[BearcatSandor]

Folks,

This is my first Mac-realted post on any forum! I'm a newbie at Mac stuff, so I ask for your patience, but I'm an experianced GNU/Linux user (and winblows user *shudder*).

As a audio enthusiest, it's come to my attention that it's time for me to get a G5, as soon as i cna save up the cash on my pityfull pay. However, coming from the World of the Pinguin, i have some questions. All these questions can assumed to be aimed at Panther or Tiger as that will be out by the time i buy.

1. I am intimately familiar with the bash shell. How comfortable will i be at a Mac command line?

2. How does package management work? What's a dmg file? How long does it take for a package to be updated (generally) when a security warning is issued?

3. There will be some Linux apps that I'll need to run. Most will have Mac equivelent, but for those that do not, can i open a gnome app with in Tiger or do i have to have the whole X11 server running in it's own window?

4. What version of X does Tiger/Panther run? I don't mean a version number, i mean what flavor? It is Apple's own implementation or the same one the XServer created? I assume it's not xorg.

5. One of the Linux apps, I'm going to need is something called gstreamer. It's a library the allows you to put plugs-ins into an audio stream, so that your audio player does Amibisonic processing (for example). Check out http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/mod...st-editor.html
Is there a Mac equivilant for this thing?

6. Is is possible to play DVD-Audio or SACD discs on a Mac.

Thanx a lot folks for helping me out. My head spins when i think that i may be able to run both mac and linux apps. The best of both worlds!

Happy Compiling!

Bearcat M. Sandor

[spiky_dog]

1) 10.3.x uses bash by default. i chsh'ed to tcsh since that's what i'm used to, so there's choice aplenty.

2) dmg is disk image. apple is a bit slow with their automated Software Update mechanism, but you can always download source and ./configure, make, make install for any particular package you want updated.

3) apple's X server is rootless, so its windows will look more or less like mac windows. find someone running matlab on mac os x to see how this looks.

4) http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/

5) no idea

6) dvd-a is supported in dvd player, i believe. i don't know about sacd support.

[wadesworld]

I'm not sure whether there's a misunderstanding or not, but you cannot run Linux apps on OS X unless there's a OS X-native version available or you can get the source to compile.

Check out the fink package management system for a huge library of precompiled apps. http://fink.sourceforge.net

Wade

[BearcatSandor]

As far as running Linux apps, yeah i understand that. I guess i was talking about the fact that quite a few of the cli tools i use, can just be compiled and installed on Bsd as easily as on Linux.

Yeah, the fink looks like great stuff.

As far as the DVD-Audio's playing in the dvd player, what i mean is the high-resolution layers. The same question applies with SACD. I'm sure there is a way to do it with the awesome Protools stuff, but...wow that stuff is pricy!

I think Mac and I are going to get along just fine. However, I don't think there are *any* stores around me that even have a G5 for me to play with . I do live in Montana after all.

Bearcat

[larkost]

Originally posted by wadesworld:
I'm not sure whether there's a misunderstanding or not, but you cannot run Linux apps on OS X unless there's a OS X-native version available or you can get the source to compile.

Check out the fink package management system for a huge library of precompiled apps. http://fink.sourceforge.net

This clarification needs some clarification... Linux binaries won't work on MacOS X, but many linux applications compile just fine on MacOS X. It is just like many apps will compile on FreeBSD (even without he linux compatibility layer).

On the GUI side, many of the toolkits have been ported, either through Apple's X-11, or by native versions of the toolkits (such as QT). It is a complicated story, so it is often better to take it on a case by case basis. The problems are normally some dependency that has not been ported rather than app code.

Fink is a good source of finding applications.

To add my notes to specific questions:

2) dmg is like a much easier to use .iso. Apple does not really have a package management system at this point... at least not one that you would recognize as such. There has been development on it... but nothing solid released yet. There are systems that work fine on MacOS X, such as Fink and Portage. Most of the end-user apps are self-contained and updating them is a drag-and-drop operation.

Apple does provide timely updates for important security holes... but make no attempt to keep at the newest version of everything. You can do this manually, but if you are manually replacing system-provided binaries you run the risk of breaking something when Apple updates it.

5. I am not sure that this is going to work out of the box. Apple has their own system for doing something similar on a programming level (CoreAudio) if I am reading the site correctly, and they also have their own audio mixing products: Logic Pro and Logic Express. They are commercial apps, but if you are serious, then they are probably a good investment.

[BearcatSandor]

As far as package management goes, let me ask this. If i install a program, how easy is it to uninstall said package? How does a mac avoid 'dll hell'?

Is there a program/site that will search the programs I've installed and update them for me, even if it's just the ones provided by Apple?

I learned today that Itunes will support plugins. Can you use effects plugins with it? I'd love to get ambiophonics working. What are the professional plugins called on a Mac (on Linux, their LDSPA)? Will those work with itunes?

In the Powermac literature I've been reading it mentions that the PowerMac G5s have optical digital outputs. Are they actually ADAT? If so at what bitrate/frequency do they opreate at (24/192)?

Is it just me or is the Mac more popular in Europe than the States? Why is that? Does it trouce the Amiga as nuch as it appears to?

Thanx for the kindness folks!

Bearcat

[utidjian]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
As far as package management goes, let me ask this. If i install a program, how easy is it to uninstall said package?

Only if it is a bundled package. If it uses an installer and writes to several places in the filesystem then it is very difficult to uninstall. Some apps are "bundled" (all the files associated with that app are located in a single folder called 'nameofapp.app'). Just drag it tot he trash and it is uninstalled. If however the app uses an installer to get installed and writes neccessary files to several places in the filesystem there is, yet, no utility I know of to remove all those files cleanly. There are projects like RPM for Darwin (http://rpm4darwin.sourceforge.net/) but it I have never tried it and it has not been widely adopted. Fink basically uses apt-get and while it requires that the Xcode devel tools be installed it is completely separate from the rest of the system. Merely deleting the /sw folder and all its contents removes the fink system entirely.

How does a mac avoid 'dll hell'?

By putting apps in bundles.

Is there a program/site that will search the programs I've installed and update them for me, even if it's just the ones provided by Apple?

SoftwareUpdate.app and softwareupdate (GUI and CLI respectively) will do all that for Apple supplied apps. Some, not all, thirdy party apps have have their own updater.

I know nothing about the rest of your questions.

[larkost]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
As far as package management goes, let me ask this. If i install a program, how easy is it to uninstall said package? How does a mac avoid 'dll hell'?

Is there a program/site that will search the programs I've installed and update them for me, even if it's just the ones provided by Apple?

This is a complex question... and it all depends on what you are talking about. On one level Apple does have an extraordinary system to allow for versioning of libraries (called frameworks) so that multiple versions of the same library can exist on the same computer, and different Apps can link to the version they were compiled with. This level is very like what you would see on any other *nix system. Sadly this system is not used much by people outside of Apple.

But, most GUI applications made specifically for MacOS X (where you will spend most of your time) are self contained in a specially formatted folder called a bundle. All of the executables, related files such as images, specialized libraries, and other files live in that folder. So if you want to upgrade the app, you just toss the old folder, and replace it with the new one. Unistalling these Apps is as simple as dragging the folder to the trash.

For software that is distributed as part of the OS there is a built in system to update it with patches that Apple releases. It is a simple system that just keeps track of what patches have been installed through a system of receipts, and thus if you mess around with the files yourself you can break it (it makes lots of assumptions that are good ones, but you can trip it up if you just randomly change things).

Then there are the ported apps from the *nix world. In this segment there are a ton of different ways of doing things, basically there are congruts to FreeBSD's port system (Fink), the unmanaged way (./configure, make , make install), a port of Gentoo's system, a rpm's system, etc... Each of these methods has its own rules... and the managed ones tend to build their own directories to keep out of the way of other systems.

Then there are the very few MacOS X GUI programs that install kernel extensions, and thus need their own uninstaller program. These are not many of these, and they tend to warn you up front.

Oh... and preference files go into ~/Library/Preferences, so if you really want to clean out an app completely you might have to remove the data files it places there... and maybe in ~/Library/ApplicationSuport... but both of these places tend to be harmless if left alone.

I learned today that Itunes will support plugins. Can you use effects plugins with it? I'd love to get ambiophonics working. What are the professional plugins called on a Mac (on Linux, their LDSPA)? Will those work with itunes?

iTunes is a fairly simple Application, you could probably abuse the plugin system to do almost anything... did you look at the CoreAudio link I gave before?

In the Powermac literature I've been reading it mentions that the PowerMac G5s have optical digital outputs. Are they actually ADAT? If so at what bitrate/frequency do they opreate at (24/192)?

They are TOSLink connectors, just like it says in the specs.

Is it just me or is the Mac more popular in Europe than the States? Why is that? Does it trouce the Amiga as nuch as it appears to?

Actually Apple has a relatively small market in Europe compared to the US. On the Amiga front... well it does have the advantage of being a live commercial venture compared to a mostly dead fanatic-supported one... You will have to be more specific, but time has marched past the Amiga, most of whom's innovations have either become commonplace or been obsoleted.

[BearcatSandor]

I looked at the CoreAudio link. Yea, it looks really cool. I gave ita second read, did a little more research and answered the rest of my audio questions.

I m a little worried about the lack of a packaging standard. I'll just have to keep an eye on it and back things up frequently (which i should do frequently anyway)

I'm spoiled by my linux distro, which uses a gentoo like system of downloading the source code, and tracking every aspect of the install, so that versions can be rolled back or re-applied, installation dates can be monitored and full dependancy checking with conditional re-compilation when nessesary.

Hmm..still if the mac packages are managed by OS X itself, and most programs install into a single directory (or i can find the programs files with the dearch tools) that's good enough for me.

I take it there is no /etc for global configs?

Thanx again folks! I'm looking forward to this.

[larkost]

On the package thing... once you get into it you will be surprised at how not an issue it is. For those few programs you install that are basically command line only, Fink will do that job more easily than gentoo does for you now, you will just have to fire it up manually from time to time. But I would bet that you won't really care after the first week.

And the self contained app thing is really astounding once you get used to it and then use other OS's... Everything else is just so, well... inelegant. I have been working on bundling up a few command line apps with nice GUI's and in the package format so that I can put them on a USB thumb drive and walk around with them... really mind blowing.

And there is a /etc.. and it is used for many of the things that you would use it for in any other *nix... it is just that most of the programs that you will wind up using are MacOS X GUI apps, and use the MacOS X ways of doing things. /etc is there if you need it (/etc/apache/httpd.conf), as is almost everything else you can think about in *nix (except rc.d... /Library/StartupItems and cousins... remarkable similar, but with real improvements).

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
Folks,

This is my first Mac-realted post on any forum! I'm a newbie at Mac stuff, so I ask for your patience, but I'm an experianced GNU/Linux user (and winblows user *shudder*).

As a audio enthusiest, it's come to my attention that it's time for me to get a G5, as soon as i cna save up the cash on my pityfull pay. However, coming from the World of the Pinguin, i have some questions. All these questions can assumed to be aimed at Panther or Tiger as that will be out by the time i buy.

1. I am intimately familiar with the bash shell. How comfortable will i be at a Mac command line?

2. How does package management work? What's a dmg file? How long does it take for a package to be updated (generally) when a security warning is issued?

3. There will be some Linux apps that I'll need to run. Most will have Mac equivelent, but for those that do not, can i open a gnome app with in Tiger or do i have to have the whole X11 server running in it's own window?

4. What version of X does Tiger/Panther run? I don't mean a version number, i mean what flavor? It is Apple's own implementation or the same one the XServer created? I assume it's not xorg.

5. One of the Linux apps, I'm going to need is something called gstreamer. It's a library the allows you to put plugs-ins into an audio stream, so that your audio player does Amibisonic processing (for example). Check out http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/mod...st-editor.html
Is there a Mac equivilant for this thing?

6. Is is possible to play DVD-Audio or SACD discs on a Mac.

Thanx a lot folks for helping me out. My head spins when i think that i may be able to run both mac and linux apps. The best of both worlds!

Happy Compiling!

Bearcat M. Sandor

1. bash is the default shell, but you can use basically every other shell out there: korn shell, tcsh, etc.

2. You have two options: fink and darwinports. I would advise you to use fink, because of its easy update mechanism (it works apparently just as it does with Debian's apt-get, although I have no Debian experience, I can't tell you).

I still wish there was a working system that works like FreeBSD's ports collection (and I am familiar with FreeBSD). If you want to know how the low-level layer of MacOS X looks like, try either Darwin or FreeBSD.

3. You can use X11 right now, either Apple's original port or you could use fink's instead. I don't know about the versions as I don't need X11 apps.

4. No idea, check with fink or apple.

5. No idea what you're talking about since I'm not into audio. For streaming, my guesstimate is that you can find either an equivalent or you can keep on using the same software. Apple offers its QuickTime Streaming Server for free.

6. I haven't heard of any computer being capable to read SACDs. If you have an SACD player, you could probably hook it up to your Mac (using the optical out).

Maybe I can tell you a little about me so you might get an idea where I'm coming from.

I have a FreeBSD machine as a server/toybox and an iBook as a primary machine. I use command line tools all the time and my server doesn't have X installed. I enjoy tinkering a lot, but sometimes I just want things to work, especially when the environment changes a lot (network configs for work, universtiy and home). I can use plug-and-play with most printers, even though I would know how to configure them on the command line. But it's much easier if you can just plug it in and print.

The Mac has a lot of professional apps out there that aren't available for Linux, especially in the audio or video sector. Sure, you have to pay for them, but it's no different/cheaper in the windows world. Macs are usually built quite solidly, and even if you don't like OS X, just put Linux on them

[BearcatSandor]

Originally posted by larkost:
On the package thing... once you get into it you will be surprised at how not an issue it is. For those few programs you install that are basically command line only, Fink will do that job more easily than gentoo does for you now, you will just have to fire it up manually from time to time. But I would bet that you won't really care after the first week.

And the self contained app thing is really astounding once you get used to it and then use other OS's... Everything else is just so, well... inelegant. I have been working on bundling up a few command line apps with nice GUI's and in the package format so that I can put them on a USB thumb drive and walk around with them... really mind blowing.

And there is a /etc.. and it is used for many of the things that you would use it for in any other *nix... it is just that most of the programs that you will wind up using are MacOS X GUI apps, and use the MacOS X ways of doing things. /etc is there if you need it (/etc/apache/httpd.conf), as is almost everything else you can think about in *nix (except rc.d... /Library/StartupItems and cousins... remarkable similar, but with real improvements).

Excellent. I was worried that it might be similar to a winblow installation sytem (ie no system).

Everything in its own directory? Does that mean that you have duplicates of libraries around? If 2 programes use the same itunes library do they each have a copy of thier own directories or is this handled through soft links?

What is a macintosh package called? Whats the extension (ie how do i know if I'm looking at one online).

Thanks. This is getting more exiting!

[BearcatSandor]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:

5. No idea what you're talking about since I'm not into audio. For streaming, my guesstimate is that you can find either an equivalent or you can keep on using the same software. Apple offers its QuickTime Streaming Server for free.

<snip>..... But it's much easier if you can just plug it in and print.

The Mac has a lot of professional apps out there that aren't available for Linux, especially in the audio or video sector. Sure, you have to pay for them, but it's no different/cheaper in the windows world. Macs are usually built quite solidly, and even if you don't like OS X, just put Linux on them

As far as gstreamer, it's not meant for internet or network streaming. think 'streaming' as in sed. You take a stream like an mp3, quicktime video, dvd, or wav file and you apply DSP effects to it before it is sent to your soundcard.

Your comment about think being available and things 'just working' is one of the thinks I'm looking forward too. I love Linux and being in the Open Source community. It's great that i have months of uptime, and I feel a lot of pride in beeing L33t.

But i have to be honest too. It is a struggle. I do enjoy fixing stuff, but dependancies break a lot. Everytime i update program B due to a security warning packages M-Z break and need to be recompiled. It woudl be nice to buy a professional soundcard and *know* that it is supported.

In short, Linux works great and I'm proud of the community, but i spend more time fixing and getting things working, and trying the latest hot window manager then i do *using* it.

Panther and Tiger seem like the best of all worlds. I can forgive Mac for having some prorietary stuff and not being truely Open.

As a side note, it seems that no-one complains much about them. They seem to acknoledge that they are not completely Open, yet imbrace those of us in the OS movement.

Personally I have no problem with a company protecting thier intrests as long as they are not trying to club us like a certain conpany in Redmond!

Bearcat

[wataru]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:

What is a macintosh package called? Whats the extension (ie how do i know if I'm looking at one online).

Mac apps are never put online "naked." You won't know exactly what you're getting until you download the .dmg, .sit, .zip, .gz, etc. file, open it up, and see what's there. It could be a .pkg-style installer, it could be a drag-and-drop-installable .app bundle, it could be a proprietary installer app. Most consumer-oriented apps, especially shareware, are drag-and-drop installs. System-level stuff is usually a .pkg install.

[BearcatSandor]

Originally posted by wataru:
Mac apps are never put online "naked." You won't know exactly what you're getting until you download the .dmg, .sit, .zip, .gz, etc. file, open it up, and see what's there. It could be a .pkg-style installer, it could be a drag-and-drop-installable .app bundle, it could be a proprietary installer app. Most consumer-oriented apps, especially shareware, are drag-and-drop installs. System-level stuff is usually a .pkg install.

Excellent! Thank you.

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
As far as gstreamer, it's not meant for internet or network streaming. think 'streaming' as in sed. You take a stream like an mp3, quicktime video, dvd, or wav file and you apply DSP effects to it before it is sent to your soundcard.

Your comment about think being available and things 'just working' is one of the thinks I'm looking forward too. I love Linux and being in the Open Source community. It's great that i have months of uptime, and I feel a lot of pride in beeing L33t.

But i have to be honest too. It is a struggle. I do enjoy fixing stuff, but dependancies break a lot. Everytime i update program B due to a security warning packages M-Z break and need to be recompiled. It woudl be nice to buy a professional soundcard and *know* that it is supported.

In short, Linux works great and I'm proud of the community, but i spend more time fixing and getting things working, and trying the latest hot window manager then i do *using* it.

Panther and Tiger seem like the best of all worlds. I can forgive Mac for having some prorietary stuff and not being truely Open.

As a side note, it seems that no-one complains much about them. They seem to acknoledge that they are not completely Open, yet imbrace those of us in the OS movement.

Personally I have no problem with a company protecting thier intrests as long as they are not trying to club us like a certain conpany in Redmond!

Bearcat

Ditto, that's why I'm on the Mac. Right around the time OS X Beta debuted I was seriously considering to switch to Linux full time. I had a PowerBook G3 at that time, and LinuxPPC wasn't quite up to it yet (e. g. no power management). Then I saw OS X and I knew where I wanted to go.

Then I found out that FreeBSD was the user land reference platform and so I dug into it. Personally, I love the ports collection, IMHO I like it better than fink. But FreeBSD is not really a Desktop OS despite all comments to the contrary, and my latest adventures with Linux (SUSE) tell me that it got really `heavy' (meaning it has a large RAM and CPU footprint ).

With OS X, you can do most things in the command line if you are aware of some differences in the directory structure.

[BearcatSandor]

Originally posted by OreoCookie:
Ditto, that's why I'm on the Mac. Right around the time OS X Beta debuted I was seriously considering to switch to Linux full time. I had a PowerBook G3 at that time, and LinuxPPC wasn't quite up to it yet (e. g. no power management). Then I saw OS X and I knew where I wanted to go.

Then I found out that FreeBSD was the user land reference platform and so I dug into it. Personally, I love the ports collection, IMHO I like it better than fink. But FreeBSD is not really a Desktop OS despite all comments to the contrary, and my latest adventures with Linux (SUSE) tell me that it got really `heavy' (meaning it has a large RAM and CPU footprint ).

With OS X, you can do most things in the command line if you are aware of some differences in the directory structure.

Ports collection. I've read of that..isn't that like apt-get for bsd?

hmm..YAIM (yet another installation method)?

[OreoCookie]

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
Ports collection. I've read of that..isn't that like apt-get for bsd?

hmm..YAIM (yet another installation method)?

Well, you have to do some stuff manually with FreeBSD. You have to update the ports tree manually. There are tools who do the upgrades of all installed apps then. I always thought apt-get was for Debian, though …_

I like it better, because you can browse the whole collection much more easily.

[BearcatSandor]

yes, apt-get is part of Debian..i meant "like" as in a it works like Debian's apt-get.

No problem doing it manualy though.

[lenox]

Ah, you're a fan of gentoo?

In that case, here you go!

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/macos-guide.xml

[Angus_D]

Sorry, I haven't bothered reading the entire thread so some of this might have already been said.

Originally posted by BearcatSandor:
3. There will be some Linux apps that I'll need to run. Most will have Mac equivelent, but for those that do not, can i open a gnome app with in Tiger or do i have to have the whole X11 server running in it's own window?

Tiger isn't out yet. X11 has been running "rootless" (i.e. you can layer X11 windows amongst OS X windows as seen in the screenshot at http://www.apple.com/macosx/features/x11/) for years now.

4. What version of X does Tiger/Panther run? I don't mean a version number, i mean what flavor? It is Apple's own implementation or the same one the XServer created? I assume it's not xorg.

Probably best if you call it "X11" to remove the abiguity between the X Windowing System and Mac OS X

Panther's X11 is based off XFree86, with some Apple extensions. The source code they use is available from their Darwin site.

Tiger is not yet available and any information not made available on apple.com is under non-disclosure and thus can't be discussed. There was a post to the X11-Users mailing list about how they weren't going to disclose future directions or whatever a while back, IIRC.

I'm pretty sure both Fink and DarwinPorts have packages for the latest XFree86 and Xorg packages, if that's what gets your juices flowing.

5. One of the Linux apps, I'm going to need is something called gstreamer. It's a library the allows you to put plugs-ins into an audio stream, so that your audio player does Amibisonic processing (for example). Check out http://gstreamer.freedesktop.org/mod...st-editor.html
Is there a Mac equivilant for this thing?

Sounds like Audio Units. See the relevant developer documentation.

[Angus_D]

Originally posted by lenox:
Ah, you're a fan of gentoo?

http://www.funroll-loops.org

[NordicMan]

An interesting conversation.

What is the difference between BSD and linux, that linux may be more desktop ready than BSD? Do not the Gnome and kde 'environment'/interfaces work with both? Is the installer different, that linux may be more desktop ready, or does X work better for linux? Or have I misunderstood?

[macmike42]

For the audio hacking stuff, I can't believe no one has mentioned AudioHijack and AudioHijack Pro. Bear in mind I have only limited experience with using this software once to clean up a voice track quickly, so YMMV, but the possibilities seem limitless.