Installation WITHOUT fink
 

Can somebody either tell me or point me to where I can find information on how to install 1) Xfree86, and then 2) and new windowserver without fink?

Thanks a bunch.

Gabe Taubman

Try it the hard way
 

Gabe

Sorry you had problems with fink. I won't point you to the really easy downloads as I don't follow their ethics. I give credit where it is due.

1) With that in mind Apple - Downloads - UNIX Apps & Utilities will get you to an easy install of XFree86.

2) Sorry this is a hard one and you WILL need a compiler and probably lots of thinking and reading and studying to get any thing from Index of /x11/windowmanager to work for you.

The window managers tarballs will probably have to be put into a directory by themselves and then uncompressed with Since you don't have fink use tar instead of gnutar. Then you will probably have to If you are actually magically charmed this will work. Otherwise do a Edit the configure script or setenv in your shell and try again and again and again.

The really hard part will be finding and compiling all the dependencies. You will probably get this done more quickly with a large team of programmers working with you.

Good luck (sincerely)
Willy

zimwy,

You can get information and download the latest XFree86 (4.2.0) here:

http://www.xfree.org/

or

Install XFree86 4.2.0 and XDarwin from the Xonx project installer, here:

http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/

For a rootless window manager you can try OroborOSX, download from here:

http://wrench.et.ic.ac.uk/adrian/software/oroborosx/

(Remember that in order to use OroborOSX you will obviously need to have the X Windows system (XFree86 and the XDarwin application) already installed.)

Good luck.


Cheers...

WillyT,

Your information is confusing, especially for a beginner.

The easy way for zimwy, is to use the installer from the Xonx project, it doesn't get easier than that.

That will install him the new release of XFree86 4.2.0 and the XDarwin application without any fuss.

If he needs a guide, he can download the excellent 'XFree86 install guide' written by RobGriffiths from the MacOS X Hints site.
(Although not really up to date, it will give him a general understanding of what to do).

Also, the default window manager with the X11 installation is twm. Although is pretty basic, he can customize his own .twmrc file. There is a system-wide file under:

/etc/X11/twm/system.twmrc

And he could modify the last few lines of the ~/.xinitrc file to look like this:

----------------

# start some nice programs

twm &
#xclock -geometry 50x50-1+1 &
xterm -sb -sl 512 -geometry 80x25+0+380 &
xterm -sb -sl 512 -geometry 80x25+550+0 &
xterm -sb -sl 512 -geometry 80x25+550+380 &
exec xterm -sb -sl 512 -geometry 80x25+0+0 -name
login

---------------

And then,

<<Another good option for a window manager is OroborOSX. It basically works like a standard double-clickable Mac application, runs rootless so that you have easy access to other applications, and also has controls in the Mac menu bar.>>

Cheers...

I found this place to download Xfree.. it worked fine for me.

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Xwin/xfree86/

Its very easy to do. Download the 50 meg package and the small 300k package and double click on them to install.. And thats it.

It has tons of other stuff too :)

Sorry the time change makes me grumpy
 

Its just that I don't know of ANY easier way than fink to get all this stuff to play well together.

And their apt-get setup doesn't require compiling as it will download the binarys.

If I still sound grumpy let me know cause I'm up past my bedtime.

WillyT,

Yes, fink is the way to go. Me too, many hours sitting in front of the box...

Cheers...

Well, I used to be a Fink user too, but I have abandoned it. Why? Well, I recently had to reformat my HD and reinstall everything. No big deal, usually... but if I want to install the GIMP on Xfree86, I can't with Fink (by default). It looks for outdated binaries that no longer exist. YOu can tell it to try different mirrors from all over the world all night long and never find binaries it can use.

If the Fink project can't keep current with it's mirroring system, it's value is greatly diminished. Maybe it's just me, but since the project creator left Fink it has been a downward spiral.

Vanish,

Most probably, ...surely, it's you.

You said that recently you had to reformat your HD and reinstall everything. (But you don't tell us why) And you try to blame it on fink, not on you?

Get real man, fink couldn't install the 'GIMP'?

Fink couldn't find the binaries all over the world?

And because of that, then, you deleted fink?

I can't believe you couldn't handle more than that, so I'm going to suppose you are a smart person, so then:

What do you want, to sell us a CD with a GIMP installer?

You seem to be one of those people who judges free sofware at VersionTracker with just one star, because they don't like the interface color.

But as far I can guess, you are probably part of a commercial selfish enterprise who wants to put Fink down, like OpenOSX.com which used Fink to build the first release of their GIMP CD and refuse to acknowledge that properly.

I for one, and I know of hundreds of others, that happen to be most grateful and respectful of the efforts of a few software developers who work on their free time to continuosly develop fink and give it out for FREE.

Development never stopped after Christoph Pfisterer departure, on the contrary, is all well, alive and going strong. Just visit the fink-users forum. You might learn something. Like making the most basic installation of the GIMP.

And vanish, I have installed nearly 300 packages with fink, and not even once, I had to reinstall everything.


Cheers...but also some booh... to you

So not using fink is a lesson in pulling your hair out?

I've seen some programs that I would love to run, but being new to all this I either don't get what version of Unix I have, and how I would go about installing the programs from source.

There're of course other ways besides Fink to install things. It's just a matter of choice. For me, working with Fink was painless and I learned quite a few things on the way. I wrote in the above post in April, that I had installed nearly 300 packages, now the quantity of packages I installed with Fink, is over 700. And quite frankly, I don't think I could have done it so easily without this wonderful tool.

If you have Fink installed, to install from source it's quite easy, just run:
'fink install packagename'

Let me know.

Cheers...

Here is my web page for doing exactly that:

http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/%7Ewgscott/xtal/page1.html


Advantages:

1. Binary installation (not currently available with fink for 10.2.x).

2. Backups are modular (save the installer package), back up the /sw directory as a single self-contained unit


Disadvantages:

1. You have to type fink install system-xfree86

2. You have to update manually.



Functionally speaking your fink installation couldn't care less.

wgscott,

Thanks, but...some of your instructions will work "only" in MacOS X 10.1.

Your link page is very confusing for a beginner. In fact you are telling people to download binaries with Fink, when there're no binaries yet available for 10.2.

Yes, you mention somewhere this fact in your page, but is quite messy. Much better is your other page at:

http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/%7Ewgscott/xtal/page3.html

In this one, you clearly explain at the beginning in your "Temporary Note for 10.2 Fink Installation" :

"....However, some of the stuff I have written below currently won't work. _As of today, you can't yet use apt-get to install binary (pre-compiled) packages"...But for now, PLEASE READ THE FINK HOME PAGE AND FOLLOW THEIR INSTRUCTIONS."


Cheers...

Yes I know I sound stupid, but I'm just not getting it. Here is what I want to install that is not part of fink's package list.

http://snaught.com/glabels/source/glabels-0.4.6.tar.gz



Is it as simple as typing "fink install glabels-0.4.6"? No that's not right, it said no package found. Gawd, I need a book or something!

Untmdsprt,

With Fink you can only install Fink packages.

If you run 'sudo fink list' you will get a list of all the packages that are available for you to install with the 'fink install <packagename>' command.

If you would like to have packages that don't yet exist, you can put a request in the 'package request tracker' linked from the main fink page (http://fink.sourceforge.net).


Cheers...

Since OSX.2
 

The plain and simple fact is that Fink suX since OS X.2 came out. What has been updated, has been botched. Anyone trying to do a NEW install of fink via bootstrapping will have many problems.

Now you, of course, have had no problems either because you did an upgrade, or perhaps you are a geek saint blessed with a maniacle prejudice towards "good intentions" rather than accuracy and useability as applied to software.

Granted, I am sure that when the "new" Fink comes out, it will prove as dependable as the version for 10.1. But until then, I wouldn't recommend it to anyone but techno-masochists..., or perhaps an unliked brother-in-law.

Glanz,

You are quoting my post made in April when we were all using 10.1, in that time, you could still use apt-get and dselect to install binary packages, besides installing from source. Much before MacOS X 10.2 came out. It didn't get any easier than that.

I see you are talking about installing in 10.2. So the two posts, don't really fit together.

And you are right, I didn't installed Fink from scratch, I upgraded Fink to 10.2, in my main machine. But, in an iMac in my home network, I installed from scratch in 10.2 without any problems.

It seems your experience was really difficult, but I can assure you that many people I know have made a new Fink install in 10.2 and it's working quite well.

Whatever your problems are with Fink, if you would want, I would gladly guide you to make a new Fink install and would help you to solve step by step any problems that come out.


Cheers...

OK excuse me.... And thank you very much for the offer of help!!!! :) especially after I came off like the old grinch that I am! I get some pretty strange error messages and many of the necessary packages simply do not install via bootstrapping. In fact, some of the necessary packages seem to have been taken off the cvs inventory. What happens is that after an attempted install, following the site bootstrapping instructions to the letter, I end up with a directory full of incomplete tarballs and no Fink. I have done this five times already. When I get to the "fink selfupdate-cvs" step, I get the equivalent of a "what the heck are you talkin' 'bout" message, which further states that Fink is simply not on my system and that there is no such cvs.

So I installed DLCOMPAT et al to go the X86/Darwin route the hard way. I have been compiling my booty off [I must be a masochist], but everything works fine, that is, what little selection there is available for 10.2......

Oh well! I really liked Fink. In fact, Fink was the main reason I bought an iBook. Anyway, I have a fully functional X-Free Complete Root/Rootless combo install with WindowMaker, all the editors I'll ever need, including the newest emacs and Xemacs, Pico, Joe, Vim etc., all the latest pertinent libraries, etc.... I even have the latest AbiWord working perfectly, Dictionaries, Thesaurii etc [or is that thesaurussessessess?]

So I may try again to record the error messages, but that's work because I'll have to allow pathing to an "/sw" directory by hashing a lot of pathing files, then redo them after I dump the "sw" and the Fink again. It would be a pain to clean up unuseable Fink pkgs from, if you know what I mean "/usr/local" hehe.

I would have liked to see the error messages. Without them, I really can't say what went wrong with your installation.

But anyhow, it seems you have already installed all what you need and it's working quite well for you.

Well, my offer stands, whenever you would like to install Fink from scratch in 10.2, let me know.


Cheers...

Great! and thanks again! I'll try again tonight or early tomorrow morning and this time I'll record the error messages. I'd really like to get Fink up once again. When I had it working, I used OS X only to connect before changing to full XFree mode.

BTW there's a great little driver download from the Apple Darwin site [about 6 megs of diverse drivers, inclucing connextant modem drivers]. With the modem driver, copied to the appropriate created directory, Fink iBook users may connect directly via KPPP from full X-Free86 mode instead of connecting from OS X first. I'll get the tweak and instructions together this week and post that too.

BTW, the reason I liked Fink so much is that I am an old Debian user from waaaaayyy back...., since the very first release.