Editors & mac to Linux stories

[yellowdog-general@lists.terrasoftsolutions.com]

Derek, you say:

> This leads nicely into the next topic: Mac to Linux transitions. If
> there is a reason to do this, vi/vim and emacs/xemacs are it.

I don't think so it! Remember, OS X is a unix OS (Darwin, a branch
of the BSD family). The cli is there and moreover you can run X11
and apple's beautiful gui quartz, interleaved. I frequently use
vi, emacs, xemacs and nedit in OSX, as the taste takes me. I often
do ssh -X into a unix workstation and run X applications remotely.

> Mac OS X has been called "rootless" and it
> is doubtful that without root sufficient control can be established by
> anyone as well as can be done within Linux.

It is not difficult to become root in mac osx. I sometimes log into
the gui as root, and I very often sudo su - from the cli. In fact,
Apple has done a splendid job in making the unix underlayer and in
particular the possibility to become root - and really screw
everything up - invisible and essentially out of reach of joe user.
But if you know about this possibility, it is easy to find out how
to do it.

> There may be scientific and other
> tools available for Mac OS X, but they are proprietary.

There is much fantastisch stuff you can buy for OS X. There is much
fantastic stuff you can get for free. Finally, just about everything
we use in YDL coming from linux has been ported to Darwin and is easy
to install with Fink. You can even replace the finder+quartz
with kde, if the desire would take you...

This doesn't change the fact that gnu-linux is opensource through and
through so that running linux on apple's wonderful hardware has got
a lot to say for it too.

Richard
http://www.math.uu.nl/people/gill

PS. a bit OT but anyway, my favourite internet windoze jokes:

Clippies suicide note:
http://www.visar.com/index.html

The onion:
Microsoft Patents Ones, Zeroes
REDMOND, WA—In what CEO Bill Gates called "an unfortunate but necessary
step to protect our intellectual property from theft and exploitation by
competitors," the Microsoft Corporation patented...
3311 | 25 March 1998 | News
http://www.theonion.com/search.php?q=microsoft+patents

Fun with windoze:
http://www.hallikainen.org/windoze/