Which X11?

Gray Fox

Registered
Greetings,

I have decided to make the jump to OS X, Gotta new 933MHZ on order!
( Status: being built ). I am stepping up from a Mac 7600.

I have a low (33kb) connection to the internet so large downloads are
not feasible.

I want to get X working asap. I ordered the Developer Tools CD from
Apple this morning.

Does the latest X11 4.2 release support the GForce 4MX?

There seem to be two basic paths to the traditional unix software

1) MacGnu project: Offer a CD! and it appears to be compatible with the Mac OS X installer.

2) Fink-- Elegant installer , does not appear to be compatible with the MacOS X installer and no CD. My slow internet connection does not bode well here...

Could some kind soul offer me some words of wisdom... I have some experience with unix having managed various unix systems for a number
of years

Thanks

Gray Fox
 
Go with fink, you should never have to pay for anything in the *nix world unless you donate money to a person/company. I believe that MacGNU is another macosx.forked.net that just sell ports of free software (but i could be wrong). Anyways, fink is really great and it could take a little time to download the tarballs, but after it finishes downloading the tarballs it just unpacks and compiles them, so you should be good. The alternate thing you could do is try to compile them yourself. It can be sorta tough but you get good support in the forums and I know a little bit about porting *nix stuff to X so if you need any help just email me or talk to me on a messenger or anything. Good Luck with your new mac!

Justin
 
Originally posted by jcpowers21
Go with fink, you should never have to pay for anything in the *nix world unless you donate money to a person/company. I believe that MacGNU is another macosx.forked.net that just sell ports of free software (but i could be wrong).

Justin

Is this a personal philosophy? It doesn't jibe with the FSF free software phylosophy:

Many people believe that the spirit of the GNU project is that you should not charge money for distributing copies of software, or that you should charge as little as possible -- just enough to cover the cost.

Actually we encourage people who redistribute free software to charge as much as they wish or can....

Non-free programs are usually sold for a high price, but sometimes a store will give you a copy at no charge. That doesn't make it free software, though. Price or no price, the program is non-free because users don't have freedom.

Since free software is not a matter of price, a low price isn't more free, or closer to free. So if you are redistributing copies of free software, you might as well charge a substantial fee and make some money. Redistributing free software is a good and legitimate activity; if you do it, you might as well make a profit from it. (http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/selling.html)
 
That was my personal opinion about using Fink our just doing it yourself. I believe that their is no point in selling free software because their are enough people on Mac OS X and other *nix forums that could help compile something, so paying money for something free is just pointless. I also think that at the GNU philosophy site when they talk about selling, I really just think about the many Linux Distro's, not little things which are always included in the distro's and are pretty small. All of this is just an opinion though, so just do whatever makes you happy.

Justin
 
Hi,

I just installed XFree86 sucessfully on our dual 450 G4 Mac at work. Go to http://www.mrcla.com/XonX/ and you get a nice OSX installer. It is big however, 57MBytes.

Not sure about the GForce4 support though.

My hassle is now getting a decent window manager.

bruno
 
Originally posted by jcpowers21
That was my personal opinion about using Fink our just doing it yourself. I believe that their is no point in selling free software because their are enough people on Mac OS X and other *nix forums that could help compile something, so paying money for something free is just pointless. I also think that at the GNU philosophy site when they talk about selling, I really just think about the many Linux Distro's, not little things which are always included in the distro's and are pretty small. All of this is just an opinion though, so just do whatever makes you happy.

Justin

I think I just misunderstood you. Lately, I have encountered a lot of people in Mac flavored forums telling the Free Software newbies that charging money is wrong, or evena GPL violation. Being a natural butinsky, I feel obligated to intervene. The "community" suffers enough FUD without our own members spreading disinformation, however well intentioned.

I agree 100% that as a user I wouldn't want to pay for free software. Hell, I don't want to pay for proprietary software. Sadly, my bosses don't agree. I usually can't get them to sign off on free solutions unless they come from a commercial vendor with a support contract. For instance, we need new DNSs. My recommendation is BIND 9.2 over Debian or FreeBSD on generic internally redundant PIII based machines. My boss however, has his heart set on an "appliance" solution. The thing is BIND/RedHat/Intel based, so the technologies are all the same. But it comes in pre-installed black box with one stop vendor support, so he assumes the total cost of ownership is lower. Adjusted purchase price is about four times as high. I think my counter will be Yellow Dog briQs in dual high availability clusters. That way I can make my TCO argument on low power consumption. I can run eight of those on the juice one Intel server sucks.

The upside to high cost free software is that many commercial vendors of Free Software, such as RedHat, contribute mightily to the resource pool.

I digress. Our friend should look at Fink, but also the GNUDarwin and Darwin Ports ports of the FreeBSD Ports system. Which is best is pretty open to debate.


http://elisa.utopianet.net/~rlucia/devel/darwin_ports/
http://gnu-darwin.sourceforge.net/ports/
 
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