Flutterby™! : Mac agonies 2006-09-06 00:17:05.473449+00

Mac agonies

2006-09-06 00:17:05.473449+00 by Dan Lyke 4 comments

Argh. So I want to check out some software on this Mac. It's written in Python. It requires some libraries.

Reasons I hate the Mac #2243151: Various packages have seen to install at least 4 different Python interpreters in different places. Each gets installed at different times. The library installer came with cool Mac binaries. It appears to have installed for a version which I can't figure out how to execute from the command line.

Mac sucks less than Windows, but as I've used this machine for the year and a half or so that I have, the gap is closing. I yearn for the day when my work's on a Linux machine...

Don't Linux distributions move things around and also break applications from version to version?

Borland released Kylix but it had so many issues due to library compatibilities and I assume, locations, and kernal changes that they stopped its support. A Windows app from windows 98 runs just fine on XP - better if they skip the registry ...

For years now I've been using systems which use a variation of the Debian package management system. Installations of commercial and free software have been a matter of pointing the installer at the .deb file and letting it go, figuring out its own dependencies on the way.

And when that didn't work, almost always the other methods of installing libraries (ie: Perl's CPAN, or just "./configure; make; sudo make install) have just worked.

Windows is so amazingly different that library and dependency stuff often works, because builds are done specifically for it. But the Mac is this bastard hybrid, so often I just SSH into a Linux box and use it as an X front-end. But that doesn't give me accelerated OpenGL

or any of the other things you get from running on a machine.