[SATLUG] I Mac and Me

[Brad Knowles]

On 5/6/07, Sean Carolan wrote:

>  I should have been more specific.  The last time I worked from the
>  command line on a Mac the default shell was tcsh.  I prefer bash but I
>  have heard that newer versions of OS X include bash by default?

I prefer tcsh, but bash is also present in /bin/.

Other than that, I can't really say very much.

>  Most flavors of Linux have better command line tools for package
>  management and dependency resolving.  It would be great if Mac had an
>  equivalent system to yum or apt, where you could grab new F/OSS
>  software with a short command, instead of compiling from scratch.

Package management in the sense you're talking about is not 
appropriate when you're talking about native Mac OS applications. 
They all have their own installers, or you just click-n-drag the 
binaries, or whatever.

There is no Apple-imposed package management scheme, and I don't 
think there ever will be.  Package management is just not something 
that Mac OS X tries to do.  If you want that, try Fink, or one of the 
other third-party tools.

>  I'm also not a huge fan of the OS X built-in Terminal app, finding
>  gnome-terminal to be more customizable to my needs.  When you have
>  several ssh sessions open in terminal windows, it's nice to have them
>  all in tabs instead of separate windows.  This is not specifically a
>  command-line issue, but it is related since you have to use Terminal
>  to get to the command line, unless you install a 3rd party app.

I've tried multiple different terminal programs on Mac OS X, and none 
of them have worked anywhere remotely as close to as well as 
Terminal.app.  Okay, Terminal.app doesn't support running things in 
tabbed mode, but I've never heard of a program that did, at least not 
until now.

All the alternatives I've tried on Mac OS X have taken a great deal 
more CPU & RAM in order to run, and provided a lot fewer features for 
their much heavier price.

>  Nothing against Macs though.  I may get one after my current system
>  kicks the bucket.

Don't get me wrong -- Mac OS X has plenty of things that I feel are 
wrong or need serious improvement.  I don't think it's "perfect" by 
any stretch of the imagination.

However, if there are areas in which others think it's weak, I want 
to try to understand what those are, and see if I agree.

-- 
Brad Knowles <brad at shub-internet.org>, Consultant & Author
LinkedIn Profile: <http://tinyurl.com/y8kpxu>
Slides from Invited Talks: <http://tinyurl.com/tj6q4>

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