Re: What next?

As an OS X user since Server 1.0, I feel the need to step out of the lurker shadow. OS X does not _have_ a package management system. One of its greatest weaknesses IMHO. Installing applications is easy on OS X, by design. One of the trade offs is there are many apps that could share libraries but don't. Most are statically linked ( except for OS-provided frameworks ). Some people bitch about high RAM usage in Fedora, I think OS X is worse. Fink is a third-party application that fills a void in the base OS. It is not included in the OS, like rpm. It can't install _any_ application, only those it knows about. There is no way on OS X to ask the system what is the version of app foo, or ask it if app foo is even installed. You could look in the "Applications" Directory, but apps don't have to live there, so you can't be sure. From a single user perspective that may not be a big issue. As a system admin, that is a pain. Keeping users from installing random applications can be a _good_ thing. The a OS X .pkg format an installer depend on frail scripts to accomplish many things rpm does in an enforced, consistent way. And it uses a freakish .bom format as storage. OK, maybe the storage format isn't a big problem. There was talk on the Darwin devel list about adding a package management system, but inaction is the decision. It is a hard problem to solve. The application installation/management needs of a single-user desktop are almost opposite of a server, or a company-managed desktop. As for ease of use, users here are experienced in both OS X and Winders. Since we use Fedora too, when I show anyone "sudo yum update foo," they say, "That's it? It's that easy?" You can look to OS X for ease-of-use with installers, but it isn't as good as rpm/dpkg/ports in many ways, and some OS X users suffer because of that. At least I do. Charles Dostale System Admin - Silver Oaks Communications http://www.silveroaks.com/ 824 17th Street, Moline IL 61265