Interview with Fink's Project Leader

Gentu writes "There is a interesting interview over at OSNews with Fink's project leader, Max Horn. They discuss Fink's relationship with Apple, integration of their Unix/Linux ports to Mac OS X via Debian's packaging solution, ease of use on installation of the .deb packages, AltiVec optimizations and more."

Comments

Re:Fink is a problem

[Llywelyn]

"Do a search for the bugs Apple has introduced to IPSec and GCC."

No need, I am dealing with a bug in Apple's gcc3.1 as we speak.

In response I use Apple's gcc for things where the bugs do not exist and gcc3.3 (compiled from cvs) for times when they do. A good craftsman never blames his tools, but always tries to make sure that his tools are up to his own specification.

Apple did introduce a few bugs, they also removed a few. It's the way it goes.

"Where on the Jaguar disc can I find XFee86?""

What you are doing here is called "not reading what I wrote".

"I can safely say they ARE trying to do everything for me and let's try an analogy:"

Not at all. Not all of their machines ship with AppleWorks, for instance (mine didn't), QuickBooks is not in-house by any means, and they are (or at least were) offering a steeply discounted version of Microsoft Office.

They are not trying to do a lot of things for me. I have to purchase Keynote separately, download TeTeX on my own, &c. Considering how small of a percentage of users ever write anything in LaTeX or see LaTeX code...

"Why can't Apple's out-of-the-box Unix be as compelling to RedHat users as say, their Final Cut Pro is to Avid users?"

This would be called a "false analogy".

"I don't want to get into 'my Apple loyalty is bigger than yours' but it is my 13-year admiration of their complete product line"

I've been using macs since 1984 and have owned or had as family computers over 10 macs (Original, Plus, SE, LC, Centris 650, 7100, G3MT, iMac, iBook, and a 12" PowerBook). I used to subscribe to the MacMarines mailing list and was (and still am) a Mac Evangelist.

I also have done a lot of work with Linux and ran my systems in dual boot (with LinuxPPC or MkLinux, depending on the system) until the release of MacOS X 10.1.

Yes, I also ran MacOS X 10.0 and even the MacOS X 10.0 Public Beta.

"ot shipping with a working package manager "

Is it annoying? Sure. Can it be worked around? Easily and through commonly available (and easily installable) means. Therefore I do not complain.

"explain how I perform the equivalent of 'rpm -e apache' on a freshly-installed Mac OS X box?"

1) Apache comes preinstalled.

2) Try fink.sourceforge.net

3) Once again, this is called "not reading what I wrote"

"Kudos to Fink and and GNU/Darwin to finding workarounds to this situation."

I don't consider it "a workaround," I consider it "adding useful functionality to a system."

There is a *big* difference between those two.

". I simply don't understand why it is a problem in the first place."

Neither do I (though I have a few guesses involving Apple's tech support getting swamped with phone calls from people trying to install Unix software and thinking that Apple supported it since they were using an Apple utility), however, considering we are on 10.2, and are about to go to 10.3, Apple mentions Fink on their website, and now Apple has a publically available X11 implementation, why are you still up in arms?

"That was on Mac OS X 1.0 install disc 3?"

Once again, "not reading what I wrote."

I don't care whether it was on the 10.0 install disc. I doubt I could *find* my copy of the 10.0 install disc if I went looking for it.

Also, when it is readily available via the internet or through CDs, why is it a problem if it doesn't ship with it? Oh boo hoo, it takes that much longer to get working?

"These guys seem to: www.macdevcenter.com Do you put O'Reilly and Associates in the same Trolling Idiot category as you put me?"

I'm going to venture a guess that they would be chugging along just fine if XonX were the only implementation of XFree86 involved on the Mac and we all were using OrobusOSX.

They are also not "traditional workstation users" by any stretch of the imagination, which is what you claimed. Nor do they seem to be whining, like what yo