Slashdot Mirror
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
The Dell optical USB mouse works with OS X 10.3.x without drivers also... but won't work with an IBM ThinkPad with Windows XP Pro. Go figure.
..that Mac OSX users now think they know 'Nix, and that 'Nix users think they know Mac now?
Umm, no. The "average" Mac user only wants to use his/her computer efficiently. These people don't consider "knowing" the computer as more important than actually using it for work.
The only people who are big UNIX geeks running Mac OS X came from other *NIXes like Linux or BSD. These people have a right to assert they know UNIX because in most cases they do. In turn, anyone who can figure out UNIX can figure out the Mac overlay in no time at all. (hint: it's simple for a reason)
I suspect you were trolling, and I bit.
-- Fighting mediocrity one bad post at a time.
Don't forget the Apple mouse gets a pretty good price on eBay so you usually come out ahead.
well, i can relate to your friend.. since i am usually one to agree with people when they say "it's too good to be true" with computer technology.... and i was once told asked by a windows user why i make using a mac sound too good to be true...
i really didn't know what to say because i never did realize that i was praising the OS.. it just comes as a suprise to me now, since i use OSX as my #1 OS, that windows users can accept applicaiton lockups/freezes, viruses, security holes on a regular basis and go on about their way like nothing happened.
i sold my "l33t" PC within days of buying my new G5.. and have no plans of ever switching back to using a PC OS.
not a troll comment at all.. just agreement with the statement above..
It is the case that in several macOS X application (most notably Carbon emacs, but there are others), the 'simulated' right click (i.e. ctrl+click) gives you a contextual menu, but a physical right-click with a three button mouse does something else. This is how everything should work, IMO. The sooner apple releases a mouse with optional buttons, the better.
(I don't know what a mouse with optional buttons would look like, but it'd be cool)
for my 12" powerbook G4 HOWEVER since I found THIS I don't even bother anymore. The right side of the trackpad is vertical scroll. The bottom edge is horizontal scroll. I set a finger tap in the lower left corner to right mouse button click. I set expose up to "choose all apps" and "clear off desktop" with taps in the other corners. With practice, it's a lot faster than a mouse.
For every annoying gentoo user, are three even more annoying anti-gentoo crybabies. Take Yosh from #Gimp for example.