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And what application is that?

An editor (and yes, I'm being elusive because you're rubbing me the wrong way).

Is it something used by a large number of Mac users?

A good chunk of users use it, yes.

If so, can you tell me: why did your app fail, when most other *nix apps can be compiled and run on the Mac?

This is a missleading question, most other *nix applications require modifications to work properly under OS X while they work fine on other Unix and Linux systems, see the extensive modifications done in darwin ports and mac ports. In fact, you will find some of the ported tools even ran into the exact same problem I mentioned. Yet even still, there are issues even now with the software packages due to the lack of POSIX compliance.

What did they do that you did not?

They didn't bite on Slashdot.

There's a ton of Open-Source app distribution systems aside from Apple's nice GUI one.

Fink
DarwinPorts
The list goes further on...

There's a fair amount of confusion as to the various ports systems on Mac.

http://darwinports.com/ claims to be the "original" Darwin Ports.

http://www.macports.org/ claims the above is an imposter. But the thing is, darwinports.com has a really nice command summary for every individual package. (I.e., go to terminal, type "sudo port install bzr ", etc.) This is better than MacPorts which only has a generic help for all apps.

And then there's Fink, http://www.finkproject.org/.

Anybody want to comment on the best/recommended system?

...and only with programs that they want you to use...

Wait, what?! How do you people not get modded down for this blatant misinformation? There are absolutely no restrictions on what applications you can run on OSX, as evidenced by the vast selection of free and open source software available for it, much of it competing directly with apple products.

Like which software? 99% of Linux software runs happily on OS X.

I tried to install and use CinePaint and Fink. I was unable to use either one. Sure some get them to work but I'm no genus or hacker. With Ubuntu Studio CinePaint comes with it and I don't need Fink. Or DarwinPorts or MacPorts to install apt-get, .deb, or .rpm packages. I also have Eclipse installed but I get errors when I run it in my user account, then when I try to quit it it won't. Even Force Quit will not stop Eclipse, the only I can kill it is by shutting down though logging out may work, I haven't tried it. Yet I installed the Mac version of it, and it works fine in an admin account but not a user account.

Falcon

of OS X:

X11
kde
e17
For everything else there's fink and darwin ports.

I've got X11 installed and tried to install CinePaint and Fink but couldn't get either one to run. I could try MacPorts but it doesn't have CinePaint. So I've been thinking of installing Ubuntu Studio.

Falcon

Just a brief list of linux stuff that runs on top of OS X:

X11
kde
e17
For everything else there's fink and darwin ports.

In fact, darwin itself is open source, meaning if you really, really have a hard on to run just linux apps, you could run the core OS with the drivers and all with X11 on top of it. Beeslebob's point is spot on, there's no reason to take a perfectly good unix that has drivers custom written for it to replace it with a one-size fits all OS like linux (as awesome as linux is, hardware drivers are its Achilles' Heel because the hardware is often propietary).

If you REALLY like to punish your Mac... you can also get Gentoo for OSX. Of course, to some Gentoo is punishing yourself, too... but personally I love having the prefixed Gentoo environment for all my Linux-style tools, while still being able to run my Mac tools in the same terminal window.

I'm not quite ready to have that as my default shell environment though... but I do have a shortcut to start up "startprefix.sh" in a terminal window :)

Note that if there's BSD or Linux type software you just HAVE to have and can't live without, but also can't get as an OSX package or Gentoo emerge... there's always DarwinPorts, which is a version of Port for OSX. I have that as well, but I tend to use Gentoo as my first source, Port as my second.

yeah, port install fizzbuzz is really hard

For those of you guys using Macs and OSX for security work, is my perception skewed? Is there some simple way to get the good apps (nmap, wireshark, etc) working under OSX that I've missed?

I use both under OSX, you're doing it the right way, but you might not be going about getting the packages in the easiest way possible. Did you install the developer tools off the DVD? That's the best way to get GCC and the GNU build system tools. Once you have that you can use the darwinports package manager to get either, but if the versions on port are too old, it's just as easy to download the source tarball of what you need and do the old configure; make; sudo make install.

This is a pair of tools for building (bsdiff) and applying (bspatch) binary patches. When applied to two versions of the same executable the patches produced are significantly smaller than those generated by other binary diff tools (eg, xdelta).

bash instead of tcsh as the default shell.

Standard directory names like /home and such.

Standard text-based package managers like apt-get. My mac friends spend way too much compiling and have all their applications in the weirdest places.

Often things like page up/down and home/end don't work in the OSX versions of programs.

This stuff doesn't have to happen at the expense of the GUI either. My impression has been that Terminal.app is more of an accident than an accepted member of the operating system.

http://koffice.darwinports.com/ http://ranger.users.finkproject.org/kde/index.php/ Home The second one's easier, as it's torrented dmg files :)

If Excel is over, point out to me a good replacement for it on my Mac. ... There isn't one.

• Debian PowerPC
• Open Office Mac
• Gnumeric OSX

Gosh, that was easy. I don't have a machine to test the above, but I'm sure at least one of them would work well. Running Debian would be the easiest way to get an alternative if it has been made to work with your current machine (x86 or PowerPC). Any are sure to run better and be more frequently updated than the two year old kludge that is Office of OSX:

Both Office v. X and 2004 Standard Edition run non-natively on Intel Macs through the Rosetta Emulation layer. Microsoft does not intend to update Office 2004 for Intel Macs, and has announced that the next version of Office for Mac will have universal binaries, capable of running natively on both PowerPC and Intel Macs.

Excel doesn't require Windows...

Wooo-hoo! Freedom and choice in crappy and expensive software. My horizons in non free have been broadened. M$ emulation is everywhere.

Samba includes a SMB client AND server for free; OSX (desktop edition, at least) has a bundled client, but no server.

Wrong.

Apache/php/perl/etc have been ported, but seem to run most smoothly on linux.

I don't know why you'd say that, as Apache and Perl come installed by default on OS X. (I don't know about PHP, I wouldn't use that heap of crap if you paid me.) There are nice 1-click installers for Rails too.

As far as user apps, well, the Gimp still seems to be designed for linux.

Yup. That's why I paid $30 for a copy of Photoshop Elements, which blows away The GIMP for usability and has all the functionality I need. Frankly, I wish there was something to compare with Elements on Linux. I use the GIMP, but every time I do it does something weird and inexplicable.

iMovie only lets you save to Quicktime (ugh), and Windows Movie Maker to Windows Media.

False. What you apparently missed is that when you save to QuickTime from iMovie, it's not saving to QuickTime file format—it's saving to the QuickTime multimedia subsystem. From there you can set your output format to anything you like. Hence iMovie can save to MPEG-4 with H.264, DivX, 3ivX, MPEG-1, DV files, whatever the hell you like.

I don't care if iMovie can turn junk footage into pure gold - what good is it if I can only save to a proprietary format?

QuickTime file format is the basis of the MPEG-4 file format. Maybe MPEG-4 is "proprietary", but it's the closest thing to a usable open standard that exists in the world of video. The QuickTime and MPEG-4 formats are both open documented specifications.

I can't open Quicktime movies in any of my windows software for further editing, and I can't open Windows Media in any of my OSX software for further editing.

If your Windows software is so crap that it can't open QuickTime, it presumably isn't one of the well-known movie editing packages like Adobe Premier, which is built on QuickTime for Windows. In which case, export from iMovie to whatever format your software needs. To use Windows Media on OS X, you simply need to install the Flip4Mac WMV QuickTime codec plugins, which you can download from Microsoft's web site. Then you can drag-drop your WMV video straight into iMovie.

As for apps that noone on Windows/OSX seem to use, netpbm is a good example. They are command-line utilities that let you convert image formats, rescale, rotate, crop, etc.

Nobody uses them because you can do the exact same thing with Graphic Converter, PhotoShop or QuickTime, script using AppleScript, and not have to actually write the code. But netpbm and ImageMagick are available for OS X if you'd rather do batch image processing the hard way. (I speak as someone who's done batch processing with ImageMagick and with GraphicConverter.)

I'm not sure how to track down all the dependencies on OSX, or whether Apple made any modifications before compiling.

So download the latest netpbm from DarwinPorts.

The good news is that darwinports, while related to OpenDarwin, is a separate project, and James Berry indicated on the mailing list that porting efforts could continue on.

It looks like the version of gaim in Darwinports is still 1.5. Will be interesting to see how fast this gets updated. ;) Didn't know that the Mac version of gaim has a variant with support for MSN in it.

Adblock for Safari (but better): Pithhelmet

DVD Player complaining about regions: Set your drive's region to the region you live in, and it should mostly never ask you that again

Package management: DarwinPorts

bluefish which is available for MacOSX
and nvu which is also available for MacOSX.

bluefish which is available for MacOSX
and nvu which is also available for MacOSX.

Not sure if anyone noticed, but in a completely legal way to discuss and develop for x86 stuff, check out the Darwinports list of x86-related ports.

I'd just use Safari to browse to TOD and try my own "acid" test in VisualBoyAdvance for Mac OS X.

Check out: ettercap.darwinports.com

pnet.darwinports.com/

see: darwinports.com.