Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

New Fink Binary Distribution 0.5.2

Posted by pudge on from the making-mac-os-x-better dept.

dmalloc writes "The Fink Project community and contributors announced the availability of the Fink Binary Distribution 0.5.2, which adds binaries for KDE 3.1, Koffice 1.2.1, and Kdevelop 3.0a3, new documentation/manuals, and improved support for Apple's X11 Server along with speed improvements to fink itself. Download instructions are on the Fink site."

3 of 31 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Include More Info by water-and-sewer · · Score: 1, Insightful

    I'm all for bringing Unix/Linux/BSD software to OSX; in fact the mere availability of Fink makes me far more interested in an iBook than I would've been otherwise. Stuff like Lyx, TeX, emacs, vim, and mutt make me believe I can have all the aqua goodness of an imac without sacrificing the applications I use the most.

    But updating Fink for the purpose of upgrading Koffice is something I can not comprehend. I haven't been able to make Koffice useful for anything other than the simplest one page letters. The spreadsheet and presentation apps are difficult to use and Kword, while it's capable of much more, is still very difficult to use. If you've got a Mac, you've got Appleworks, which is a very respectable office suite. No, it's not full featured, but it's basically user friendly, and in my opinion it offers more functionality than Koffice. Koffice isn't why you should upgrade Fink.

    --
    If this were Usenet, I'd killfile the lot of you.
  2. KOffice: glad to have you on board! by Steve+Cowan · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Koffice isn't why you should upgrade Fink.
    KOffice may not be the best suite out there, but by providing an OS X port, there is a much stronger motivation to develop KOffice.

    Everybody benefits: another title for the Mac, it's free (as in beer), expanded KOffice user base, yet another reason for Mac users to use Fink, freedom of choice.....

    It's an exciting time to be a Mac user. I honestly would not be surprised to hear that applications are becoming available to Mac users faster than new apps are being developed for Windows. In other words, the list of Mac-compatible desktop software titles may be growing at a faster rate than the list of Windows titles.

  3. Info yes, Freshmeat no by fm6 · · Score: 3, Insightful
    You're right about the "what is it" factor. Too many Slashdot articles assume that everybody has heard about Fink, or Joe, or Sesquipedialian Architectures.

    But I don't think this kind of announcement duplicates anything at Freshmeat. (What's Freshmeat?) That site is for people who already run specific platforms, and are curious to see what's being developed for those platforms. But you don't have to be a OS X enthusiast to be interested in the doings of the Fink team.