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Running Mac OS X Panther
This volume assumes you know how to use your Mac, how to perform all the routine changes that are easily accomplished with the GUI. Davidson also assumes you don't want to know how to get a movie running as your desktop, or get an Exposé blob floating on the screen or any of the usual sort of 'hacks' or 'hints.' What he gives is a good guide to lifting the hood and performing serious mechanical work or tweaking the performance of your Mac with enough background information so that you can feel confident taking your own steps.
It was good after a few near misses to read an O'Reilly book that was once again well written, well edited, tight and crammed full of information pitched at just the right level. Davidson has done an excellent job with this book.
Davidson starts with a little history, and from the viewpoint he presents, this is not a waste of space; he spends his time explaining exactly how we arrived at the current version of the Mac OS.
Then we have a chapter titled "Lay of the Land" that explores the file system, including both the Finder view and the view you get from the command line. It also explains the four file system domains and the 'Library' directory. The third chapter is a quick (20 pages) look at the Terminal and shell.
Then we get 'Part II: Essentials,' which is the 120-page core of the book. This starts off, logically, with system startup and the login (and log out and shutdown). This is followed by short chapters on users and groups, files and permissions, monitoring, scheduling and preferences and defaults before a marvelous long chapter on the file system. Davidson goes into great detail and closely covers each of the topics, making sure that you get all the details not just 'recipes.'
Part III ("Advanced Topics") starts with a chapter on Open Directory that I found particularly useful. It includes coverage on Kerberos and single sign-on that explains it well, as well as the command-line Open Directory tools. The chapter on printing could have had a bit more guts. It covers the obvious but leaves out such joys as CUPS apart from a half-page sidebar; since sharing printers has caused me more than a little grief I would have appreciated more detail here. The final chapter on networking is better, and provides more useful detail.
It must be said that this section concentrates more on user level detail and leaves out real information on server level software and options. Given the target group for this book, and that a book has to draw a line somewhere, this is quite fair.
Davidson has picked his topics well, almost everyone will find all of Part II useful and educational. Part III is perfect for people wanting to run Panther in a corporate environment. He has balanced the command line and GUI well, pointing out where you can do a job with both and explaining the details.
Oreilly's page for the book has a table of contents and index but no example chapter. If you go to Davidson's page at O'Reilly there is a link to a short excerpt on scheduling tasks as well as several earlier articles Davidson has written for MacDevCenter.
I would recommend this book to any Panther user with a moderate amount of experience. It is not for the newcomer to the Mac, perhaps, but everyone else will benefit from this book.
You can purchase Running Mac OS X Panther from bn.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page
..that Mac OSX users now think they know 'Nix, and that 'Nix users think they know Mac now?
You can buy a multi-button mouse that will work with OSX.
Yes, but how do you replace the built-in single-button pointing device on an iBook or Power book with a built-in multi-button pointing device?
Thanks for the useful link; that's good to know. I would still prefer three buttons, but that will make using my PowerBook a lot less painful.
"you'll change your mind once you use OSX."
A buddy of mine is a Windows Admin. HE eats, sleeps and breathes Windows. He even got on me for my BSD servers over Windows ones. Then someone talked him into a Mac. Within 24 hours he was a complete convert. He actually said and I quote "What the hell was I thinking!?!?!?!?!"
Evolution or ID?
Unless you're talking about IBM keyboard nipples, PC laptops with multiple buttons are impossible to use quickly and accurately. You have to tuck your thumb all weird under your hand. Right-click-drag, for example, is incredibly difficult.
You can't do it with two hands, even if you want to.
The MacOS solution is vastly preferable, for laptops only. Click-hold brings up a context menu. If you don't like the delay, ctrl-click. There is no way you can convince me that that is more inconvenient than a two-button trackpad. If you try, I'll suspect that you're lying.
The second I hit a desk, of course, I plug in my Microsoft Intellimouse Optical. My thumb and pinky drive the cursor, while every suitable finger has a button conveniently placed. Totally different excercise than a trackpad.
There are no trails. There are no trees out here.
What you say is pretty much true for the client but the mac os x server needs some serious work IMHO.
I am waiting for the Mac OS X server administration book. The PDFs at the apple web site are lame and only walk you through the GUI.
As long as I am griping... When is Apple going to get off their ass create a ports collection for apple. For those who are wondering here is the current state of the art for mac flavor of bsd.
Darwinports: Does not resolve dependencies. Very limited.
Fink: Does resolve dependencies and less limited but still fewer ports then freebsd.
Pkgsrc: Lots of ports, resolves depencies but you are likely to get lots of errors when building them on mac.
evil is as evil does
I love the bit where he uses sudo to execute a command and then says this "Don't worry about the lines of text that will scroll on your Terminal. This simply means that the command is doing its work."
And there I was all this time worrying about things I do when I am root.
Windows is fine as long as nothing goes wrong, then you discover it's something like a cross between a Pinto and a British sports car: you have to remove the engine to replace the wiper motor and it explodes if you forget to refrib the flux transduction coil or synchronise the vernor headings... so you just throw it out and get another one instead of trying to change the oil.
After a while you get used to fixing minor problems by reinstalling the operating system. It seems normal. Then you come onto slashdot and say stuff like "I find Mac OS X, Windows 2000, and the various UNIXes about as easy to use as each other" and tag people who disagree as anti-Microsoft bigots.
But... really, you shouldn't need to do that. Honest.
You seem to fail to understand the difference between a pointing device and a combination of pointing device and keyboard shortcut. Hint: you can operate a three button mouse comfortably with one hand.
Besides, while three mouse buttons do not confuse me, five choices of non-standard function keys combined with a single mouse button definitely do. Talk about counterintuitive.
Control-click may do the same thing as a right click, but it is not a right click.
Yeah? Do a non-continous selection with one hand on your three button mouse. Open an URL in a new window/tab while using the opposite of the default behaviour of focusing.
What's your point? That there are obscure key/mouse combos that some small number of people use? What does that prove?
And how does an already unintuitive feature get better by adding another two modifier keys (Fn and Command) to the already confusing set of set of modifier keys (Control, Shift, Alt, AltGr)? Even Windows UI designers had the good taste not to use the extra keys on the Windows keyboard (Windows, Menu) as modifiers for the mouse.