Fink & Macports Usability?

Hello

I'm considering purchasing a new MBP and am a Linux user on my home desktop computer. I use WinXP at work but haven't used OS X much at all. I was reading over the 'switcher' thread and was thinking perhaps using apps available via the Fink or Macports projects would lessen the 'there just isn't much free software available for macs' argument, but having never used either project (much less OS X) I can't comment.

So the question I put forth is...can someone please comment on their real-world user experiences with either of these projects porting Linux apps to OS X. I'd greatly appreciate it!

Thanks!
Nikolaus

 

There is actually quite a bit of very good free OS X software, just not as much as linux which is 100% free. Just do a web search for "best mac apps" or some similar term to get started.

Porting Linux code is no major thing. I use Macports with few hassles, but check first to make sure a pre-compiled binary package is not provided somewhere first. Sometimes a kind soul will maintain a package just for OSX. The major OSS apps all seem to have ready to install binary packages for download.

 

How is performance of the apps, though? Do the ports run slower since they're using a non-native X-server? It'll be interesting later in the year or early next year to see how the KDE on Mac project turns out - once the KDE apps are ported to Mac using the native Mac X-server!

I thought the idea behind Fink/Macports was that you can issue one or two commands and update all of your ports at once instead of watching for updates to the binaries. Like with apt-get:

Code:

sudo apt-get update && upgrade

Thanks for the reply!