Fink, Xdarwin, Now what?

Koelling

Koelling

I Think Different
I've been wanting to get into the open source type stuff cause I hear you can do some really "cool" things. Looking at all the problems that people had with Fink and Xdarwin I put it off for a long time (plus the download size kept me at bay for a while).

Let me tell you, it wasn't that hard at all. I downloaded Fink, reconfigured my shell, got it working no problem. Downloaded Xdarwin, installed it, it too is running fine.

Now what? When I go to sourceforge.net there is so much stuff and so many different file types. What do I need to do to download a program and run it? What do I look for and where do I put it so I can install it with Fink? I also have the apple developer's tools and I know how to c++ from my CS class so that's no problem if I need to compile something.

Thanks a lot everyone. Also, if in your instructions you could put some cool programs (games) so while I am doing this I have something to look forward to that would be much appreciated :)
 
Well, you could do
Code: 
sudo dselect
and look through the programs that you can download with Fink. Each one has a brief description.

Look for something exciting and try it out.
 
Cool I had gone into dselect but not seen that stuff. I thought I had to download programs first but looks like there is a lot there.
 
If you go to SF most of the time their won't be Darwin Binaries that the site hosts...So all you have to do is compile the project. Most of the time it is pretty easy, but with Darwin their are problems with things like you have seen. If you need help just ask people because their are a lot of people in here that know a lot about *nix and programming, so don't be afraid to ask questions...

Justin
 
I'm not sure what I did. Somehow Fink now says that there are no acess methods. Has anyone seen this? is this like a server shut down or did some configuration go dead on me?
 
I got everything running again in possibly not the best way, but it worked. I just deleted the /sw folder and reinstalled fink.

Got stuff running now so I am En Fuego :)
 
sorry I didn't respond in time. It sounds like you had changed the access method in dselect. If this happens again (or someone else has the same problem), you can do 'sudo dselect' to launch dselect. Options 0 and 1 let you change the access method and the list of servers that dselect uses. The correct settings are listed on Fink's web page (in the FAQ, if I recall correctly).
 
Unfortunately I don't think that would have worked in my position. It said <No Access Methods available> I didn't have any options in that menu and since I didn't know what I changed elsewhere I didn't know what to change back.
 
If you want to check out a pretty cool open source program, I just love XEphem - it's an astronomy program with views of the sky that let you access images from actual sky catalogs, and do all kinds of other astro-geek things. You can download it from Apple's OSX downloads under Unix - it has a slick installer that runs from OSX. Once you do this all you have to do is go into XWindows, open a terminal and type xephem.
 
How do you access Fink once it's installed? It created the /sw directory, but there's no application program, and you can't access if from the command line. I saw a screenshot of a graphical, not command-line program on Apple's UNIX downloads page. Help!
 
It may be that there is a GUI interface in the download from the apple site but the way I'm familiar with is through the terminal. It is somewhat counter intuitive as the command is dselect. This should be used with root so you would type

sudo dselect

and then give the necessary password. I don't know how an aqua face to this would look but this way works well. Honestly, if you are afraid to open the terminal, you are going to be majorly handicapped in my opinion.
 
Hey chenly - I have been working on a set of simple and clear step by step instructions on setting up XWindows on OSX using fink - complete with screen shots. Using these instructions you can have XWidows up and running in a little over an hour and most of that time will be spent watching installs. Right now it is in a word file - do you want me to send you a copy? It is a rough draft, but all the steps are there. In a nutshell all you have to do is download two files (fink and XDarwin), install them, run dselect (the hardest part mainly due to a funky UI and hundreds of choices) and create two files in your home directory (.cshrc and .xinitrc).

Five months ago I had no idea how to do this or an understanding of how it worked. Without this forum I would still be lost, but after reading hundreds of posts and asking scores of newby questions I am getting it. Almost every person on this forum is well meaning and very generous with their time and help, but some are *extremely* sophisticated computer users and might not appreciate how intimidating or confusing some of this stuff can be. Writing these instructions is my way of paying back all the folks who helped me (jcpowers in particular) - by helping someone else.

Though someone might argue that one has to pay his or her dues before running X (I'm not saying anyone on this forum thinks this way), this is the kind of thinking that contributes to keeping Linux as an elitist geek-only club. I think the more people who get X on OSX up, the better it is for X, OSX and the Mac in general. However, once you get it running, there is still a very long way to go, but I think delaying gratification isn't always the best thing.

Again, I meant to work on these instructions some more, but I think it is clear enough. Look me up if you want to give it a shot. Thanks.
 
By the way, I did install XFree86, also downloaded from Apple, but the stupid thing launched every time I tried to go to the Dock or Finder to launch a program. Worse, the programs wouldn't launch after X was finished launching. The only way to do it was from the Apple menu, which contains the recently used applications. Obviously, this isn't a viable option since you can't get to any new applications, so I deleted X. Any thoughts, people?
 
Originally posted by chenly
Welcome to Darwin!
[msp-**-***-**:~] [username]% sudo dselect
sudo: dselect: command not found
[msp-**-***-**:~] [username]%

I've reinstalled Fink twice; there were no errors. Does anyone know how I can get this thing to run the way Apple's screenshot looks?
Click to expand...

Did you modify your Path as specified in the Fink Read Me?
 
Did you modify your Path as specified in the Fink Read Me?
Click to expand...

Paraphrased:

Open a new Terminal window and type:
cd ~/
pico .cshrc

The text editor Pico will open in your terminal window.

Type this line:
source /sw/bin/init.csh

To save this file and get out of the editor, type:
Control-O
Return
Control-X

Close the Terminal window.
 
Noooooo, you are not an idiot! I don't think anyone ever involved with developing anything for Linux or Unix won a prize for clear communication skills - spoken, writing, UI... you name it, they seem to thrive on making things complicated, plus they always forget to stress the one little thing that is really important - "Oh, yea, you only needed to do _, gee I guess those seven wasted hours of your life must have been hard on you, but hey, look on the bright side, you'll never make that same mistake again!"
 
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