Comment Re:Questions about OS X - somewhat offtopic (Score 1) 528
I am a Mac developer (on Mac, for Mac), so I'll try to address your questions - bear in mind though I have little experience with non-Mac systems.
1: Terminal.app is bare-bones but fairly usable. If you need more bells and whistles by all means go for iTerm. Also, I recall reading somewhere that Leopard will have an upgraded Terminal with more features.
2: My familiarity with Linux/UNIX is not high, but I'm pretty sure what you're looking for is launchd. You can manage launchd's daemons via the command-line launchctl, which I assume can be done through ssh though I've never tried it. (There's also a very nice FOSS Cocoa app called Lingon that interfaces with launchd locally).
3: X isn't bad; it starts automatically when you attempt to open an X app, which can be packaged and opened from the Finder just like a native one or from the command line. In my experience it's a bit slow, especially on first startup, but usable. There are a few quirks of integration with the OS X window manager and controls, but nothing too serious. Oh, and Fink is very very valuable, though it can be somewhat out of date (you absolutely must use the unstable package tree).
4: Of a sort, yes; there is a hierarchical list view and a column-based browser. I find both very clumsy myself and tend to stick with the old-style Mac icon view. Fair warning, the Finder is widely -- and correctly -- considered a piece of junk needing a total rewrite. It's not well (or at all?) multithreaded and tends to balk on things Konqueror wouldn't even bat an eyelash at.
Hope this helps.
1: Terminal.app is bare-bones but fairly usable. If you need more bells and whistles by all means go for iTerm. Also, I recall reading somewhere that Leopard will have an upgraded Terminal with more features.
2: My familiarity with Linux/UNIX is not high, but I'm pretty sure what you're looking for is launchd. You can manage launchd's daemons via the command-line launchctl, which I assume can be done through ssh though I've never tried it. (There's also a very nice FOSS Cocoa app called Lingon that interfaces with launchd locally).
3: X isn't bad; it starts automatically when you attempt to open an X app, which can be packaged and opened from the Finder just like a native one or from the command line. In my experience it's a bit slow, especially on first startup, but usable. There are a few quirks of integration with the OS X window manager and controls, but nothing too serious. Oh, and Fink is very very valuable, though it can be somewhat out of date (you absolutely must use the unstable package tree).
4: Of a sort, yes; there is a hierarchical list view and a column-based browser. I find both very clumsy myself and tend to stick with the old-style Mac icon view. Fair warning, the Finder is widely -- and correctly -- considered a piece of junk needing a total rewrite. It's not well (or at all?) multithreaded and tends to balk on things Konqueror wouldn't even bat an eyelash at.
Hope this helps.
