Gentoo, Fink, and DarwinPorts Join Forces

Mr. Quick writes "From Metapkg, "In order to better provide freely-available software to users of Mac OS X and Darwin, we Fink, Gentoo, and DarwinPorts commit ourselves to work together." A unified front for free software on Mac OS X is something that was needed."

Comments

Name for the United Front?

[TPIRman]

What will this new collaboration be called?

DarFinkGen?
FinkTooWin?

Firebird?

Re:Name for the United Front?

[popeyethesailor]

United MacOsX.

Re:Name for the United Front?

[mikeophile]

MacJustice League Superfriends X?

Re:Name for the United Front?

[darketernal]

FarTooGink(xed) maybe? :)

All word play aside, maybe this will end up in me being finally able to get my friend to install UNIX stuff on his G4...

-Josh

Re:Name for the United Front?

[switched4OSX]

No, Gendar Fink (say it quickly).

Re:Name for the United Front?

[x136]

Moland Spring.

</ObSeinfeld>

Re:Name for the United Front?

[carpe_noctem]

I'm partial to "Operation Enduring Package".

Re:Name for the United Front?

[blakespot]

What will this new collaboration be called?

League of Extraordinary OS X Application Providers?

blakespot

Re:Name for the United Front?

[Maserati]

I second that.

Re:Name for the United Front?

[muzzmac]

Darth FinkTooWin

Uh.. so

[Anonymous Coward]

So while this is really cool, how is it going to work out?

To wit: thought maybe i'm on crack, it SEEMS like each of the three-- while offering basically the same interface to the same service-- were pegged to different codebases, and taking packages from different sources. Fink to debian, gentoo to gentoo and ports to bsd.

Is this the case? And which source (debian/gentoo/bsd) will the collaboration generally follow?

Re:Uh.. so

[pete-classic]

There is a huge amount of overlap in those three "codebases." Recall that we are talking about user packages here, and not the system . . . the system is OSX.

All three are maininging OSX ports of, say, wget and grep and such. All three port packages to OSX. I think this is a huge win for Free Software on this platform.

But maybe I'm wrong. I have no interest in OSX so this is my POV from the outside looking in.

-Peter

Re:Uh.. so

[MrWa]

From what I understand, the Gentoo portage system atleast, is quite powerful in decidig which ports are available and which are pulled in to be compiled. Something as simple as a flag in make.conf could be used to decide what source packages to use.

Re:Uh.. so

[cait56]

If they just learned to read each others install lists, and how to check for what was installed via normal packages, then they could keep their seperate codebases.

The OS is Darwin. Lots of different codebases can use it. The real challenge is managing the classic Unix problem of ensuring everyone gets the right version of shared dynamic libraries.

No need to update

[mr100percent]

"While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way"

Perfect, this means we dont have to scrap Fink or Gentoo for a new system, we can use the ones we already have.

This is what Linux needs

[Anonymous Coward]

...to come together like this. The competing GUI's (KDE vs. GNOME), the competing browswers (Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Galeon), the competing distributions (SuSe, RH, Caldera), all drain human and financial resources that, if combined would make Linux into the powerhouse it could be.

Until then, Linux will remain second fiddle to the likes of Windows XP and MacOS X.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[HornyBastard77]

Yes indeed. Get them all together. Package them all the same. Get rid of choice, it is overrated anyway. That is the only way to get Linux to be just like Windows, and the OSI, FSF et al to be like just like MS.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[90XDoubleSide]

These group's aren't merging into one project: they're still making three products, but will be working together to ensure there is sharing of work and no duplication of effort. This is indeed different from most OSS projects where the two competitiors come to hate each other for some reason. Another groundbreaking thought from their mission statement: "Non-advocacy: Our common goal is simply to provide software for people who choose to use Mac OS X & Darwin, not to promote or advocate any particular operating system." OSS with non-advocacy! Imagine how much more acceptance open-source software might get if everyone focused on telling people how the development model could produce great software at no cost to the user instead of droning on about how it is immoral for programmers to serve as wage-labor.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[RoLi]

Wrong. Competition is great and leads to better results.

The main reason why Linux is behind in the desktop is missing reliable Win32 compatibility. Usability sure is not perfect but certainly on par with WinXP (WinXP is not perfect either.)

Everywhere, where Win32 compatibility is not needed (on servers, on embedded systems) Linux is very strong.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[HornyBastard77]

I agree. My comment wasn't in response to Fink/Gentoo/DarwinPorts working together. It was in response to this:

This is what Linux needs... ...to come together like this. The competing GUI's (KDE vs. GNOME), the competing browswers (Konqueror, Mozilla, Opera, Galeon), the competing distributions (SuSe, RH, Caldera), all drain human and financial resources that, if combined would make Linux into the powerhouse it could be.

Until then, Linux will remain second fiddle to the likes of Windows XP and MacOS X.

The emphasised parts indicated (to me anyway) that AC was advocating one distro, one browser, one gui. Or maybe (and I hope this is the case) s/he was being sarcastic and I missed it. Should've quoted in my reply. My bad.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[sengork]

You make it sound like Linux has to "catch-up" with windows :)

Re:This is what Linux needs

[Idimmu Xul]

What choices would you be losing if that happened? They same software would still be available, and you would still beable to do the same thing with it, e.g. install it from packages, install from source packages, roll your own from a tar ball.

The only thing that I can see that you'd lose is the multitude of different ways things can be configured. e.g. is the httpd.conf in /etc/apache /etc/httpd /var/www/conf or somewhere else? etc etc

Where is the choice between GNOME and KDE when you have to have both installed anyway to beable to use all the decent apps avilable to Linux?

Re:This is what Linux needs

[SilentMajority]

There are pros & cons to this.

The drawbacks to having fragmented marketshare (like KDE & GNOME) is sometimes--but not always--outweighed by the improvements caused by having strong competition.

Look at the drastic improvements MS IE received while Netscape was still a strong contender. Then look at the improvements after IE got 90%+ marketshare. Some would argue that there isn't much to add to a browser but a look at the innovations in Opera, Mozilla Firebird and Safari.

Rather than consolidation, I'd rather see competing products like KDE & Gnome come up with common standards. For example, KDE & Gnome could come up with very specific & consistent user interface standards and adhere to them in their products.

Microsoft did a great job (compared to Linux) in not only coming up with Windows UI standards but in preaching it: the vast majority of Windows apps writting by diverse vendors has a FILE, EDIT, HELP, etc. menu and they are rather consistent in their content too. CONSISTENCY IS IMPORTANT.

I'd like to see Linux be different where it counts: like stabiliy, security, open standards, Unix-like shell & filesystem, etc. But I don't see the point of being different for its own sake (like throwing out MS Windows GUI/UI guidelines so that 95% of pc users will find it less desirable to switch to Linux).

My apologies if such a GUI/UI standard exists--I simply don't see it being promoted or used in X apps I've tried--and it was just an example.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[Telex4]

Why do these trolls keep getting moderated up to 5 points? Let me go over this again:

o Duplication of effort, whilst often unecessary, is not the death of Free Software. Maybe some people don't like the code architecture of KDE, and so choose to code for Gtk and GNOME; maybe some people dislike the lack of challenge in approaching Konqueror and so choose to code on Mozilla. It's people's choice, and I see no reason why we should try to force all FS developers to code in particular projects.

o Many projects with the same goal is also not that big a problem. Look at the many different ideas that KDE and GNOME have developed, and then shared when good. Relations between the projects are improving a lot, to the extent that now KDM and GDM (the login managers) are sharing certain configuration files!

o Different distributions are also always a good thing. They each provide a different focus, with different strengths and weaknesses. Whilst this might be more confusin than one GNU/Linux distribution, consumer choice is an important thing. When you buy a car, you research the many options and chooce the one best for you. Why should we have to put up with such a limited choice in operating systems?

o I could go on but my food is ready ;-)

Re:This is what Linux needs

[Japer Lamar Crabb]

Except that this is merely pooling efforts on the porting side, so that one's choice of package management tool won't restrict availability of a given piece of software anymore than one's choice to use PPC Darwin.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[hhw]

My thoughts exactly... I think this is one of the reasons the 3 BSD's are able to accomplish so much despite having a fraction of the developer resources of the Linux community. Although each project is developed independently according to their respective goals, they share their solutions that the others are free to adopt or improve upon.

Re:This is what Linux needs

[SlamMan]

You know what would be an awesome way for the to work together? They should give each other thier source code! Then they'd all always be working on the same page, right?

Re:This is what Linux needs

[Sentry21]

The drawbacks to having fragmented marketshare (like KDE & GNOME) is sometimes--but not always--outweighed by the improvements caused by having strong competition.

The problem is, as you point out later, inconsistancy. You can't troubleshoot Linux nearly as easily, because you have to say 'Ok, go to the menu with the foot on it, and choose- what? Oh, ok, the menu with the K on it. And then go to, uhh.. let me see, I only ever use Gnome.' Having to know twice as much can interfere ver much with helping someone.

Rather than consolidation, I'd rather see competing products like KDE & Gnome come up with common standards. For example, KDE & Gnome could come up with very specific & consistent user interface standards and adhere to them in their products.

As I recall, they agreed to work together on this a while ago. I could be wrong, but it's in the slashdot archives I'm sure.

Microsoft did a great job (compared to Linux) in not only coming up with Windows UI standards but in preaching it: the vast majority of Windows apps writting by diverse vendors has a FILE, EDIT, HELP, etc. menu and they are rather consistent in their content too. CONSISTENCY IS IMPORTANT.

Microsoft did a horrible job with their GUI. The standards you mention (File, edit, help) have been around since the early Mac days, and are in a slew of DOS programs too. Microsoft, however, made a lot of very bad design decisions - such as using 'Yes/No/Cancel' or 'OK/Cancel' dialogs whenever a choice needs to be made, instead of properly labelling the buttons with exactly what they do.

They also don't stress the importance of making one's program follow the same pattern as the 'standard'. Most programs, when you try to close them, have a 'Save? [Yes/No/Cancel]' dialog, but enough of them have an 'Abandon changes? [Yes/No/Cancel]' dialog to make life frustrating for anyone who deals with a wide variety of programs. If you want real UI guidelines, check out the latest ones from Apple. It's a near-religious text.

I'd like to see Linux be different where it counts: like stabiliy, security, open standards, Unix-like shell & filesystem, etc. But I don't see the point of being different for its own sake (like throwing out MS Windows GUI/UI guidelines so that 95% of pc users will find it less desirable to switch to Linux).

Linux environment programmers (KDE, GNOME, etc) have three main options. If they copy the Windows behaviour, it'll be familiar to Windows users, but the Windows behaviour makes little sense in a lot of circumstances (See above)

If they (properly) copy the MacOS behaviour, they will have a system that feels and works properly even to a completely new user, but most people consider it 'wrong' because it's not what they're used to. As such, it will probably never be adopted, since a lot of people refuse to give it a chance.

If they make their own guidelines, then obviously, they'll have the freedom to make their own standards, which they can tailor to suit their programs. This is bad, but it's what will happen. As evidenced by Sun's usability study, programmers design interfaces for themselves and others, but don't tend to consider what other people are used to or will find intuitive - well, how would they know? It makes sense to the programmers. A lot of programmers consider the UI an 'interface to the user for the code' - a way for the code to get itself run - rather than 'an interface for the user to the code' - a way for the user to make the code do what they want.

What the GNOME/KDE projects need are clear heirarchies, and priorities. Unfortunately, GTK is such a rabid bitch to code in (compare to Cocoa) and not many programs use Glade, so UI designers have the harsh end of the stick. I also can't help but feel there's a feeling with GNOME programmers that only 'real programming' is beneficial - documentation and UI design can be 'good enough' (docs and UI can never be 'good enough'). If it's there i

Re:This is what Linux needs

[Sentry21]

How on earth is this 'Insightful'? Seriously? Where's the insight?

This is not about removing choice, it's about removing incompatibility. You know, the thing that Slashdot is always harping on MS about? By promoting compatibility, it will make it easier to use, and unless it's easier to use, no one will want to use it.

Remember, we're dealing with OS X here - the users in question are people who appreciate simplicity that just works, without having to screw around with it. Why would I spend three thousand bucks on a system that I know will 'just work' out of the box, and then cruft it up with three variations of crap from three separate packaging systems, none of which are interoperable, because some troll wanted 'choice' instead of 'usability'? It doesn't make sense.

There's something to be said for doing things differently, but there's also something to be said for doing things right, and in this case, it's the latter.

--Dan

Re:This is what Linux needs

[SilentMajority]

Great response!

I believe what is most lacking is consistency and publicity. Whether Linux draws from Max OSX or Windows or a combo, Linux UI should be much more consistent and that push should be publicized.

But without Microsoft's budget, it will be more difficult for projects like KDE & Gnome to publish a GUI guideline book that we can pickup at Barns & Noble or Borders. When Microsoft published theirs, I remember companies buying it and using it as their bible to enforce UI consistency across their products.

What about Apple?

[BibelBiber]

Since they ported X11 to Mac OS X on their own it would be kinda useful to have them in the same boat. Dont you think?

Re:What about Apple?

[Halo1]

Apple is more or less part of the darwinports project (Jordan K Hubbard is one of its project leads)

Re:What about Apple?

[itistoday]

It is my belief that Apple is probably the one who coordinated this effort. Behold articles from the attested Think Secret, relating changes that Apple has been working hard with 3rd-party developers to support them better (i.e. less of the Shrelock VS Watson scandal).

Re:What about Apple?

[majorflaw]

Apple's #1 priority is selling Apple hardware. While they make some $ through the sale of software, harware is far and away their major source of income. I would expect that Apple is delighted when someone else writes software that works well on the Mac platform; just another reason for people to buy a Mac. The difference between Apple and their carnivorous competitor is that Apple doesn't really care what you run on their computer, as long as you buy the computer.

Coordination in Open Source development.

[dwerg]

I think most people don't understand how unique this initiative is. Most of the times open source projects don't really notice eachother and when they do, they just start a flamewar about who's best and who stole feature from who.

It's good too see there are some developers out there with organizational talents who are willing to communicate with other projects in order to speed up development time and create a better product.

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[Leroy_Brown242]

I agree. There is a common bond that the open source community has. Even if people don't agree as to how to get it done, we're going the same place.

I wonder what teh open Source world would be like if more camps joined forces, and worked together?

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[ickoonite]

It's because they're developing for the Mac, so they can Think Different. :P

Tho' you might think all the stereotypical arty types who use Macs (amongst which I include myself, occasionally) would be more likely to bitch about and compete with others' efforts.

iqu :D

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[IamTheRealMike]

I think most people don't understand how unique this initiative is.

Huh? You realise that the Red Hat apt repositories have been allying with each other for some time, to reduce duplication, overlap and synchronize metadata right? They just don't do press releases for it.

Most of the times open source projects don't really notice eachother and when they do, they just start a flamewar about who's best and who stole feature from who.

How do you explain that then?

It's good too see there are some developers out there with organizational talents who are willing to communicate with other projects in order to speed up development time and create a better product.

Sure, it's all good. I still don't understand how they intend to reduce duplication when using different packaging systems and different sources though. If we have packages A and B in fink and gentoo, but they both depend on package C, which network gets to "hold" package C? How do you interface emerge to apt? How do they synchronize the metadata between these two large bodies of packages? In the cases where there already is duplication, who gets to keep the package?

Lots of unanswered questions here. Will be interesting to find out the answers.

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[ndogg]

I think that the flamewars come more from non-developer users of OSS software rather than from the developers themselves. Take, for example, KDE and GNOME; it's the users that bicker, not the developers. In fact the developers want to work together and port features across. There are some arguments that happen across the camps, but that usually comes from differing philosophies about the UI or just conflicting personalities (which happens with any organization.)

So, I guess the real question is: why do end users (i.e. people who just use the software and do no development on it) bicker so much? I'm not quite sure, really.

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[dwerg]

Huh? You realise that the Red Hat apt repositories have been allying with each other for some time, to reduce duplication, overlap and synchronize metadata right? They just don't do press releases for it. Oops, forgot about that. How do you explain that then? I didn't say no-one worked together. Sure, it's all good. I still don't understand how they intend to reduce duplication when using different packaging systems and different sources though. From the website:

Under this new alliance, the projects will share information and coordinate efforts for porting software to Apple's Mac OS X and Darwin operating systems.

They're planning on sharing information and patches for packages.

Re:Coordination in Open Source development.

[dwerg]

So, I guess the real question is: why do end users (i.e. people who just use the software and do no development on it) bicker so much? I'm not quite sure, really.

Because most of them are 16-year-old linux n00bs who are using social groups to define their own personality.

Aren't they forgetting someone?

[idiotnot]

NetBSD's pkgsrc works very well for me on OSX. I haven't tried portage or darwin ports, but fink seemed a little strange....almost but not quite debian goodness.

Still, I think all this work is kind of weird. I can see the porting effort for things like the text-based things (emacs!) and the very large projects (OO.o!)....but running standard unix apps under X on top of OSX doesn't take advantage of OSX's strong points. For all the hype, this could be happening with people on cygwin....

Kudos to the GNUMail.app people, of showing what can be done.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[MalleusEBHC]

...but running standard unix apps under X on top of OSX doesn't take advantage of OSX's strong points.

Unless I'm alone here, being able to run X11 apps and native OS X apps at the same time is one of the best features of my OS X boxen. The availability of diverse software from two almost totally separate camps is awesome.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[axxackall]

Unless I'm alone here, being able to run X11 apps in cygwin and native win32 apps at the same time is one of the best features of cheap x86 boxen.

I think that spending resources and efforts on the platform, which keeps only about 5% in US (and much less outside), is insane. It would be much better to port Portage to cygwin and thus to introduce many windows users with the best packager in the world.

Consider this: how many users can run how many commercial native OSX applications? Now, how many users can run how many commercial native win32 applications? Porting Portage to Cygwin will give you a corporate market, while porting Portage to OSX will give you just few more geeks.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[Jon Abbott]

Cygwin is great (I've been running it for years), but there is one fatal problem with it: the underlying OS. For me, running X11 on cygwin (let alone X11 apps) produces the same feeling as trying to quickly pull out a tablecloth from a table that is covered with expensive china.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[Jon Abbott]

Unless I'm alone here, being able to run X11 apps and native OS X apps at the same time is one of the best features of my OS X boxen.

To quote Chicago, Leonard Nimoy (for those who don't believe me), R. Kelly, Diana Ross, Paul Oakenfold, Culture Shock, Michael Jackson, Boyz II Men, ATB, Dean Fraser, Lovewar, Modern Talking, Olive, Saga, the Kingsmen Quartet, Michael McLean, and Patty Griffin, "You are not alone". :^)

(This omniscient post is powered by the AMG All Music Guide...)

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[axxackall]

I did not understand your feeling. For me - X11 on cygwin works fine with up-to 3 months uptime and I stop it only when I upgrade cygwin itself or when IT dept insists to shutdown all workstations.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[macmurph]

According to a recent Forbes Magazine, %10 of the worlds computers are Macintoshes. Dont confuse sales figures with the installed base. Macs dont need to be replaced as often as PCs.

%.000001 of the worlds computers are running cygwin. Thats probably a generous guess too.

How many users can run how many commercial native OSX applications? Now, how many users can run how many commercial native win32 applications?

Consider this: it does me no good that there are half a million windows apps when the seven programs I really need and want only run on OSX.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[Jon Abbott]

For me, X11 on cygwin has always made the hard drive "thrash" much more than normal (normal being an equivalent Linux box), which makes me pretty paranoid while using it...

Is there a way to run X11 on cygwin as "rootless", or inside of Windows itself? The last time I checked it was full-screen only.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[MalleusEBHC]

The code is all there for your viewing, compiling, and porting pleasure. I suggest you either fire up emacs and start hacking up the cygwin version you want or stop whining about people who are providing the Mac community with some great apps for free.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[axxackall]

My experience lets me to doubt in your numbers. In last few companies I worked last 3 years there were usually 1-3 Macs per whole company, but 5-10 people using Cygwin.

And if you specifically need just seven programs (let me guess: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, IE, Photoshop and Illustrator, right?), it doesn't mean the other people are like you. Most of people prefer the Windows platform and Windows applications is one of those reasons (PC prices is another big reason). Don't forget, most of good CAD, accounting, banking, financial, trading, human resources and other real-business applications exist only for Windows (too bad - I want them for Linux, you want them for OSX).

I admit, most of CAD and HR users don't need neither Cygwin or OSX. But most of system administrators and system developers certainly would certainly prefer Windows+Cygwin, which they can use from any x86 computer in their enterprise.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[axxackall]

On my PC with Cygwin Xfree86 takes CPU only when I start using it. Otherwise it sleeps somewhere in the swap without being noticed.

And yes, I saw many meesages from Cygwin users about "rootless" X11. However, I prefer it with root: IceWM and nice background, thus I feel when I swtch my attention from one env to another :)

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[macmurph]

>>Consider this: it does me no good that there are half a million windows apps when the seven programs I really need and want only run on OSX.

>And if you specifically need just seven programs (let me guess: Word, Excel, Powerpoint, IE, Photoshop and Illustrator, right?), it doesn't mean the other people are like you.

Well, I said the seven programs I need only run on OSX. Every single one of the apps you listed run on other platforms... I do occaisionally use all of the apps you listed and its great they are all on the mac too. But the programs I was refering to include Project Builder, Interface Builder, WebObjects, Max/MSP, iViewMedia Pro, Final Cut Pro, iTunes, BBedit, EvoCam, Graphic Convertor, Entourage, VSamp. Ok, thats 12 not 7.

Re:Aren't they forgetting someone?

[axxackall]

Well, most of peopl dont use such programs. Moreover, most of web-designers and web-developers don't use such programs. Well, it's really a matter of personal choice. And here we come again: a personal choice would not be possible without competition.

You don't want a competition. You want one monopolist making software for one or several segments. Too bad that you don't understand that it's bad.

Why not just port GTK/Gnome to MacOS X ?

[Anonymous Coward]

That why you just compile your favorite GTK/Gnome app and have a native MacOSX app ?

Re:Why not just port GTK/Gnome to MacOS X ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks to new gpl qt, kde is already running even better than the X11 version. But the port of gtk for os exists, but it is poor and unlike qt, it dosent look like aqua.

how it will work

[porkface]

Fink has always provided a user-friendly approach to installing ports that appeals to even sub power-users. Darwin ports brings to the table the experience behind the BSD ports system as well as the leadership of Apple. Gentoo brings some hardcore technical muscle. They all bring different strengths to the table, so I think they'll find a way to make it great.

Re:self-reply: fixed

[Michael's a Jerk!]

FYI, I'm using Mozilla 1.2.1

Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Win98; en-US; rv:1.2.1) Gecko/20021130

Hope this helps...

Debian, Mandrake, Redhat, Gentoo, join forces

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the defactoness of rpm
Take the power of apt-get
Mix with the strength of emerge.
And take the ease of use of Mandrake.

To make a
One unified linux, with one libc, one X (X 4.4), one desktop environment (KDE 3.2) and one text editor (nano, because ^X is better than :wq).

The true united linux, ready to take on the real enemeys (SCO, Microsoft).

The chances of this happening are 0.000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000000 0........001%, but we can always dream.

Re:Debian, Mandrake, Redhat, Gentoo, join forces

[meringuoid]

One unified linux, with one libc, one X (X 4.4), one desktop environment (KDE 3.2) and one text editor (nano, because ^X is better than :wq)

One Linux to rule them all, one libc to find them, one X to bring them all and on the Desktop bind them.

Re:Debian, Mandrake, Redhat, Gentoo, join forces

[DeathPenguin]

I'd want Redhat and Mandrake to dispapear from that picture entirely. RPMs are simply beyond redemption at this point for me. Give me Portage or give me death!

Re:What broken link?

[Spider[DAC]]

Epiphany 0.7 compiled against Mozilla 1.3 here, The on-mouse-over reported the link as http://slashdot.org/fink.sf.net

Excellent news

[harikiri]

One of the reasons I've installed Yellow Dog Linux on my iBook (for coding & development) was because it was such a pain having to search across multiple "vendors" of open source ports and packages for Darwin. Depending on which package I installed, I would either have to modify makefiles to use up to three different -L (path's to programming libraries), such as /usr/lib, /sw/lib and /usr/local/lib. It was bloody annoying.

So I welcome this move towards a unified ports system for Darwin, it was definitely needed.

Re:Excellent news

[McDutchie]

I would either have to modify makefiles to use up to three different -L (path's to programming libraries), such as /usr/lib, /sw/lib and /usr/local/lib. It was bloody annoying.

So I welcome this move towards a unified ports system for Darwin, it was definitely needed.

RTFA:

While each project will continue to deliver software in their own way, [...]

Friends

[batobin]

Gentoo, Fink, and DarwinPorts alone are not enough to conquer evil. But with their forces combined, they form *dramatic pause* the league of super best friends.

Re:Friends

[Drakonian]

The allusion is lost on me. Can anyone explain?

Re:Friends

[batobin]

It's a joke from a south park episode. Buddha, Jesus, Mohammed, Krishna, Joseph Smith, and Sea Man form a club called "The Super Best Friends". They fight together against evil (except for Buddha, who doesn't believe in evil).

It's a spoof of the Justice League (cartoon with Superman, etc.) I think.

FYI: GPL QT/Mac soon (if not already) available

[harikiri]

This means that many of your favourite KDE-related apps may soon be compiling natively under OS X.

Go here for more info. Droooooooooooooool. ;-)

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Ed Avis]

-fomit-instructions

LOL! This should be the name of the archetypal broken compiler optimization.

Re: rpm + apt-get

[TeknoHog]

Since apt is not tied to Debian'd dpkg, there is a version for rpm as well. The downside is of course that not all programs are available from apt/rpm servers. On the other hand, Mandrake has urpmi with very similar functionality.

I wouldn't rate emerge very high because it's just overkill to compile/optimize everything for current machines. It would be more useful on a slow system, but then it'd take ages to install anything.

Consider that they cooperate

[GerardM]

Linux has things like LSB, the Linux Standard Base.
All these companies contribute towards one Linux and take THEIR pick out of the applications they support.
For security they share their insights into what they find.
You can say a lot about the RedHat GUI but it did stimulate Gnome and KDE to increase their cooperation. My point is, all these companies struggle with the FACT that they have to distinguish themselves while their work IS open source. Everyone can take note (and does) of what they do and can incorporate the innovations.

This is not Unix where all software is proprietaty and where you have to program all features yourself to compete. It is a different ballgame.

With SCO disconitinuing their distribution, Linux as a whole is not worse off. A distribution is valuable for the value that they add. (SCO does not add value they destroy what is good, everybodies time and "their" IP). When someone cares to continue the SCO distribution, everybody can as the code is available. But in the same vain there is less of a lock in, current users of the SCO distro can move relatively easy.

Conclusion, you think in terms of Linux needing only one version one orgnisation to succeed. It is alive and well and doing insanely great without it.
Thanks,
Gerard

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Doobian Coedifier]

It's sad that Slashdot has gotten bored bashing windows, now the distro wars are heating up.

It's even sadder that you post this crap that has been posted verbatim several times before (that I've seen), and you didn't write.

And yes, I use Gentoo. And yes, it DOES kick ass.

We have zealots?

[ohad_l]

Okay, we do... But I never saw Gentoo as a mainstream distro. We're just the guys who make sure everything compiles :)

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Anonymous Coward]

Hey, by all means use it! I'm just glad it still gets moderated up... :)

-- Mike (original author)

Re: rpm + apt-get

[Doobian Coedifier]

I sure don't think it's overkill. All of my packages are optimized for my cpu, and thanks to USE flags, I only have the options I want. I want Mozilla, but only the browser, not the mail?

USE="moznomail" nice emerge mozilla

Less bloat makes me happy.

Besides, if you don't like compiling stuff (I typically nice it, my machine is perfectly usable while compiling) there are binary packages for many larger programs such mozilla and openoffice. These take only minutes to emerge.

You want one about Macs?

[Anonymous Coward]

Mac Zealot Translator-o-matic

Apple have come up with some innovative products, but their market share remains tiny. Sadly, though, many buyers have been mislead by the marketing and eye-candy, and desperately try to justify their overpriced purchases to themselves on forums around the Net. Let's see what they really mean...

"MacOS X is everything Linux wants to be."
"Despite the fact that Linux is just code and can't WANT to be anything, I truly believe that it'd love to be a single-vendor, single-platform, sluggish half-proprietary OS with dwindling market share. Linux would love to throw away its impressively growing corporate takeup for that."

"Apple hardware is for real computer lovers."
"It's no hassle to use a plethora of keyboard combos to make up for the patronising one-button mouse. Despite the fact that my hands have FIVE fingers, and multiple-buttons make Web browsing so much more pleasant, I prefer my computer to be treat me like a special-needs child."

"Aqua makes me so much more productive!"
"My non-techie friends drool over the transparency and scaling effects, even though UI research has shown that they add practically nothing to getting real work done. It feels like KDE 2 on a Pentium 200, and I can't change to a light and fast WM, but those drop-shadows must make me work so quickly!"

"OSX shows that Apple is committed to open source."
"OpenDarwin.org and its community of about 27 is surely not just a token gesture by Apple. Pretty much nobody uses pure Darwin, and all the crucial components of the system are closed and require me to spend money just to get major OS updates, but they're really helping the community somehow."

"You get what you pay for with Apple hardware."
"My iBook was made by in Taiwan by AlphaTop and has design and build quality flaws (needing foam sheets jammed in to stop the common problem of the keyboard scratching the screen). But it's silvery and cost far more than an x86 laptop of better spec, so it must be much higher quality!"

"...blah blah MHz myth blah..."
"Although there's truth in PPC being more elegant than x86, it's crushing that the top-of-the-range 1.5 GHz chip is slaughtered by the equivalent 3 GHz Pentium 4. However, Steve Jobs showed some vague Photoshop filter benchmarks at the last MacWorld, so being a leprotard, I'm convinced."

Why can't they use BSD's system

[Billly Gates]

kiss= keep it simple stupid.

There is no need to make a complex metapackage system.

I find Gentoo's python based system way overly complex and buggy. You need to emerge rsync quite a few times during a new install to ensure you are using the latest version of portage.

The FreeBSD ports system on the other hand are just simple tcsh scripts. Under /etc/defaults/make.conf you can specify which mirrors to use for popular ports or you can type in the closest FreeBSD ftp site and over-ride it for the fastest download speed.

If any of you reading this use FreeBSD 5.x go to /usr/local/examples/etc/defaults/make.conf and edit, cut and paste the data to /etc/defaults/make.conf. For some dumb reason the FreeBSD team moved all the import rc scripts there. The big commented scripts is one of the traditional strength's of FreeBSD. I hate it when they make it harder for newbies.Do a man make.conf for more info.

WHen you do a "make install clean" the port scripts just use standard ftp and http sites in the makefile to download the apps. Nothing complex and its alot easier to use.

I can not speak of fink because I have never used it.

Simple shell scripting can get rid of alot of complexity.

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[justrob]

> You need to emerge rsync quite a few times during a new install to ensure you are using the latest version of portage.

This isn't true. You run it once and it actually runs rsync, giving you the latest version of portage.

>The FreeBSD ports system on the other hand are just simple tcsh scripts.

Gentoo's ebuilds are simple Bash scripts.

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[incom]

Ever heard of /etc/make.conf on gentoo?

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[fifthcent]

>You need to emerge rsync quite a few times
> during a new install to ensure you are using
> the latest version of portage.
I'd have to disagree here. Unless your 'emerge world' takes more than a week, it isn't likely that there will be new ebuilds out. And even in that case, it is probably a matter of a new revision of an ebuild, rather than a new version of the software.

>Under /etc/defaults/make.conf you can specify
> which mirrors to use for popular ports or you
> can type in the closest FreeBSD ftp site and
> over-ride it for the fastest download speed.
I don't know when the last time you used portage was, but you _can_ specify mirrors to use in /etc/make.conf . Furthermore, there is a script called mirrorselect ('emerge mirrorselect'), which makes finding the fastest mirrors and updating make.conf, all automatically, even easier.

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[jschauma]

You already can: Behold NetBSD's Packages Collection. Use it on NetBSD, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, Linux, Solaris, Irix, Darwin, Mac OS X...

More details here.

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[Fros1y]

Well, so far as I can tell, the complexity of the Gentoo system is well-bounded, with nice python scripts not all that much more complicated than your average shell script (Assuming you're able to program, of course.

And I can't really imagine what you're talking about with "You need to emerge rsync quite a few times during a new install to ensure you are using the latest version of portage." Granted, installation has quite a few steps (For the most customized, only) but I don't remember ever having to 'emerge rsync quite a few times' in any of my multiple gentoo installations.

As far as the complication of day to day use, I can specify standard mirrors for my gentoo system to use too. In fact, using mirrorselect, I can do it automatically to pick good mirrors for me. Then again, I don't even see how 'make install clean' is so much simpler than 'emerge foo'.

Frankly, I'd rather wrangle python scripts than shell scripts anyday. I find the idea that shell scripts eschew complexity kind of off. Gentoo has been able to grow technically so well, I think, in part of the advantages of a full and elegant language (Python) of implementation, rather than a hodgepodge of shell scripts.

Just my two cents as a Gentoo user saving up to be a Gentoo OSX user.

Re:Why can't they use BSD's system

[overbom]

Jordan Hubbard wrote FreeBSD's port system (based mostly off bsd .mk files, not just tcsh scripts), which was then ported to NetBSD and OpenBSD. He's never been happy with it, so he wrote the OpenDarwin port system, based off tcl scripts.

Just nitpicking. :-)

how about TooFarkingNewdi

[goombah99]

not that it makes any sense but at least it uses all the letters.

The thing is I dont reallyknow how good an idea it is to merge the three. What is a good idea is that things be consistent. This is more important in the mac world than others. Its why we like macs. its why for example we put up with having to drag disks to the trash or annoying dialog boxes. by forcing you do to things in consistent ways your productivity and abbility to manage more applications increases in the long run. with applications I want them all in one folder not sprayed allover my disk. I want my prefernces all in one place. etc.. for an example of how not to do things on a mac see GnuDarwin.

Re: rpm + apt-get

[autechre]

Or you could have a distribution which has modular packages instead:

apt-get install mozilla-browser

I don't have to recompile PHP every time I want to use a different module; I just install whatever modules I want, whenever I want to use them.

That is the strength of Debian. It's not just apt-get; people who have ported apt to work under Red Hat are moving in the right direction, but that is not the whole problem. With Debian, thousands of packages are "official", and so are quite strictly designed so that all dependencies really, really work. The organization of packages is what really makes apt worthwhile.

LotR Reference ...

[Amiasian]

... Three packages for the Mac users under the sun ...
And one metapackage to find them, and in the darkness bind them. In the land of shell, where the shadows lie.

the benefits should be obvious

[zojas]

The common problem they share is getting every piece of software to compile & run correctly on OS X. They can obviously pool their talents (and patches) to attack the porting of the software.

each group simply provides their own set of software for installing and maintaining the ported software on your OS X system. They get to share & distribute the hard work of actually porting the packages. Then everyone benefits, regardless of which package manager you choose.

If only...

[WiggyWack]

Hm. If only Linux groups could unite like this.

Stop modding crap like this up

[bogie]

Geez thie ONE OF EVERYTHING crap isn't the holy grail or the road to linux dominance.

I really don't feel like pointing out(for the billionth time) why all the myths I've seen today wrong, but suffice to say get over the fucking idea that "Linux" is ever going to mean ONE THING or that by eliminating all other distros but one is suddenly going to get Joe Consumer interested..

btw get back to me when Adobe, Jasc, Corel,Broderbund, Macromedia, MGI Software, and Ulead FINALLY have One graphics app, one interface, and one file format. Then FINALLY they might get somewhere.

Re:Great, because OSX = least included software ev

[bigBlackSabbath]

Umm... maybe you didn't look or the tech's down at the district ripped out all the good stuff, but OS X (especially with a new computer) comes with a ton of good useful stuff. Just from the GUI side, if you check out TextEdit, you'll notice that no only is it a decent text editor (especially if you use services) but with support for leading, font, spell-check, RTF, tab, and indent support, it's definitely a bare bones word processor enough for me.

There's also GNU chess with a nice gui, iCal, iChat, iMovie, iPhoto, Mail, and iSync.

On top of that, it includes a whole IDE for FREE - Project Builder (along with Interface Builder).

Also, Apple throws in a bunch of programs on the iBooks (Quicken, Deimos Rising, etc.) and the PowerBooks (OmniGraffle, OmniOutliner, Art Directors Toolkit, etc.).

Of course, this doesn't scratch the surface of commandline apps that are in there, but it doesn't sound as if you were looking for those.

better anagrams: A NOW INDIGENT FORK

[goombah99]

Here are some anagrams. or maybe its just poetry

Great Info, Nod Wink

A NOW INDIGENT FORK

No Farking Tie On

I no twin dong freak

NEON DWARF KING ITO

I Got Neon Dwarf Kin

Knot Fearing Windo

Newton Irk A Fin God

Farking Do Not Wine

Fink To Anger Windo

A Neon Dog Wink Rift

FREAK DINGO IN TOWN

Finn Great Windo Ok

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Xabraxas]

This trash makes me sick.

"Gentoo makes me so much more productive." "Although I can't use the box at the moment because it's compiling something, as it will be for the next five days, it gives me more time to check out the latest USE flags and potentially unstable optimisation settings."

What's really funny about this is that I'm compiling right now as I write this! Somehow it's not stopping me from doing anything.

"I use Gentoo because it's more like the BSDs." "Last month I tried to install FreeBSD on a well-supported machine, but the text-based installer scared me off. I've never used a BSD, but the guys on Slashdot say that it's l33t though, so surely I must be for using Gentoo."

Never used gentoo huh? There is no graphical installer for gentoo.

"Heh, my system is soooo much faster after installing Gentoo." "I've spent hours recompiling Fetchmail, X-Chat, gEdit and thousands of other programs which spend 99% of their time waiting for user input. Even though only the kernel and glibc make a significant difference with optimisations, and RPMs and .debs can be rebuilt with a handful of commands, my box MUST be faster. It's nothing to do with the fact that I've disabled all startup services and I'm running BlackBox instead of GNOME or KDE."

It is faster. The proof is in the pudding and I've tried it on two different machines with the same outcome. You could recompile every RPM if you wanted to but why? Gentoo is built from the ground up. There is another thing too, it's called prelinking!

"...my Gentoo Linux workstation..." "...my overclocked AMD eMachines box from PC World, and apart from the third-grade made-to-break components and dodgy fan..."

So that makes you a better person with a better arguement? This doesn't even belong in the discussion.

"All the other distros are soooo out of date." "Constantly upgrading to the latest bleeding-edge untested software makes me more productive. Never mind the extensive testing and patching that Debian and Red Hat perform on their packages; I've just emerged the latest GNOME beta snapshot and compiled with -09 -fomit-instructions, and it only crashes once every few hours."

I've got a bleeding edge gentoo box, although it's not -O9 (O as in Optimization, not 0 you fool), and it has never crashed.

I could go on and on for every one of these cases but that's not the point. The poing is that everytime some idiot bashes gentoo he is bashing Linux and it does none of us any good. Who cares what distro you use? Use the one that suits you. I like gentoo for many reasons but I don't care if someone else uses or likes a different distro. Gentoo is just suffereing like everything else from it's popularity. You can argue all you want about how popular it is but the fact that there are so many anti-gentoo zealots goes to show that there's enough users to impact others who don't use gentoo.

I'm wondering...

[__aahlyu4518]

we Fink, Gentoo, & DarwinPorts

I Fink Gentoo & Darwinports as well

What do you Fink ?

Re:no way

[Tumbleweed]

To defeat the forces of evil, these are the entities that make up the Coalition of the Willing. Oh yeah. No more WMD on an Apple box! Woohoo, we're all saved! Re-elect Apple in 2004! :)

Good Timing, GenFinDar

[JavaJoint]

The timing of this announcement is no accident. Think of WWDC starting on Monday. The eyes of the tech press will be firmly fixed on Moscone Center in San Francisco; at least on the first day.

So what better time to put forth the story "we can offer Unix/Linux apps from different sources, and do it in a way where we aren't stepping on each others toes!"

This is a really positive step.

Re:Yellow Dog Linux

[Tumbleweed]

I _would_ use it, but I'm really more of a cat person.

Dogs smell funny.

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[martingunnarsson]

Hahaha, you fit into his description perfectly!

What about Apple?

[seanthenerd]

What does Apple (the company) itself think of all this? I suppose it could see it as an advantage, more apps for it's OS, but they might also see it as more competition. Strange that nobody has said anything about Apple yet, considering that it's http://apple.slashdot.org/!

RE: MS IE and competition/improvements

[King_TJ]

I pretty much agree with your statements, but I will say this much: I don't think the lack of useful changes you're seeing in IE are strictly due to them achieving a "90% marketshare".

Honestly, IE wouldn't have dominated so completely if it wasn't a pretty well "finished product". Compared to any version of Netscape I've used, IE is incredibly more stable and reliable. Netscape tends to blow up after only so much use, and can even destabilize an entire OS it runs on top of.

Many of the "innovative new features" now being added to browsers like Safari and Mozilla are, in my opinion, fluff and "nice idea, but far from a necessity" features.

Take one of the current big ones, tabbed browsing. Sure, it's nifty - but what does it ultimately add to the experience of viewing a given web page? The HTML is still rendered the same way, and that's the core function of any browser.

Maybe I'm giving MS too much credit here, but I suspect they've realized IE is a key piece of the operating system puzzle for them. They know they've achieved a stable, reliable, reasonably fast, and useful browser product for Windows. Why mess around too much with something that works, and risk breaking it further - when it's required for much of corporate America? (Heck, they're serving complete Windows applications through it with Citrix Metaframe.)

Re: rpm + apt-get

[tbuskey]

Like with fink:
apt-get install mozilla-browser?

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Doobian Coedifier]

You missed my point. It's not "his" description. He ripped it off from someone else. And it's not very insightful anyway. For every "gentoo zealot" that doesn't know what they're talking about, there's plenty of us that DO know why Gentoo is so great.

Re:Gentoo Translate-O-Matic

[Doobian Coedifier]

Once you have things to do in your life, and a worthwhile existence, you may find that you'll have better things to do than compile code from source.

Ummm...it's not like we have to sit there and watch it compile.

Re: MS IE and competition/improvements

[SilentMajority]

Many of the "innovative new features" now being added to browsers like Safari and Mozilla are, in my opinion, fluff and "nice idea, but far from a necessity" features.

I use the bookmark keywords feature of Mozilla Firebird more often than I manually type in a URL. I've setup about 7 of these to do lookups in Amazon, Dictionary, FedEx Tracking, Google, Thesaurus and more.

For example, when I type "g linux", I get a Google search result of the word "linux" using my language & results per page preferences.

And when I type "d word", I get a www.dictionary.com definition of "word".

It is an awesome feature that changed the way I used my browser in a fundamental way because it only takes 10 seconds to set one up and it works with most pages that receive parameters. I used single letters like "g" and "d" but it can be whole words like "google" or "dictionary".

As a result of this feature, I think of typing in keywords rather than URLs now. And that is a huge shift in how I use the browser.

Take one of the current big ones, tabbed browsing. Sure, it's nifty - but what does it ultimately add to the experience of viewing a given web page? The HTML is still rendered the same way, and that's the core function of any browser.

Another core function of any browser is the BACK & FORWARD navigation of the web. One thing tabbed browsing gives us is the ability to have multiple BACK & FORWARD histories--something I'd rather not give up after being using it. And having multiple windows open clogs up the task bar and consumes more resources.

Re:Do you think...

[dwerg]

Uniquestesteteststest I guess.