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OpenOSX CDs by OpenOSX
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OpenOSX CDs by OpenOSX
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Introduction
Hi all! Nice of you to still pop around from time to time to this ever so new but ever so brilliant new Website which promises to fulfill all our nightmares, er, dreams: reacquainting us with our command-line past and making us feel like teenagers again, when we were sitting in front of a miniature computers with rubber keys hooked up to mom's ancient black and white TV from 1973, typing away unrecognisable lines of code (for those of you who started in the nineties on computers with a GUI, these were the days of the homecomputer, back in 1981).
As I had to grow up with these monsters, I never had any inclination to return to anything that resembles a text-terminal, but now with the advent of MacOS X there is suddenly a whole new world of freeware out there that thrives on strange, undecipherable text messages (or whatever). So, I ventured onto Darwin's homepage to check out all the amazing applications that were already prepared for our NeXTStep dialect of a *nix OS and: didn't understand a word. I didn't have a clue about the kind of applications they were on about, and I didn't understand how to install them (gimme an installer program any day).
So, when I read on Macslash that OpenOSX was offering a bundle of the best Linux applications compiled for MacOS X with automatic installation I couldn't resist: $70 for a pack of three CDs packed with programs that would take me three days to download with my 56k modem; compared to $500 for the new MS Office? Deal, I thought, so I gave ordered the Office, Open Web and GIMP bundle and 7 days later these babies were being installed on my trusty scratched Icebook 2001.
Review
First impression: jolly CD design on colourful covers, but no printed instructions, no manual or handbook. So I chucked in the Office CD (Abiword, Gnumeric and Xdarwin) and whee... 12 minutes later everything was there. A new folder was installed containing two icons for the apps, an nice red X for Xdarwin and a folder for the source-code. The installer told me to start Xdarwin first and then start the apps, and really: Abiword started up flawlessly and displayed itself in its, uh, Linux - beauty. It certainly looks more like early Windows than MacOS X , but hey, it's $70. I started typing away, had a look at the preferences and the features, and: it stopped working. Fired it up again, and... It froze again. Luckily Xdarwin was nice and stable, and by quitting it I got of Abiword.
As there was no manual, I emailed support and got a rather flustered response, that this couldn't be. After a couple of restarts it now seems to be working. Nothing exciting, but hey, 70 dollars. As for manuals: the manual pages on OpenOSX's website are still incomplete, so you have to find the documentation to the programs yourself. In case of the GIMP this is brillant, Abiword's online documentation lacks a bit. Gnumeric seems to be working fine and seems to be feature-laden enough for me. Next the GIMP installation: again, no worries with the installation, one click and presto...
It took me a bit to find out that you have to type in "gimp" into Xdarwins terminal window, but as soon as it started: damn! The startup sequence made photoshop under classic look silly: blindingly fast! The OpenOSX installation packed the GIMP folder full of filters and really makes it look like this is a bit of a gem: although the GUI is still pretty much Linux and optimized for a 3 button mouse, it's still possible to work with it almost as quickly as with Photoshop and it's certainly blindingly feature packed.
Conclusion
So, after 24 hours I am quite happy with my OpenOSX pack. Their Website needs to be improved, the documentation is non-existant, but the programs seem to be stable (after a couple of tries) and GIMP certainly is an amazing application. So, 6/10 from me, but I am open for any suggestions...
Screenshot
