[TriLUG] Bought my first Laptop--a new Apple Powerbook with OSX--With Linux software in mind I have three questions:

Benjamin Reed ranger at befunk.com
Mon Jun 3 07:57:43 EDT 2002


al johson [alfjon at mindspring.com] wrote:
> I just bought myself a new Mac Titanium Powerbook 667MHZ G4. I'm curious
> whether Linux software can be transferred from Linux to Apple's OSX system
> (which as you may recall is a version of BSD).
> 
> 1. Specifically, are there any cross compilers which can take Linux source
> code and turn it into programs that will run on Apple's OSX system??

Yes and no... it's possible to get a lot of stuff to compile, but most
packages take a few hacks to get them working.  I suggest you take a look
at Fink (http://fink.sourceforge.net/) -- it's a set of tools and packages
for installing open source unix tools on OSX.  Kind of like BSD ports, but
with debian package management, and RPM-like ease-of-packaging.  Does a
lot of the work for you.

> 2. How portable are Terminal "programs" or "scripts"  between Linux and
> OSX??? For example, how many similarities are there between the commands in
> OSX and Linux??

Very similar.  OSX's user-land tools in 10.1.x is based on 4.4 BSD lite.
The full suite of GNU tools run just fine on it as well...

> 3. If I wanted to put a version of LINUX on this laptop, which version would
> everyone recommend???

The easiest install I've had on the iBook so far is Mandrake 8.2; YellowDog
is pretty nice too (basically RedHat for PPC -- http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/),
and debian works on PPC too if you're a debian fellow.  I've had the best luck
with the "netinst" CD: http://www.debian.org/CD/netinst/.

-- 
Benjamin Reed a.k.a. Ranger Rick (ranger at befunk.com) http://ranger.befunk.com/
Is it considered bad form to quote one's self in a .sig?  -- Me



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