Fink
- May 09, 2003
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Have you ever tried to download an open source application in a tarball and try configuring, making and installing it in OS X? My success rate was 5%, if that. I’m not a Unix/Linux guru by any stretch of the imagination, so I didn’t know what the hell to do when the compiler would spit back some kind of weird gibberish about not finding this or that. I would always give up frustrated.
Well, lo and behold, I’ve found a project for Mac OS X that makes all of the open source world seem like child’s play! It’s called Fink. I had seen it the first time well over a year ago, but didn’t check it out because I wasn’t really into open source. Now after playing around with Linux or a while, I was really wanting to do the same in OS X. Fink takes the task of finding, downloading, configuring, compiling and installing all of the myriad libraries and binaries and makes it happen in a few VERY simple steps. They include a program called Fink Commander, which is a GUI for the Fink service. With Fink Commander, I simply scroll through the list of available packages (well over 1200), choose the ones I want and click on the download icon. Fink checks out what dependencies I need to fix and displays all of the information for me. It then gathers everything I need and downloads, compiles and installs it. Then in Apple’s X11, I simply start that new application up. I’ve already installed a nice Web editor called Bluefish, several games and will be getting the GIMP soon.
So for anyone wanting to check out open source software without all the headaches, Fink is definitely worth a try. You won’t regret it.