows, and later Windows, to do things that I needed to do. It had something close to preemptive multitasking in Windows NT (and some would argue Windows 9x), something MacOS lacked. As later releases of Windows and Windows NT hit the shelves, though, the quirks started to get to me. Unexplained crashes, the quirky behavior with too much uptime...started to bug me. Eventually I started playing with Linux. The UNIX philosophy of OS design had it's own quirks, but it suited me rather well. I trusted it to keep running despite the workload I threw at it, and when something DID go wrong, 99.9 percent of the time it was my fault, not a problem that arose because the system was turned on too long or someone was logged in too long or the moon was full that night. On top of that, you had good software whose performance was enough to raise the bar for commercial vendors...available for free! It was flexible and rock solid...I've managed to sneak Linux (and FreeBSD) into the schools I worked in as well as the small ISP I worked for, and started using it as my home workstation's OS of choice. When OS X came out, I followed the reviews, and was impressed with the "UNIX-like" Darwin core. It had all the buzzwords that I could want in the OS (preemptive multitasking, memory protection, etc.) and in addition it had a uniform interface and a company behind it that seemed to balance the desire for profit (understandably, of course) with some sense of ethics and ability to leverage an open attitude on software source...they vigorously protected their key assets (the look and feel) while allowing those with a stronger geekside to their personality to play with the source to the other components of the OS...Darwin. Still...I didn't really have the cash to purchase a Mac just to play with it and see if I liked it. My employer said they would purchase a laptop for me...they seemed to prefer a Windows one, but said if I could accomplish my job tasks with a Mac, they would give blessing for funding an iBook. But additional software purchases...would it work in my job environment where it's all Windows XP this and Windows 2000 that? I was still hesitant until an Apple rep let me use an iBook for a two week trial. I scavenged the Internet a short time and ran into the Fink project. Fantastic! It had the software that was familiar from my time in front of Linux and FreeBSD...some differences here and there, but similar enough to make an easy transition. Minicom to talk to the Cisco serial equipment...Ethereal to troubleshoot some network problems...the list went on. I liked OS X; I really liked the improved stability and UNIX-like core, the uniform interface, and the company marketing it didn't seem to be trying to limit their customer's choice and rights in ways another OS company is (perhaps it is just the cynic in me, though...). What clinched my switch, however, was Fink. I had all my utilities I was familiar with as well as the features I had come to love. Fink gave a painless way to install the network utilities and communication tools that help me get the job done, without the headaches I've run into with Windows in the workplace. How did fink affect how I use a Mac today? If it weren't for Fink, I wouldn't be using a Mac today. I'd say that's a significant influence on how I use it. Is Fink perfect? No. While I have had a lot of exposure to Linux and that helped a great deal, I wasn't a programmer, and I'm not someone who can automatically rattle off the steps to set up your own combination SMTP/POP/Web server with Spamassassin without looking things up. Fink has some quirks of it's own, especially since the majority of my Linux exposure was from a Red Hat or SuSE based distro, not Debian. Fink might benefit from documentation that was a little more clear on some issues..such as the "best" way to do updates. Do I need to do a separate source selfupdate-cvs and binary update to keep things up to date if I have some binary and some source installed packages? Or will selfupdate-cvs handle updating everything for me? I saw someone asking if it's possible to go from cvs updates back to non-cvs...the answer was no, I believe, but it would be convenient to have a guide available that would clearly spell it out. There's some odd errors I've run into, such as not being able to install mplayer because during the source install I see an error about not being able to overwrite a library file, despite being authenticated via sudo. To be fair, I haven't taken the time yet to google for an answer to that one yet. Overall I've had few problems with Fink, and the absolute best part for me is that if it did get totally FUBAR'ed, I know that I could, if I had to, delete the /sw directory and start all over again. It would be a pain, it would take some time, but it could be done without destroying my OS X installation. Sometimes that peace of mind is reassurance enough to allow for experimentation. The contributors, maintainers, and everyone behind to the scenes of the Fink project are owed a great debt of gratitude for their work. They may have helped contribute to more "Switchers" than Apple may ever know. And of course, the users of Fink who help guide new users with their questions on mailing lists like this one are owed gratitude as well...without them, new users like me would have been lost in trying to get up to speed with using what is possibly the best tool on the OS X platform ;-) Hope this isn't too long or draws too much flak for being CC'd to the list, but it was, I hoped, a convenient way to answer both a request from the list from David and a way to say think you to those on the fink-users list who had helped me out with my questions posted to the list so far. Thank you -Bart -- ********************************************************************** Microsoft: What trolls think lives under their beds... 8:00am up 6 days, 15:16, 2 users, load average: 0.07, 0.03, 0.01 I heard Microsoft improved the time it takes to reboot Windows XP. I wonder why this is a touted feature?...hmm... ********************************************************************** ------------------------------------------------------- This SF.Net email sponsored by: Free pre-built ASP.NET sites including Data Reports, E-commerce, Portals, and Forums are available now. Download today and enter to win an XBOX or Visual Studio .NET. http://aspnet.click-url.com/go/psa00100003ave/direct;at.aspnet_072303_01/01 _______________________________________________ Fink-users mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/fink-users
