XFree86, Gimp, AbiWord, & Upgrades

sfish

sfish

Fark Lover
Although I'm not a complete Unix newbie and know my way around a command shell, I've failed in my attempts at installing XFree86 on my Mac OS X box. I'm considering purchasing OpenOSX.com's GUI installation CDs for this and a few other packages (see link below). I have a couple of questions:

1) Has anyone else used their products. If so, what did you think?

2) If I buy their installation products now, will I have trouble upgrading to new versions of these open source products or should I seriously consider their subscription programs?

The link to OpenOSX.com's info (for their office products and bundle options) is http://www.openosx.com/office/index.html

Thanks for any and all help!
 
As a total UNIX newbie, I had no trouble using the one-step GUI XFree86 installer that you can find here. I then installed OroborOSX as my window manager (available at versiontracker.com among other places). I have since used Fink to install the GIMP, and another one-step GUI installer for AbiWord.
This is fun! :D
 
If have the time to download the source and compile it all, I'd suggest getting Fink at http://fink.sourceforge.net . It'll do all of the downloading and compiling for you. Plus you can easily configure Fink so that by just typing fink selfupdate it will update its files, and fink update-all will compile newer versions and install them.

With Fink, you can currently have these versions of these packages offered by OpenOSX.com's OpenOffice

Abiword: 0.9.6.1 (OpenOSX offers 0.9.4.1)
Gnumeric: 1.0.2 (OpenOSX offers 0.74)
Gimp: 1.2.2 (OpenOSX offers 1.2.3)
Guppi: 0.40.2 (OpenOSX has 0.40.0)
...

Finally, you might want to read http://fink.sourceforge.net/faq/relations.php#openosx
which just leads me to believe that you might as well get the packages from the source, Fink. Admittedly, Fink can't be the source of all of them, since Gimp hasn't updated in a while, but you get the idea.
 
Fink is what I had tried inthe past and it didn't seem to work. It's been a while, so I'll try one of these solutions again tonite, but I'm wondering if I'll return tomorrow to say it didn't work. Let's hope not.

Anyone used the OpenOSX.com programs?
 
osxgnu.com's distro of the XFree86 installer worked flawlessly and painlessly! Thanks so much for pointing out that resource. Now I'm off to get a new windowing system, then Gimp, then AbiWord...

Thanks! This is fantastic!
 
I had trouble installing Gimp 1.2.3 from OpenOSX.com. Not as easy as they promised. Didn't save me as much time as I thought because of the problems. I've heard a few others that felt the same way. BUT I've heard others say that liked OpenOSX versions (obviously pre 1.2.3 of Gimp) and that it was nice to have it all burned on a CD so no having to archieve it yourself (takes up tons of megs) or find all the different components necessary (Darwin XFree86 etc).
 
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