GIMP, Fink, Free86 and OroborOSX
 

Hello!

I have very little knowledge of Xwindows. I would love to have GIMP (among other Xwindow programs) running on my Mac as I have no access to programs such as PhotoShop / Painter, etc.

I've heard that Fink is some kind of install / package manager. I know that Free86 is the Xwindows system. I read nothing but good things about OroborOSX.

For someone like me, who doesn't know all that much about UNIX - what is the safest and easiest route to take, to install GIMP?

So far from what I gather, it would be to install FINK then FREE86 then OROBOR then GIMP - is this the correct order of things?

Thanks for any tips,
Jacques

yep. you've got it. search the forums and you'll find plenty of threads on the topics. prepare to do quite a bit of reading. you're going to need to arm yourself for the experience.

to save some time, investigate fink's dselect/apt-get commands so you can download the pre-made binaries rather than run the hours of compiles that come with the other fink install facilities.

Jacques,

Like MervTormel said, that's the way to do it.

You can download fink from here:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php

After the fink installation, you can install in this order, the xfree86-base and the xfree86-rootless packages by running:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install xfree86-base
sudo apt-get install xfree86-rootless

I will recommend you read carefully the info in the following pages:

The Fink FAQ's web page
http://fink.sourceforge.net/faq/index.php

and the Fink Usage web page
http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/bundled/usage.php

Then you can go on to install 'The Gimp' and OroborOSX if you want.

If you have problems, let us know.

Cheers...

I have only had bad experiences with fink, so I chose to installed MacGimp without it.
It's really easy: Just download the MacGimp file, which shall include the XFree86, and click on the install. It's possible that the MacGimp file doesn't include the newest versionof XFree, and if it doesn't you must download the newest version from SourceForge. I do believe it's also possible to do it the other way around. Just note that if you install MacGimp and XFree you can't install fink afterwards (at least it says so in the readme file of fink).
Good luck. :)


Kris

Kris,

Yes, this is typical of macosx.com members, most of them can't handle fink.

When you want I can help you to do a succesfull installation. Let me know.


Jacques, don't feel discouraged.

Thanks to fink I have installed more than 350 packages and growing.

It's a wonderful tool and it's free and easy to use (if you do your homework).

The installation of 'THE GIMP' is quite straightforward.

Most of the people who had some problems with it, was because they didn't do their homework before installing (read the FAQ and usage before using fink) and they didn't want to learn something new, they just wanted the fast lane.

Please give it a try, and let us know if you need any help.


Cheers...

:p I doubt my membership at macosx.com had anything to do with the failure of the installation.. :)
I'll let you know when I will try to install it again. Oh, btw, what is the real advantages of using fink?


Kris

On the one hand: Sao, don't insult the guys, they've been through a trauma recently.

On the other hand: Kris: how can fink get screwed up? It seemed about as simple as pie to setup and use.

Third hand: the reasons one uses a package manager are:

A) one knows where things are going (at least with fink)
B) one gets configuration (version control) management
C) uninstalling things is easy and fun if needs be (follows from A & B)
D) Nice people write GUI's for them, like Fink Commander.

Craig and Kris,

It was not my intention to insult anybody. If my statement was misunderstood, then I want to apologize. I know they have been going through a lot lately.

I just spoke of my own experiences about judgements of fink I read many times in the macosx.com forums, which are generally negative without demonstrating any clear reasons. And I'm talking about statements coming from people who are supposed to help others with their problems, and their negative impression of fink seems to permeate the forums.

If they will show me a fact that fink is really bad, I will probably be the first to stop using it.

That Kris chose to install MacGimp is perfectly okay.

What is not helpful, is to talk about a bad experience with fink without presenting the evidence of what went wrong and presenting the proof of why fink didn't work, in order that we could all learn something from it.

BTW Kris, If you don't understand the advantages of using fink, how can you speak about having had bad experiences?

Why discourage others if you don't understand the subject?

I will advise you to learn more about it before trying to help.


Cheers...


PS: If you are really interested to know what are the advantages of using fink (in addition to what Craig shared), I might be able to help you. Let me know.

Fink installation
 

I gather from this conversation that Fink is the way to go, thanks for reference to Fink Commander as well - I enjoy GUIs even though I started out with CLI (may my Amiga rust in peace!)

Once I gather a few moments together, I'm going to try this all out - I look forward to trying out GIMP and other xWindows programs..

I will definately post feedback!

Jacques

I don't believe you are helping someone by only talking about the pros. That is, however, neither the way development happends, nor the way new thoughts come to life.
I do believe you're right about one thing; I should probably have been more specific about my problems with fink, and I'll try to be clearer in the future. :)
But then again, the question was not about fink, but about the safest and easiest way to instal MacGimp, and I was simply posting a solution to that question...

Jacques: Please keep us updated. :)

Kris

That's easy. If you can't install it for one reason or another, that's a bad experience. It doesn't mean that you have experience with it other than the failed installation. It also doesn't mean that you know exactly what fink does or can do.

surely, nothing is quite that easy. installation may have failed for numerous reasons, some of them not the fault of you or fink, e.g., full disk (arguably, your own fault), failed download, non-vanilla commands in your path, sun-spots.

your bad experience doesn't translate to the automatic nay-saying of a product to discourage others from attempting it. i'm not saying that you have proclaimed "fink bad" in the past, but that is some of our experience with the fink bashers, and the point sao was trying to make.

sao, don't swing at this pitch in the dirt.

I don't consider this a pitch in the dirt at all.

First off, I haven't had any problems with Fink. I don't use it much, but that's not an issue.

Second, Kris originally stated that MacGimp is another way to do things without using Fink because Kris had problems installing Fink.

That's all.

I'm sorry if there are bad feelings towards others who claim Fink is evil. I don't think that my or Kris' posts are anything to do with that, and it seems to me like sao understood that as well.

Oh, and when I said "That's easy", I meant that explaining how you can have a bad experience without being able to install the program is easy. If I spend 14 days installing a new OS because it's so difficult and user-unfriendly (which I am not saying Fink is, this is just a hypothetical example) I'm more likely to say that I've had a bad experience with that OS. No matter what experience I may have with the OS after that. And no matter what the root cause of the OS installation problems may be.

We've seen a pile of hypotheticals; anyone care to give a concrete example of a problem with installing fink so we could try to reproduce it and see what happened? Please include pertinent version information.

Thanks!

And best of luck, Jacques!

Folks - it's all about FINK!
 

Fellow UNIX friends,

Wow. I haven't used CLI much since my old Amiga 1000 (on that machine, I loved tooling around with it - never touched the lousy GUI that Commodore so destroyed), this revisit has been outstanding.

The FINK package installed with no problems, quite simply. I am thoroughly impressed at it's depth and ease of use so far. I still have alot of documentation to go through to get a better understanding of how it works - must I download the GIMP through FINK to install? Which files exactly? I might end up answering my own questions..

I want to stick with installing binaries, sorta edgy about compiling source code for now - must I install the Dev Tools CD? I'd rather avoid it if possible. If I do not and an install requires it, will it break the process or safely inform me that it's needed?

I want to install xWindows now, but I noticed this in the FINK documentation:

Does the above mean I should go ahead and install XFree86 without using FINK? I had the impression that FINK would manage it for me.. how did you guys handle it? What windows manager have you folks chosen and why? (BlackBox? Gnome? OroborOSX?) Any of these in particular have advantages over another? Any to absolutely avoid? Is there a clear recommendation?

Thanks so much for all the help, looking forward to hacking away at this again soon! :)

Jacques

Jacques:

If you already have fink installled, there are two ways to go about installing gimp:

1) Using apt-get. This will download binaries, it is quick and you don't need to compile anything. Make sure you have the most recent version of apt-get by typing

sudo apt-get update

then to install gimp type:

sudo apt-get install gimp

2) Using fink to download sources and compile. This takes longer and you need the developer CD (compilers, etc). if you have those, type:

sudo fink install gimp

Now, once you have the gimp insatlled you want to run it from and X11 windows terminal. If you already have XFree86, go ahead and install OroborOSX (it allows a seamless integration of X windows and Aqua). You can download it from:

http://www.osxgnu.org/software/Xwin/...ers/OroborOSX/

As soon as you have OroborOSX working (it is very easy to install), run it and from a terminal window type:

gimp&

Good luck.

ateles

Jacques:

Actually a couple of rectifications:

1) When you install the gimp (using any of the methods) the dependencies will be taken care of (XFree86 etc...) so don't worry about which you install first. That's the beauty of fink (it takes care of all of that for you).

2) Download OroborOSX from version tracker instead of the link I gave you. This is the latest verison of OroborOSX:

http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...d=12270&db=mac

Good luck.

ateles

Jacques,

Great you installed fink. I would also install the December Developer Tools.

Then I would probably do first:

sudo apt-get update

then,

sudo apt-get install xfree86-base (to get Xfree86 4.2.0 installed)

then,

sudo apt-get install xfree86-rootless (to get the XDarwin.app installed)

then,

sudo apt-get install windowmaker (to install a window manager)

Then I would probably start the XDarwin.app and choose full-screen mode to check if the XFree86 installation went allright.

You asked which window manager I use:

The first one I installed was windomaker (is a great workhorse), but I use also enlightenment, icewm, and in rootless mode, I prefer blackbox rather than OroborOSX, but the last one, although a bit buggy works well too.)

then I would finally run:

sudo apt-get install gimp

And then after all this, I would install several window managers and also OroborOSX to ckeck which one I prefer to use.


Cheers...


PS: Anyhow, please understand that the above, is just how I would do it, but is up to you really, to choose the way you like to follow.

I would also suggest you to read the "XFree86 Install guide" (although a little outdated is an excellent reference for beginners) and is made by Rob Griffiths, the creator of this forum and the MacOS X Hints web site. You can download the guide from here:

http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/xdarwin.html

-

Hi!

I really recorment this site written by the great est linux man on mac´s Jonas Smedegaard in denmark

http://debian.jones.dk/fink

Here you will find a guide that makes it so easy to install fink and all the packages you want. I did it myself and it went perfect the first time. It's so easy. It will be up and running in 20 minutes.

regards from

Anders

bassballs,

Sorry, I tried the link you wrote and it doesn't work. Is it the correct address?

Cheers...

Hi

I just returned back and saw you letter , i pushed teh button on my own letter and it worked, try to copy paste it to your browser!

Anders

bassballs,

You are right, it now works. It was a problem with my browser.

Yes, it's a good little guide more geared towards linux users. But I still consider "XFree86 Install guide" in MacOS X Hints to be superior and more complete.

To everyone,

I want to mention that the problem installing only from apt-get or dselect is that they only know about packages available as precompiled binary packages.

Many packages are not available in precompiled form through these tools for a variety of reasons. A package must be in the "stable" section of the latest point release to be considered, and it must pass additional checks for policy compliance as well as licensing and patent restrictions.

If you want to install a package that is not available via dselect / apt-get, you have to compile it from source using 'fink install packagename'. Make sure you have the Developer Tools installed before you try this.

So for more experienced users, I will repeat here what I said in another post before: don't be afraid of using unstable.

Fink is a volunteer effort.

As you all know, there are packages in stable and unstable sections.

One of the ways we all can help is by testing the packages from unstable (it is called "unstable" because this packages are not well-tested ;)).

If nobody tested them, they will probably take a long time to be upgraded to the stable section. Which by consequence will mean less binary packages to install.

But, you can help improve the situation by testing those packages and reporting both 'success and failure' to the package maintainer or provide feedback through the fink mailing lists about the packages you tested.

In order to 'test' packages, you have to get the latest descriptions from CVS and configure Fink to use unstable.

Right now there are about 652 packages that need testing and feedback.

As you can see it here in the following link:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/pdb/testing.php

Happy finking.


Cheers...

A "for instance" re: useable unstable packages...mozilla.

On it's own, fink will only install version 0.9 something-or-other, but if you allow it to install "unstable" you can get 1.0rc3 which is really quite stable...and the fastest browser you can use on your Mac right now (yes, faster than the OS X mozilla 1.0).

rusto,

I agree 100%. Mozilla 1.0rc3 works great with me too. It's a joy to use.

Cheers...

sao et al., what are your thoughts on the April Dev Tools with fink? I've heard mixed things like: "The gcc compiler might cause problems with some fink packages" and "The gcc compiler isn't turned on by default, so it's ok to use the April Dev Tools with fink". Any suggestions?

i've had nothing but trouble. there is a pesky symlink gcc->gcc2 that caused a lot of compiles to gak. since i downgraded dev tools and finally found that FOD symlink that was leftover, i've been better.

FOD=foreign object debris - litter on runways that cause jets to gak.

The GIMP is in!
 

Thanks for all the tips, you have all made this a great experience..

I am thoroughly impressed. Installing everything through FINK has been a comfort, it seems to handle so many details - helping me avoid alot of crazy UNIX geek-talk (even though it's fun, where can one find the time!)..

---

I'm noticing a few things..

I have an Apple Pro mouse (the no-button wonder) and it seems xWindows wants to enjoy a three-button furry critter - will any three-button work? Does this xWindows system understand a scroll wheel and/or multi-button mouse without drivers? For now it looks like the CNTRL and OPTN keys will simulate them as I need them.

xDarwin launched alone loads up some kind of windows manager - is this a barebones version (it certainly isn't as pretty)? It seems to load up SO MUCH FASTER than OroborOSX however, why such a difference in load time?

Once in xWindows I can't figure out how to assign icons to the different X11 programs, must we use the terminal to launch programs? Any leads to go totally GUI will help out my wife (who hopes to use GIMP and such alot more than me, but is much less techo-friendly) and make things easier for her. Anyone know of a guide / evaluation of the various windows managers? The whole GUI thing seems to really depend on which manager I settle on and there's so many to choose from.. for now OroborOSX seems to do a nice job, further thoughts?

---

When GIMP loads I get the following feedback:
Do I need to install this LIBMPEG package (I did notice it in DSELECT, but it's 60 some odd megs fat!) in order for GIMP to work properly? I'm assuming it's not absolutely needed since FINK didn't install it automatically.

---

Perhaps AbiWord is next, this whole open-source movement is such a treasure-field - I'm amazed more don't dig in.. :)

Jacques

Timan, MervTormel,

I will advice you to stick with the December Developer Tools for the moment. A bunch of the fink developers are working hard in preparing fink for MacOS X 10.2 which will use the gcc3 compiler and use bash rather than zsh to provide /bin/sh functionality.

Work is going on at full speed. There are already many packages tested and there is a list of succesful/unsuccesful packages here:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/doc/porting/preparing.php

The list of tested packages is growing daily. If you still want to use the April Developer Tools, I suggest you check the list before installing a package.

Another issue with the gcc3 compiler is an incompatibility for C++ ABIs between gcc2 and gcc3. In practice, this means that C++ programs compiled with gcc3 cannot link to libraries compiled with gcc2.

I still use only the December Developer Tools and will wait a little longer to use the April release.

If you are a developer or package maintainer you probably will know how to deal with the problems, but for the average user the order of changing to April Tools (by fink) is not yet here.


Cheers...

thanx for the skinny, sao. those guys do a lot of good work. once i wanted to be a port guru, but i sucked at it. i suck less at admin, i guess.

Although as mentioned elsewhere the April DevTools still default to using gcc 2.95 and one must explicitly invoke gcc3. ;)

Jacques,

Congratulations, you got The Gimp installed. Here is a good manual on how to use it that you can download for free:

http://manual.gimp.org/


If you have an Apple Pro mouse, the CNTRL and OPTN keys will do for the moment.

Which window manager did you installed till now ? (Besides OroroOSX)


You can visit the following site to help you choose a window manager:

http://www.PLiG.org/xwinman/


Or visit some of the home pages themselves:

http://windowmaker.org/

http://www.enlightenment.org/pages/main.html

http://icewm.sourceforge.net/

http://www.afterstep.org/


And, if you want to check for themes for most window managers or have an idea of how they look, visit this site:

http://themes.freshmeat.net/articles/view/439/


When you get those errors after starting The Gimp, are you in rootless-mode or fullscreen ? And are you starting from terminal.app or an xterm?


Cheers...

Craig,

Conversation between Chris Zubrzyck and Max Horn at the fink lists:

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

CZ: the April Dev tools work great.

MH: Except for the things that don't work. :-)


CZ: there are some bugfixes and you can *choose* to use gcc3 as the default compiler.

MH: Yes but even if you don't some things will break...

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

Most Fink users will probably have fewer headaches with the December version until the gcc3 issues and others are ironed out. :)

Cheers...

Thanx for the info everyone, and welcome to the fink club, Jacques. Don't worry, there's a lot of good help for you (here and on those links sao gave you) so I imagine you'll be able to get your problems resolved before too long. It seems like I got similar errors when I had compiled something using bash. Now I do 'exec sh' before updating/compiling, and haven't had any issues yet. BTW, I'm still confused on this whole bash or zsh providing sh functionality. What does that mean? Those fink people are doing a great job, I agree.

OK, so I have a question. Or two. ;)

How big is the download for everything I'd need to run Gimp? I'm on dial up, so I don't want to try to download 300MB any time soon. If it is a huge download, can I download using wget or curl (for download continuation) and install from a local drive using Fink?

How exactly does this work? By installing XFree86, are you essentially replacing the Aqua layer on OS X? I know there are different layers to OS X (the GUI, the graphics rendering engine, etc) but I am still not 100% clear on everything yet. So essentially, I want to know if you're running basically another operating system on top of OS X, or just a small portion (like the GUI).

What is the minimum required to run Gimp? Do I need OroborOSX and another window manager? Or is OroborOSX a window manager in its own right (like WindowMaker)?

And finally, how long is the River Nile? ;)

nkuvu,

The only answer I know for certain is about the lenght of the river Nile:

It's 26 cm long. :)

'Search God Google' and others will help through your tribulations.

It's almost 6 AM in Singapore, and although I'm in holiday, and wife and kids in Europe, I'm going to sleep now.

Will come back and see you all tomorrow.

Good night.

Cheers...

26 cm?? Wow, I thought it was a lot longer than that... :D

And I could do a search on Google, but I figured that this would be a lot faster, since someone in the know could answer my questions.

I am curious now, though. No one suggested to Jacques to do a search on Google for the information. Search the forum, yes, but not Google.

What's the matter, do I have bad breath or something?

nkuvu: only you can answer that one for sure! :D

But, from my limited recollection of setting up fink for the first time, a little checklist:

1) Be sure to have the BSD subsystem and the OS X Developer Tools (the Dec. 2001 release for 10.1.x) installed.

2) Install fink using the handy-dandy Installer package; I admit I do not remember what configuration information may be requested here; it's been a while.

3) Run a 'fink selfupdate' to get to the latest version of fink and the package database. This will also verify the the Devtools work.

4) Now comes the point where we will diverge: I build everything from source, and you will probably just want to install binaries. My suggestion to you would be to first download Fink Commander, which provides a GUI front end to fink.

5) If the above goes correctly you should be able to run Fink Commander and see the list of packages available.

6) Install Xfree86 - those would be the packages xfree86-base and xfree86-rootless. You should be able to install these as binaries.

7) Install a window manager - OroborOSX is a good choice; it uses the oroboros window manager customised to blend in with OS X. It also requires minimal configuration. Test it to see if XFree86 was installed correctly.

8) Now get your application - the GIMP. In Fink Commander, select 'gimp' from the graphics subcategory. It should tell you it depends on other packages and so will install them as well. Do so.

9) Let us know if things went wrong, as I say, the methods I use are somewhat different and the odds that I forgot something pretty good. Search the board here and the main site as well. Sao is the true expert. I'm sure he'll catch my mistakes. ;)

Per some of your other queries: fink already uses curl; you will find that OroborOSX runs in 'rootless' mode right alongside Aqua; same operating system (Darwin), different interface; and fink will let you explore several other window managers, I'd wait til we get the first one working.

Oh, and I don't know about the Nile, but you remind me it's been a long time since last watching "The Mountains of the Moon."

nkuvu,

Good day!

I see Craig gave you excellent advice. Just filling the gaps here.

If you are in a dial-up connection, you will probably have to wait quite some time to download everything you need.

The fink installer is 8.4 MB. You can download from here:

http://fink.sourceforge.net/download/index.php

The gimp-1.2.3.tar.bz2 size (which is the last version I installed) is 10.2 MB.

It will probably also download and install gtk+ which is about 2.7 MB in tar.gz format.

The December Developer Tools are 217.9 MB .

I would also install several window managers, besides OroborOSX, to check which one you prefer best. They are not so big in size.

OroborOSX-v0.8b.tar---------------2.2 MB
WindowMaker-0.80.0.tar.bz2 ----1.9 MB
blackbox-0.62.1.tar.gz-------------296 KB
icewm-1.0.9-2.tar.gz---------------616 KB
enlightenment-0.16.5.tar.gz-----10.8 MB
sawfish-1.0.1-repack.tar.bz2----996 KB

If you have any problems, please let us know.

Cheers...

PS: No comments about your breath though :)

That's exactly what I wanted to know. Thanks to you both.

I have experience with WindowMaker from the Unix world (and I like it) but I think I might just go with OroborOSX since it has more of an Aqua feel... Anyway.

Unfortunately, I only have the April developer tools. Is there a way that I can make those work instead of the December tools? I can get the December tools if necessary, but it is a large download, and I'd like to avoid that if possible.

nkuvu,

My advice would be for you to try to get the Dec Dev Tools. (maybe somebody can lend you a CD ?)

If you decide to use the April Tools, prepare yourself to probably encounter some problems later on.

Anyhow, let me know, I will do my best to help you along the way.

You can also read my post above in answer to Timan and MervTormel about the same subject.

Good luck.

Cheers...

nkuvu,
I'd say not to worry too much about the April dev tools - I've been using them since they were first released and have had no problems with fink since doing so.

Window managers and Dev Tools
 

Learning quite a lot, this forum is definitely helpful - this website for that matter!

---

I'm using OroborOSX thus far, but haven't tried anything else. Instead of opening OroborOSX one time I just opened XDarwin alone (via the icon) - it opened with windows! It wasn't OroborOSX, so what was it using?

Blackbox (sao's recommendation) and the other window managers - are they able to be opened as OroborOSX - by just opening the icon in the normal Mac OS X way? ..or do you have to start up within the terminal to get the others going? (Will FINK install icons for Mac OS X usage if I dive into other window managers?)

I see talk of the Dec Dev Tools, where can I download it? I have the Sept Dev Tools - are they satisfactory if I end up having to install them? What's the advantage of having FINK compile source rather than just download pre-digested binaries?

---

sao - you wrote, "When you get those errors after starting The Gimp, are you in rootless-mode or fullscreen ? And are you starting from terminal.app or an xterm?"

Rootless, either with XDarwin or OroborOSX - both in the xterm way (by typing 'gimp'). Any ideas? Are those MPEG libraries actually needed?

Jacques

Jacques,

you wrote: Did you installed other window managers? If you didn't, then what you saw was probably the default window manager (twm) that comes with Xdarwin.


No, you'll need to install the window manager and set your system up to run it. You do this in your ~/.xinitrc file. By writing at the end:

'exec blackbox' or 'exec icewm' or 'exec enlightenment' or 'exec wmaker'

After setting your ~/.xinitrc file, then you can double click in the XDarwin.app and Xfree86 will open with the window manager you specified in either full-screen or rootless mode. OroborOSX is just another window manager.


You should have at least the December Developer Tools. You can join for free at the Apple Developer Connection site:

http://www.apple.com/developer/

and download them from there.


If you want to install a package that is not available via dselect / apt-get, you have to compile it from source using 'fink install packagename'. Make sure you have at least the December Developer Tools installed before you try this. In this same thread I explain about this, please go back and read it.

If you type in terminal:

'sudo fink list'

fink will show you a list of all the packages you can install.


If you would have the Dec Dev Tools installed, I would tell you to install the 'package fix-fink' by running in terminal 'fink install fix-fink' and then to run it with the command 'fix-fink'. This utility will examine your fink installation to determine if any of your dynamic libraries have been linked to an outdated version (version 50.0.0) of libSystem.B.dylib.


Cheers...

Thanks to all for such a helpful thread.:D

I went throught the steps recommended here for installing Fink, Xfree86, and GIMP and I had the same error message about the MPEG library.

fix-fink gave this result:


-----------------------------------------------------------
Welcome to fix-fink version 1.0.

This program will check your fink installation for certain problems which
are difficult to detect directly with fink. If problems are found, you
will be asked if you wish to update certain parts of fink, and if so,
fink will be called to do the updating.

At the moment, this program only checks for one thing: whether your dynamic
libraries have been linked to an outdated version of libSystem. Do you
wish to perform this check? [Y/n] y

Examining your dynamic libraries with otool......................................................................................................./usr/bin/otool: can't open file: libmpeg.dylib (No such file or directory)
..........................

Your dynamic libraries are OK.
-----------------------------------------------------------




I used "sudo dselect" to get the MPEG library and it was only 65K, not 65Mb.

"Get:1 http://fink.sourceforge.net release/main libmpeg 1.3.1-4 [65.5kB]
Fetched 65.5kB in 1s (47.6kB/s) "

After dselect installed it the error message went away.

V-tach

V-tach,

Glad it worked. Fix-fink clearly showed what was missing.

And yes, libmpeg is only 65k. Thanks for the tip.

Cheers...


PS: So Jacques, now you know. You can install libmpeg through dselect, or if you have already installed the Dec Dev Tools, through 'fink install libmpeg' or you can try 'sudo apt-get install libmpeg'.

Thanks for the info, this has been a great thread.

Since I was missing it and the error kept coming up, I simply downloaded it through DSELECT since I saw it listed. All is well with FINK, haven't really dug into it yet but plan to.

I've been trying to download the Dec Dev Tools, no way I can handle it with a dial-up. A friend is going to burn it to CD for me today, I'll have it soon enough!

---

I look forward to a stable KDE, the KDE Office application looks incredible - and useful! For now I'm sticking with Okito Composer for my word processing, a beautiful Cocoa application.

Have a good weekend all,
Jacques

OK, I have another silly question.

I installed Fink, I installed XDarwin, I got OroborOSX running, then installed the Gimp. (Actually I installed XDarwin before Fink, then told Fink where to find it) I followed the directions from Griffman's PDF file (located at http://homepage.mac.com/rgriff/ -- thanks, Griffman!)

The first time I ran OroborOSX after installing the Gimp, XDarwin failed to start (and therefore OroborOSX failed to start). I tried it again (because I clicked too fast to fully read the error message) and it worked. Typed gimp & and Gimp started up, let me congifure stuff, then worked fine.

I don't have the exact error message from XDarwin failing ( :rolleyes: Sorry) but it seems that OroborOSX fails every other time that I try to start it. By "every other" I mean, it works, then the next time it fails, then the next time it works, etc...

Any ideas? It works, but not as well as I'd like.

And I also have to echo the others in saying that this is a very informative thread. Thanks for the help.

One of the funky things about OroborOSX is that it has it's own self-contained copy of XDarwin (v. 1.1). (Do a 'Show Package Contents' on it). So the normal version of XDarwin which you would use with any other window manager does not launch with OroborOSX.

If you try to launch them both at once without changing the default display number (typically 0) on one of them they will clobber each other.

I've been launching just OroborOSX -- and it says it's starting XDarwin, so I assumed (I know, bad idea) that it was the same.

So why would it fail intermittently?

Probably a silly question..

I load the GIMP by typing gimp which seems to work fine but I notice people say they load it by typing gimp & - what's the difference?

Jacques

background
 

Jacques

If you type an & after the command it runs in the background and returns your prompt to the terminal. This is very handy with X11 apps that open their own windows and long running commands (those that take several minutes or hours to complete)

vs. you can just open another terminal or wait it out.

So %gimp would tie up your terminal while %gimp & would let you continue using the terminal AND use gimp.

Willy

One other thing to note. If you run gimp without the &, then kill the terminal window, you kill gimp also. If it's not in the background it's dependent on the terminal window staying open.

Another way to start 'The Gimp' is directly from the menu of your window manager. For example if you use icewm, you can modify to your taste the file 'menu' in ~/.icewm/menu with your favorite applications. My menu file looks like this:

I'm using blackbox most of the time these days, so I also modified the 'menu' file in ~/.blackbox/menu like this:

In windowmaker you can configure the preferences for calling the different applications and 'save the session' after you attached them to the dock.

Same you can do in gnome, you can configure your panel and menus to show the applications you want.


Cheers...