[rescue] ARGH

[D.A. Muran-de Assereto]

There're a lot of sites devoted to OSX out there; you might start
at www.darwin.org or www.openosx.com and start following links.
There are also some docs on Apple's support site.

I ran OSX on a Cube for a couple of months. Aqua is a gloriously
beautiful windowing system. It's not X-compatible, and takes a little
getting used to. Classic (MacOS9.2) integrates well in most cases, although
it craps out on occasion, and there are some reported compatibility
problems. Of course, if you follow Apple's recommendations, the machine
is set up as a dual-boot machine, so if there is some quirky app you must
have, well, then reboot into OS9.2.

The underlying UNIX is....different. I got my first culture shock when I
went to edit /etc/hosts, and noticed that the first line in the file is
a comment that says
"This file is only used when the machine is booted in single-user mode"
Pretty much everything is controlled through a netinfo database, inherited
from Next, so I understand. This is all fine, well, and good if one
knows the Next OS, but if one doesn't, well, prepare for a steep learning
curve.

Documentation from Apple is more-or-less non-existent; in three months of
futzing around, I found less than five relevant docs on the web. There are
a few sites with recipes for specific tasks. I never did get the Cube
integrated into NIS, although it claims it will work.

There are a number of quirks related to compiling code, largely because
of the newness of the OS. Many of the GNU tools, notably those that have
their own "configure" scripts, fail because they don't recognize the OS.
The GNU-Darwin project is working on porting the FreeBSD ports system
to the OS, but they have a long way to go.

All of the available books on OSX concentrate on teaching the differences
in the Aqua GUI to the person who knows old MacOS. The MacOS Server book I
bought discusses features that are available only in the server edition.

The OS upgrade and patch process is automated, a la Windows Update. The
download and install parts work great; the patches are not always benign.
There is no way to selectively patch the system.

In short, if you know NextStep or have time to invest, this is a really
neat system to play with. Since I am heavily overworked, it was not useful
to me, even though I purchased the setup with the same intention as Bill --
I was going to get off the Windows desktop and use OSX. I still have my
Win2K boxes, and will stick with Solaris and FreeBSD until I have more time
to learn a new, highly incompatible version of UNIX.

Dave
"The other Dave M."


> Can you recommend any useful documents on the web that describe MacOS X in
> useful terms to die-hard Solaris/Unix lovers?  I know Apple boxes use
> OpenBoot so that's one big plus in their column.  But what does MacOS X
> _feel_ like?
>
> -greg