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

[Roberto J Dohnert]

On Mon, Jun 03, 2002 at 01:46:46AM -0400, al johson 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??

Although many of the same tools are available with the developer tools
CD the structure of OS X apps are very different.  I only bought a
Powerbook for Cocoa but I have since gone to GNUStep under Linux which
is based on the old Openstep standard the same that is used in Cocoa

> Incidentally, I've discovered that O'Reilly's new OSX book (in the
missing
> manual series) has a super intro to using the Terminal in OSX for
beginners.

Yes it is a great book.

> I'm told many people consider it better than other attempts to do this
for
> LINUX, which raises a second question:
> 
> 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??

I use it but I personally do not care for Mac OS X,  I consider Linux to
be a much more innovative OS, The commands in OS X and Linux are
basically the same, except in Linux you dont have netinfo and hostinfo, 
most scripts from FreeBSD and NetBSD can be run from Mac OS X terminal
programs have to be recompiled from source

> Finally, I have one last question:
> 
> 3. If I wanted to put a version of LINUX on this laptop, which version
would
> everyone recommend???

Yellowdog Linux.  Yellowdog is a superior PowerPC linux.  But Debian is
available as well as Mandrake and Suse.