On Sun, Aug 01, 2004 at 06:10:28PM +0100, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: } On Wed, Jul 28, 2004 at 10:18:02AM -0400, Scott Henson wrote: } > -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE----- } > Hash: SHA1 } > } > "Michael" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: } > } > > On the Debian GNU/Linux PowerPC PowerMac Page } > > (http://www.debian.org/ports/powerpc/inst/pmac) the second } > > paragraph closes by mentioning that "Shortly, you may also have } > > the option of running Debian within a Darwin system." What } > > exactly does that statement mean, and when is shortly? Thank you } > > for your help. } } I think this is connected to project called fink.
Someone has already mentioned that no, Fink is unrelated to Debian except insofar as they ported apt to darwin. As a user of both Debian and Fink on MacOS X, I can tell you that Fink is distinctly inferior to Debian, and probably always will be. There are a few reasons for this, but the main one is that the strength and power of Debian comes from clearly stated policies which are followed consistently, and a huge group of developers willing to dedicate time and effort to maintaining thousands of packages on multiple platforms. Fink fails on both counts. Fink serves too few people (those who use MacOS X, *and* use it as a Unix/X11 system, *and* like Debian's packaging scheme) to attract the number of developers Debian has. The Fink developers also made the mistakes of abandoning Debian's source package format and abandoning its packaging policies. If they had not, it would be a much easier job to port a Debian package to Fink; instead, one must start from the upstream version rather than a Debian package and still produce a package that will install in the right places and track files properly. That said, Fink is the best thing going on MacOS X. I used to really like the BSD ports system (a version of which is available on MacOS X), but since I started using Debian I am unwilling to go back. I would, however, abandon Fink in a heartbeat if Debian chose to begin supporting Darwin. I can't see Debian supporting MacOS X directly, since I believe there is some bad blood between Apple and Debian. Darwin, however, is a reasonable BSD to support, and any work done there could be ported to MacOS X with relative ease. If the Debian project is considering including Darwin as a supported platform, I would be delighted. } Grzesiek --Greg
