You mentioned some stuff about the lib files being a bit dated. Do you know of any plans to get them up to snuff? BTW, you talked a little bit about the compiler and things associated with it. Once I can scrounge up enough to get a PowerBook G4, I plan to attempt to become a halfway decent programmer for the system, so any feedback on development tools (and any oddities that go along with them) would be appreciated. On Sat, 27 July 2002, steve ulrich wrote: > > > highly recommened! it's a great OS. in the current incarnation it's > freebsd 4.2 for the unix layer (mach kernel underneath). a lot of > stuff builds right out of the box. > > i made the "switch" to OS X back in february on my work laptop from > triboot linux/fbsd/win2k i got sick of having to reboot to win2k to > edit large word/excel documents. > > i've reached my holy grail - a unix box with a real office > implementation and a nice interface (i'm still grappling with how much > i like aqua or not) with really good development tools. 98% of the > unix functionality that i want (it ships with some old curses libs and > some oddities in the compiler but most folks won't notice that). > > the enterprising user can replace the parts under the hood with the > work that's being done on the darwin side of things and there's a > flourishing freeware and shareware community. > > apple did a really good job with shipping the components that people > expect to find on the unix side of things. a really good emacs port, > include files in reasonable locations (really well done here) and > other stuff. on the user space side of things they ship a lot of nice > stuff. hell, fetchmail and procmail were in the default installation. > this shocked me. fink makes getting your fix of other tools and newer > libraries a snap and the folks doing XonX have been churning out > really good code. > > there are some rough spots. i've alluded to the fact that some of the > libraries are a bit dated, not all of the elements that it would be > nice to have documented have been documented and/or put into the > darwin side of things. notable amongst this are some of the driver > elements. (i'd like to know how they're interacting with the wireless > hardware) i'm still not happy with the integration of netinfo (a > NeXTism) and the rest of the authentication world. printing has some > real oddities associated with it (this will be addressed with the > introduction of CUPS in OS X 10.2) the release notes are skimpy on > details regarding what they're touching under the hood. the terminal > application leaves me itching for xterms in a big way and sometimes > the wireless authentication and the driver interaction can be > interesting on the LEAP side of things. i miss having as many > keyboard shortcuts as i used to for applications but that seems to be > the mac way and since i spend most of my time in terminal it doesn't > matter. > > i bought an iBook to see how well i'd like it figuring that if i > didn't really care for it i wouldn't have all that much tied up in it. > from a hardware perspective it's the best laptop i've ever touched and > i've used a lot of them. i consistently get 4.5-5 hours of battery > life and that's with real work taking place over that time period. i > never shut it down i just close the lid and it goes to sleep instantly > and comes back to life instantly. it's amazing. > > > when last we saw our hero (Saturday, Jul 27, 2002), > Matt Waters was madly tapping out: > > Has anyone here ever had the opportunity to use MacOS X? I've been a > > Mac user for most of my life, and would like to know if anyone here > > has any feedback about it. > > > > --Matt Waters's Infinite Wisdom #18: "Firecrackers, gasoline, and > > bored youth do not mix." > > > > New wisdom every week! > > > > -- > steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org > PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC > _______________________________________________ > Twin Cities Linux Users Group Mailing List - Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota > http://www.mn-linux.org > tclug-list at mn-linux.org > https://mailman.mn-linux.org/mailman/listinfo/tclug-list --Matt Waters's Infinite Wisdom #18: "Firecrackers, gasoline, and bored youth do not mix." New wisdom every week! ------------------------------------------------------------- Sign up for ICQmail at http://www.icq.com/icqmail/signup.html