AOL Instant Messenger

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macdaddy42

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As much as I hate to say it, I need AOL Instant Messenger that runs under Mac OS X. The AOL version isn't carbonized, and 90% of the time it's the only reason I have Classic open. If anyone finds a version that is Carbonized or made in Cocoa or whatever else it takes to not need Classic, I'd really appreciate a response. Thanks.
 
I tried to get the UNIX AOL IM to run. I am not very unix fluent so I may be doing something wrong.

I followed the instructions on the AOL IM Unix page and got the the final step of running AIM. When I type it into the terminal window, I get:

aim: Command not found.


now what? any ideas?
 
I am not very Unix fluent at all, I've used Linux for like 10 minuts, but I couldn't figure it out. So, I have no idea how to help you on the Unix AIM thing. And to add to it all, AOL doesn't even offer support, so you're SOL. Sorry.
 
I have not tried this yet, but here a few Unix tips.

Terminal windows are case sensitive, so make sure its "aim" not "AIM" etc.

second, unless you added aim to your path, it will report command not found unless u are in the directory of the program.

do an "ls" to see what it is called. it it is aim, and you are in the same folder of the app, try typing "./aim"

Just type whats in the quotes


"now if my PB would just finally arrive..."
 
I have been using epicware's Fire for AIM. It works pretty well, but it doesn't give as much feedback as I like. Once I figured out whether I was connected, I started chatting immediately. It is really cool to have anti-aliased text in an IM window.

jonathan
Powerbook 2000 - 196MBytes RAM
OS X Public Beta
http://jonvw.com
 
If anyone knows anything about *nix, then could you help out here? Please post a step by step, retard-proof, list of how you can get the Unix AIM to work under OS X. Thanks.
 
What "UNIX" AIM are you guys talking about? On AOL's web site, I see a Linux Beta client. That's for i386 type machines running Linux, not for Mac OS X at all!

In general, many command line applications designed to be portable among various UNIX or UNIX-like operating systems will easily _port_ to Mac OS X. You have to have the source code to the application and recompile, possibily changing makefiles and/or source code to get those applications to run. It's not hard to do for many beginning programmers if the port is easy, but it certainly isn't for most end users.

Even if you had the source code to the Linux client, you then have another problem... that client relies on the X Window GUI system, not Mac OS X's GUI mechanisms at all.

Anyways, right now, run AOL's Mac client inside of Classic or run Eric Peyton's Fire.app. Eric even distributes source code to Fire, so if there is something you don't like about, feel free to enhance it.

..Bill Chin

 
As I read the posts on macosx.com, I see a growing problem with MAC OS X. For those of us familiar with UNIX, the transition is going to be easy, but for those not familiar with it, it is going to be harder. I wonder how MAC OS X will go over with the MAC public when OS X is officially released with UNIX as the foundation of the OS? For those of you who do not have these two books, I strongly recommend UNIX in a Nutshell by O'Reilly & Associates and UNIX Power Tools. You are going to need them.

Also, UNIX and LINUX are not the same thing, although they are close. Most UNIX/Linux source distributions can guess which computer you have when you run the standard ./configure configure to build the program, but don't expect it to be perfect in all cases or to "point, click, and install." Sometimes it takes a little effort to get a program working in the UNIX/Linux world.

Good luck.

Daniel
 
I use Linux-Mandrake on a peecee at work, and I
was happy to see that Fire looks and works
a whole lot like the AIM client I use at
work (gaim)... except it's much prettier
(thanks to Quartz)
 
I don't understand why someone wanting to use Mac OS X would have to learn ANYTHING about UNIX. The BSD layer of Mac OS X PB is an optional install and it is my understanding that it will be like this for the final release.

If someone wants to use their computer to the maximum and be a hard core power user then I highly recommend learning the ways of UNIX and open source, but to say that one must learn this stuff in order to have an easy time with OS X is premature and not the intent of this new operating system.

The coolness about Mac OS X is that it can be used by hard core UNIX geeks and people that simply want a computer to surf the Web and do e-mail. It appeals to both ends of the computer user spectrum.
 
ok, this might be kind of a dumb question...but how can I expand the openup file when it's first downloaded?
 
To expand stuff (that's in .tar.gz or some deriative) I generally find it's easiest for now to use the terminal.

FOR NEWBIES:Just open the terminal, and "cd ~/" to the folder where the downloaded file is. To do this, first type "ls" to show the folders within the base level of the drive, which for example might read "Documents Applications". If the saved file was inside Documents in some other folder, then type "cd ~/Documents" and then "ls", which now should show you the contents of the Documents folder. When you finally get to the folder where the file you want to decompress is, type "gnutar xzvf [full name of target file]". If you did everything right it should decompress everything into the same folder as the compressed file.
 
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