i've yet to find a good reason to rip out os x. i made the conversion to an iBook and OSX back in february from a linux/win2k. linux because i needed a decent java platform and a packet sniffer as well as mutt, procmail and fetchmail. ideally i'd be able to get that in freebsd but the java support was a bit lacking. the win2k provided the office suite which i need. forget (star|open)office, it's simply not up to the task of the writing work that i need to do. villify MS as much as you want, the office suite rocks. os x provides all of the above. hell they ship with fetchmail and procmail available by *default*. the terminal leaves a little to be desired and pretty much anything that you need to build from a unix perspective is available. i spend all day in terminal and pretty much the only graphical application that i run is mozilla and the office applications. a cocoa version of vim just came out a little while back and i'm in heaven. if you're in the market for a laptop with pretty much everything integrated and you need good productivity apps. give the apples a serious look. the list of sites that kevin listed below is an excellent starting point for getting unix apps for os x. i'd also recommend tracking the stuff at developer.apple.com and www.darwin.org (which is really devleoper.apple.com/darwin) there's some seriously innovative stuff happening here. as a further aside - apple has demonstrated considerable clue in dealing with the open source community and aside from sun is the only company actively developing unix. when last we saw our hero (Saturday, May 25, 2002), Kevin Bullock was madly tapping out: > Okay, okay, so I'll pipe in :) I have found absolutely no reason to run > linux on my mac. Here's some sites to get you started: > > http://fink.sourceforge.net/ > http://www.osxgnu.org/ > http://wrench.et.ic.ac.uk/adrian/software/oroborosx/ > > Now in all actuality, I don't use the command line for much. There's > well-designed GUI tools (e.g. Network Utility). But it's there when I do > need it :) > > The things I had to do to move my workflow from Linux to OS X involved a > couple things: > - Getting GNUCash working, since that's where all my data is. > - Moving my web development environment (apache, mysql, php) moved over. > The first one was the hard part, since GNUCash requires GNOME. But with > a little help from #fink on openprojects, I did it. The second was easy > ? 'fink install mysql', then found a little package to make it start on > boot. Done. > > Of course, everyone's usage, needs, workflow, etc. vary. But this is the > real beauty of free software: you have the source, so you can recompile > on something other than Linux. It may very well be easier to recompile > than to try to partition, reinstall two OS's, then install the apps you > need. > > If you have troubles getting the stuff you need running on OS X, feel > free to e-mail me. > > On Friday, May 24, 2002, at 10:37 , Andy Zbikowski (Zibby) wrote: > > >On Fri, 2002-05-24 at 10:57, Terry Houle wrote: > >>Am considering trying to put a dual boot on an Apple iBook that I > >>recently > >>purchased and it is running OS X.. > > > >Personally, if I had an iBook I'd just stick with OSX, and get all the > >goodies like rootless Xserver, fink, and other good stuff. All the > >goodness of Linux and OSX (more or less) > > > >Works very well for my friend with a tibook. > > > >*pokes Kevin* chime in if you still read this list. > > -- steve ulrich sulrich at botwerks.org PGP: 8D0B 0EE9 E700 A6CF ABA7 AE5F 4FD4 07C9 133B FAFC