Search Results for mac os x
Excellent list of open source Mac OS X software
Open Source Mac is a cool web site for two reasons. (1) The recommended
software is excellent, top-notch stuff. The recommendations just make sense. I mean, how could you go wrong
with Adium for IM, DTV for TV downloading & viewing, VLC for videos, Handbrake for ripping DVDs, and Shiira for
browsing? And there's plenty more where that came from. And (2), the web pages on this site looks so darn Mac OS X-ish.
Lots of white space, big, beautiful icons, and large text. Talk about a marriage of form and function! If you use Mac OS
X, you owe it to yourself to go here and check out these programs. You'll discover something cool, I promise.
(Check out all of our posts on Mac OS
X.) ...
My buddy Ed gives advice about Ruby on Rails
My buddy Ed is a great programmer, & in the last many months he's really gotten deep into Ruby on Rails. Periodically he emails the CWE-LUG list about Ruby, & his info is always good. Here's some of those emails for your edification & enlightenment.
Here's a presentation that Ed did for the Unix Users Group here in St. Louis:
<begin Ed>
Hello. I know its been 1.5 weeks since my tutorial on Ruby at the general SLUUG mtg, but finally the slides are up.
http://www.cwelug.org/~edh/RubyForNubys.sxi
An OOo Impress document. Feel free to convert it to HTML or PDF if you want.
It is released under a Attribute/Non-commercial/Share-Alike Creative Commons licence. That means you can edit it and redistriute it as long as attribution is maintained and it is released under an identical license.
<end Ed>
Then Ed had this to say about developing Ruby on Rails for Mac OS X users (even though I'm pretty sure Ed uses Linux).
<begin ...
Apple publishes documentation for running X11 in Mac OS X
Mac OS X is really Unix with a pretty candy-colored Mac shell, but many users don't realize that (and it's a
testament to just how damned good Apple did its job that most users never have to realize that). For those who
want to embrace the yummy Unixy goodness underneath Aqua, there's X11, a real live working X environment for Mac OS X.
Apple has now published a loooooooooooong document -
"Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X"
- that explains in great detail how to set everything up for X11 and then use it and apps that run under it. Heck, it
even tells you at the end how to set up and run OpenOffice.org! It's absolutely fantastic that Apple is doing this. I
mean, just think about it: with one machine, you can run Mac OS X, Unix (X), and even Windows with Virtual PC. Now
that, my friends, is sweet. ...
More open source for Mac OS X with DarwinPorts
If you use OS X - and more and more nerds are (I speak as a nerd here) - you may be familiar with
Fink, an open source project that makes it easy for users to download a
wealth of open source Unix software & install it on their systems. Fink is cool, but there's another project worth
investigating if you use OS X: DarwinPorts. The DarwinPorts project's
main goal is to provide an easy way to install open source software on Mac OS X. In particular, Fink & DarwinPorts
both install their software in a separate directory far from the main software that's installed on OS X, so it's a very
safe way to play with the humongous range of open source Unix software that's out there.
(Check out all of our posts on Mac OS X and
Fink.) ...
Sharing a file system among Linux, Mac OS, and Windows
When you're dual-booting (or triple-booting, or …), or when you're sharing a portable USB2/Firewire hard drive among
different boxes, all of a sudden, file systems become important. NTFS isn't supported by Mac OS, to my knowledge, and
while you can read it under Linux, writing is still iffy. Fat32 is supported by everyone, but that's kind of a sucky
filesystem. So what can you use?
Ext2 isn't a bad choice, since it's supported under Mac OS X, Linux (duh), and even Windows, to some degree.
Mac OS X - Ext2fsx
http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsx/
Windows - Explore2fs
http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs.htm
Mac OS X & Linux can read & write Ext2; Windows, however, can only read. However, with all OS's you get
support for large partitions and large file sizes, which is great. Too bad you don't get journaling … ...
Open source SFTP client for Mac OS X
We all need a nice SFTP GUI, & if you're a Mac OS X user, you should take a look at
Cyberduck. Features include an
Aqua interface, drag-and-drop, transfer queue, synchronization, support for Keychain, Bonjour & AppleScript,
integration with text editors, & much, much more. And it's free! This looks like a good one. Try it out!
(Check out all of my posts on SFTP.) ...
Killing a Mac OS X machine
My buddy Robert Citek has been interested, over the last couple of years, in ways to kill Unix machines. In other
words, he tries to create scripts that will bring *nix machines to their knees. His interest isn't malicious - he's one
of the most honest guys I know - but he thinks that by understanding where the weaknesses are, it will better enable
him to shore those up and turn weaknesses into strengths. Robert knows Linux really, really, really well (actually, he
knows RPM-based distros really well; Debian-based distros are still something new to him), but he bought a Mac OS X
laptop a year ago, so now he's focusing on ways to kill Mac OS X (which is still Unix, remember). Here's his latest
report, from the CWE-LUG mailing list:
<Robert's email>
I was able to successfully kill my Mac last night with the following script [Scott: remove the blank lines from the
script; this blog's wysiwyg keeps inserting them]:
perl -le '
@foo=qw(hello) ;
for (my $i ; $i<100 ; $i++) {
...
A violation of the GPL?
Hey, kids! Wanna run that ultra-cool Mac OS X on your Windows machine? Wow! Neato! Then just head over to a company
called MXS & buy CherryOS, which allows you to do just
that: run Mac OS X inside Windows. It's only $100 - yes, $100 - plus the cost of Mac OS X that you have to buy
yourself. Does that not sound great or what?
Actually, it's complete & utter crapola.
OK, I don't know for certain that it's complete crapola … it just seems really certain that it's utter crapola. It
seems, in fact, like MXS is violating the GPL by taking an open source project designed to allow folks to run Mac OS X
on x86 hardware, called "PearPC", and re-jiggering it and releasing it
under a new name, without releasing any of the code they've added. Now, if you ask MXS, they'll deny it totally: "No
sir, not us! We wouldn't dream of doing that! No way, no how."
Unfortunately for MXS, DrunkenBlog, in an excellent, detailed, insightful, lengthy post titled
"The pits in CherryOS", pretty ...
Open source video players for multiple platforms
Someone on the CWELUG mailing list asked, "Can anyone recommend a FLOSS video player that works under Windows? Under
Linux? Under OS X? Under all three?" Following is my answer.
For Windows, Media Player
Classic is pretty good.
VLC runs on EVERYTHING.
"VLC (initially VideoLAN Client) is a highly portable multimedia player for various audio and video formats
(MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, DivX, mp3, ogg, ...) as well as DVDs, VCDs, and various streaming protocols. It can also be
used as a server to stream in unicast or multicast in IPv4 or IPv6 on a high-bandwidth network."
VLC supports a ridiculous variety of platforms: Windows, Mac OS X, BeOS, Linux (oodles of distros), Zaurus, WinCE
(AKA PocketPC) ... & more.
However, the best general media player (but not for DVDs) on Windows is
Quintessential Player, which is free but not open. Poo. :(
(Check out all of my posts on media
players.) ...
Free fonts!
Looking for free fonts? Heck, who isn't? We can always use more fonts, whether we use Linux, Mac OS X, or Windows!
If you want to snag some cool free fonts, check out dafont. Everything is
nicely categorized & organized. I know you'll find something you like!
(Check out all my postings on fonts.) ...
Firefox 1.5 RC2 out!
You know what this means - Firefox 1.5 is comin' out any day! In the meantime, if you're feeling like keeping ahead
of the Joneses, go get it! Available for
Windows, Mac OS X, & Linux … of course.
(And yes, I wrote a book about Firefox -
Don't Click on the Blue E!:
Switching to Firefox - that you might find interesting.)
(Check out all of our posts on
Firefox.) ...
"Why isn't BitTorrent faster?", he asked.
I'm on a mailing list for web developers, & recently one of the guys on the list told he was using Tomato
Torrent (a BitTorrent client) on his Mac OS X box to download a 1.3 GB file, and it had taken almost a day so far,
& he was less than half way there. His point: "I thought the whole point of Bittorrent was to make the process
FAST. I could have FTP'd 1.3 gig much faster."
Here's my reply: ...
Praise for Ubuntu
Russell Beattie is a guy whose writings & thoughts I respect. He's
got a post on his blog titled "Ubuntu is Amazing"
that - obviously - praises Ubuntu for its ease of use. It also explains why he's uncomfortable with his Mac OS X box,
and why Linux may be a better choice for him. If you'd like a smart nerd's thoughts on Ubuntu, take a look at Russell's
post.
(Presumably what he says also applies to Kubuntu …)
(Check out all my postings on Ubuntu and
Kubuntu.) ...
Harden your *nix box
Even though we use Linux, BSD, or Mac OS X, which are generally better configured and safer out of the box than
Windows, we still need to be careful and keep security in mind. Good configurations help, but even better is knowing
how to harden your machine even further, and what to do if - crap! - you think you've been compromised. With that in
mind, take a look at "1001 ways to
harden Linux", an excellent, long list of links & resources about *nix security. It's worth a bookmark, &
definitely worth several hours of reading.
(Check out all of my posts on
security.) ...
DTV: Open source video casting viewer
Scott has recently been posting about podcasts and podcasting. Well, it's going to go one stage further as video
casting becomes the next talked about technology. DTV is an interesting OS X
application which lets viewers subscribe to video channels, much like you can subscribe to podcasts. DTV is being
ported to Windows right now, and the source is
available for anyone who wants to take a look. If you're doing any development on the Mac, the code might be worth
a look, as DTV has a very slick interface.
(Check out all of our posts on video.) ...
