dmg files

[TDT]

Hey all,

I'm going to cancel my internet soon, about the same time I get my new laptop (because the savings on the internet and gaming will pay much of the laptop loan), but before I do that I want to get all the programs I should need for my laptop (and burn it to a CD or something).

This question is really 2 parts...really. The first part is what programs do people recommend as free/open source for the following activities:

1. IRC
2. Instant Message (like GAIM?)
3. A good browser (I like firefox, is it good on the mac too)?
4. System display utility, to show the CPU status, memory usage, etc, etc (like gkrellm, or gdesklets?)
5. E-mail (is the current one good enough)?
6. Other ideas?

The second part of this question is I notice some formats as dmg (irc client I already downloaded), and some are slt (according to some mac friends). Can these files be burned to a CD in data form, then mounted on the other computer? From what I heard, there may be a few problems doing this? I would rather not expose my new mac to the internet (college net) until I determine the best way to set up the firewall and stuff...which leads me to my last question.

When the mac is 'out of the box' and 'on the net', is the security very good? I'm thinking of immediately reinstalling OSX because I heard there are a lot of things not needed on the system. Once that's all done, is there a program I should run to secure the system? I would like to have everything installed, working, and setup (all necessary programs, etc), and security totally done before I expose it to the net in any way, shape, or form. Personal preference, I'm kinda a stickler on security.

Ideas on this would be great, if I can burn dmg files to the CD without problems, I think I'll do that today so when I get my mac that I can install everything up front.

Thanks all,

 

[HexMonkey]

3. A good browser (I like firefox, is it good on the mac too)?

Safari and Firefox are probably the best mac browsers. Safari is included with Mac OS X, and you can download Firefox here.

4. System display utility, to show the CPU status, memory usage, etc, etc (like gkrellm, or gdesklets?)

You can use Activity Monitor, included with Mac OS X.

5. E-mail (is the current one good enough)?

Mail in Panther is quite good. Some people prefer other programs, but for most people, Mail is sufficient.

The second part of this question is I notice some formats as dmg (irc client I already downloaded), and some are slt (according to some mac friends). Can these files be burned to a CD in data form, then mounted on the other computer? From what I heard, there may be a few problems doing this? I would rather not expose my new mac to the internet (college net) until I determine the best way to set up the firewall and stuff...which leads me to my last question.

Yes, you can safely burn dmgs and sit files to a CD. And you don't need any additional software to use the files (dmg mounting is built in to Mac OS X, and Stuffit Expander uncompresses .sit files, but it comes with new Macs).

When the mac is 'out of the box' and 'on the net', is the security very good? I'm thinking of immediately reinstalling OSX because I heard there are a lot of things not needed on the system. Once that's all done, is there a program I should run to secure the system? I would like to have everything installed, working, and setup (all necessary programs, etc), and security totally done before I expose it to the net in any way, shape, or form. Personal preference, I'm kinda a stickler on security.

Yes, Mac OS X has good security. If you're really worried about security, you should download the latest security updates though.

A firewall is built in to Mac OS X. To configure it, go to System Preferences->Sharing->Firewall.

You might also want to use FileVault to secure your user folder, but be warned that it was buggy in the original versions of Panther so you'd need to ensure you have your OS up to date. Also, if you forget the master password, you'll lose your data forever.

 

[7on]

Yeah, you shouldn't worry about connecting your new Mac laptop directly to a campus network w/o a firewall. I leave mine off all the time. WinXP on the other hand ;P

 

[TDT]

Thanks for the help so far you two. I very much appreciate the help on these subjects. Does anyone have any helpful things that I should do specifically to make sure that the mac is in best running condition? The reason why I'm asking all these questions is because I never owned a mac, and the last time I really solidly used one was when I was in gradeschool. I don't want to open the powerbook, and end up ruining some stuff right away.

Thanks again.

 

[7on]

lol, that's what I basically did when I got my powerbook. Ruin it. Re-installed the OS 6 times in the first 4 months. Got to learn the Mac inside and out I must say. All I gotta say is Archive and Install is your friend. One thing I noticed when switching to the Mac is the multi-tasking is incredible. Don't every think you've got too much open. Well, it's possible, but my system never seems to bog down with anything other than VPC or hdd writing (i.e. copying a backup to my fw hdd). In the end remember to have fun with it. From your posts you seem pretty intellectual, so I'm sure you can handle any problems that go your way. Search the forums if a problem or ? arrises, odds are that it has been asked and answered already.

 

[TDT]

Thanks 7on,

I will be storing backup information of just about everything on the laptop to my main machine for the very reason for data redundancy. I should back up my data to DVD much more often, the last time that I had a huge hard drive problem I lost a lot of information that I only had partial backups for. I should know better about making backups from that incident.

About ruining the OS right off - it's nice to see someone else 'playing' as much as I do with an operating system. I've installed most operating systems many times due to the fact that I kept ruining them at first. My huge hope is that because I use, and know Linux, that the Mac OSX will not be a problem. From everything that I've read, the Mac OSX is running off FreeBSD. I never used FreeBSD, but Linux and Unix are close relatives. Hopefully, if all goes well, I'll be able to get used to a Mac system in a short time - since I need it working well for college.

I get the laptop within 4 hours. Too bad I have college at the same time, oh well - this afternoon I'll get to mess with the laptop better.

 

[cb911]

hi there TDT. you sound kinda like me as well when i first got my TiBook back in the day.

i've always been using MenuMeters for as long as i can remember. they're very handy monitors that just sit up in the top menu bar and show network, CPU, disk and RAM stats.

some things i've been getting interested in more recently: GeekTool this is really cool little app. well it's actually a Preference Pane, so that's even better. it shows system logs and Terminal commands on the desktop.

there's also X Resource Graph. this is a very handy multi-purposed system/weather/stocks monitor. i haven't used Linux much, but this looks like alot of the monitors i see running on Linux machnes.

i use Safai and Mail, they're both fine apps.

and so you can see what all the apps look like running, here's a screenshot.

that's GeekTool (system.log & top) with the green text on the desktop (and also uptime with light blue text), XRG on the right side, and MenuMeters in the top menu with the RAM and network stats (they're the only ones i use). and i'm inbetween changing themes as well, that's whyit's sorta funy looking.

as for security... i just always have the firewall turned on in Preferences. i also use Little Snitch sometimes. it lets you choose exactly which outgoing connections to allow. very handy.

well that's about it.

i also re-installed OS X numerous times when i first got it, mostly because of messing around with the system, but that's half the fun, right?

you also might want to think about making different partitoins for your documents and Panther. that way if you do wreck the system, you can just do a re-install and keep all your documents safe and sound. i've relied on that technique quite a few times.

also, you should feel right at home coming from a Linux background. but there are a few things that are different, as i recently found out. example: ethernet would be 'eth0' in Linux... well it's just 'en0' in OS X. but you'll get the hang of it.

oh, just make sure you read the manual all the way through and calibrate your battery properly. and most importantly, enjoy your new PowerBook.

 

[TDT]

Nice desktop. The XRG program is most like gkrellm, which I'll probably need to get/install/use first off. Looks handy.

That's a good idea about moving the /home directory to another partition. I wasn't sure if OSX was that customizable or not. I'm glad to hear that it should be fairly easy to setup directories and partition (mounts) in other ways. I usually like to have my data on a different partition, just for less problems in the future.

Little Snitch sounds like an interesting application. Are you able to disallow certain programs from accessing the internet with that application? This program sounds very much like a software firewall, I'll have to google more about this.

Thanks for the time in taking a snapshot of your desktop. It's shown me quite a few nice features that I may want to strive for.

 

[cb911]

OS X is surprisingly alike with Linux, i also recently found out that OS X has an fstab file. i just never thought about that before, because it's mostly an automated installation, you just dont' touch system stuff like that.

but you can also make a dedicated partiton for your swap files as well.

and i didn't really mean make a seperate partition for your /home dir... but you can do that as well. actually it would be realy handy to have /Users on another partiton, then just unmount it when you come to re-install, then mount it again and you've got a fresh system with all of your stuff already setup right there. but you've got to edit the fstab to do that. but definitely read up on it, it's really good once you get to understand the capabilities of OS X.

and there are some other good little apps that come in handy... here's one called Desktop Sweeper. you can set a key combo to press and it hides all the icons off your desktop. kinda handy to have if you keep lots of clutter on your desktop. there's also another thread about GUI stuff... i think it's called something like 'GUI apps you can't live withou'. have a search and see if you can find that thread. some usefully stuff in there as well.

EXTRA TiP: i forgot to mention that when you install OS X do a 'custom' install. it might be called 'customize' but i can't remember right now. and make sure you have BSD sub-system, and all that sort of stuff. but just turn off the extra language support and print drivers, and that's about an extra 1GB of space you'll have free.

 

[TDT]

Is the /users directory where all the user files are stored? like the /home directory in Linux?

When I install network drivers for my printer (samba print sharing I suppose), can the OS just install them then from the CD? I don't see why this wouldn't work, but I don't have a mac quite yet :: looks at clock to see about another3 hours yet:: Extra langauge support I may need, specifically Japanese, Chinese, and Spanish - other than that, I shouldn't need too much else.

What about the extra programs that it installs? I read another post where they said it was 15 gigs that was installed from the factory on the laptop. 15 gigs is extremely hard to believe, my base linux install with KDE, X, the works reaches maybe to 2 gigs, if that. If 1 gig is used for language and print drivers, what about the rest? Does all that ilife, iphoto, itunes, i<insert more here> get installed too?

Are any of those programs even worth having/using?

Thanks again for the help on this.

 

[cb911]

sorry, i might be confusing you. yes, /Users is where all the files are stored, then you have /Users/mugget /Users/plazma for all the different accounts on your machine.

i don't know about network print drivers... but i wouldn't install all the print drivers. i know you can select which drivers to install, but i wouldn't install any off the CD (or it might be a DVD?). i'd just get the latest drivers off the net.

for the languages, just select the ones you want, i'd still turn the unused ones off. every bit of space counts.

15GB for a full OS X install? lol i doubt it. my Panther partition is only 8GB (but i'm making it bigger soon, going to re-size to 11-12GB). i'm pretty sure it installs the iLife apps as well. but if you delete anything and want it back, you can always use Software Restore from the CD. out of all the iApps i only use iTunes. haven't even touched iPhoto much, never even opened iMovie. but i've got iDVD installed, i might use that some day.

well i've got to get some sleep.

hope all goes well.

edit>> i just thought of something... since you're from a Linux background (you are aren't you?) you might already know this, but you realise that yo can install Linux on a Mac? i've just installed Gentoo on my PowerBook. i've got about 4-5GB for Gentoo, it's pretty good having a dual-boot system. what size HD do you have 80GB? you should have heaps of space for different partitons. just something to think about, so you don't get 'homesick'

 

[TDT]

Thanks for the information and help. For print drivers, I'll only require a basic apple postscript network driver. That's one of the good, and actual bad things about network printing with Linux. You only require to have very basic drivers, but unfortunately any addons or special things your printer can do - can't be done through this method.

I'm not sure if there is another option or not, CUPS has a network print option, but I'm not sure how it works compared to that of samba printing. I may have to do some research and poke around to find out what to do about this. Printing in such a way that I get the most use out of the printer would be nice, without directly connecting it to the laptop.

Thanks again for the information and help, and good night

 

[7on]

Normally, I install all the printer drivers. Just because I find it nifty that I can print from most printers and not require a "driver" cd. But Samba printing isn't too difficult. My mom's computer (WinXP) with an hp970 prints stuff from my pBook just fine. Printer Setup Utility click add, and then on the top drop down menu select "Windows Printing" and the Windows workgroups should show up.