Some newbie questions about OS X

[kotbehemot]

Hi!
I am going to get myself a macbook in some two weeks. I chose Mac, mostly becouse of the operating system, which I find very easy to use and friendly.

But I have a few (lame?) questions..

1) is Mac OS X going to work for a long time? Windows is a very cool OS for the first month, and than it becomes slower and slower and reaches the nadir after ~6 months I played with Mac OS X in the Apple store for a while - but is it going to work after 6, 12, 18 months? Or will I have to re-install it every, let's say, year?

2) what happens after programs are installed and re-installed and un-installed? In windows every re-, un- or installation is risky - becouse after each the system is more and more clumsy. Does the same happen on Mac OS X. Do I have to be carefull with how much things I install or I can install and re-install what I want and when I want, and the system will be OK?

3) if I will add additional fonts to the system (I own Font Folio), will the system be much more clumsy and slow? If I will run Mac OS X + Font Folio on 512MB MacBook - will it work (i'm going to upgrade RAM, but not in September ).

4) Does something like a command line exist in Mac? I believe so. If it does - where can I find any tutorial or help, how to use it? I like the text command line, I used it in Linux - it's great.

Thank You in advice!

 

[reh]

1) Mac OS X is very stable, even in the long term. Only in rare circumstances will you have to perform a clean install.

2) Mac OS X has a nearly perfect setup for applications in my opinion. There's no huge file where all the settings are stored (like window's registry). Everything is either in the application or a few preference files in your home folder. You have no worries with installing/reinstalling/uninstatlling apps.

3) no idea

4) Yes! A very good one. See /Applications/Terminal for access to a real command line. It's a BSD variant, but quite similar to linux (for me anyway).

 

[pianoman]

3) if I will add additional fonts to the system (I own Font Folio), will the system be much more clumsy and slow? If I will run Mac OS X + Font Folio on 512MB MacBook - will it work (i'm going to upgrade RAM, but not in September ).

i've added a few fonts to my MBP and haven't had any problems with speed and clumsiness. i don't think adding fonts affects the speed since they take up hard drive space, not RAM. as for adding font folio - which i presume is an application - it should work just as well as other programs work. but with your limited amount of RAM, you will experience a slow down if you have too many apps open at the same time.

as for your other questions, reh answered them very well. enjoy your new mac!

 

[AvSRoCkCO1067]

3) You're going to want at least 1 GB of Ram - sure, 512 MB is usable, but 1 GB is really the minimum these days (it actually IS the minimum with Windows Vista Aero)

 

[kotbehemot]

Thank You guys for a quick response. I am glad to see the positive answers Meanwhile I found a great pdf about fonts, on an Apple server
http://images.apple.com/pro/pdf/L311277A_FontTT_v4.pdf

From there I know, that I can de-activate fonts, which I want to have, and don't want to use at the moment

You only didn't answer one question - is there any command line help, or tutorial, which I can finc on the web? To use command line I need to know the commands

Thanks!

 

[Willis]

go to google and type in

terminal command OSX

that should spring up a few results.

 

[CANEHDN]

You could always use the Font Book that comes with OS X. I'm not sure what Font Folio offers but Font Book is a good place to organize and use your fonts.

 

[gekko513]

The Mac OS X terminal works in the the same way as for other UNIX and Linux variants. That means you get a so called shell when you start Terminal. There are different types of shells and the shell can be set for every user. The OS X default shell is bash, which is the most common one on Linux as far as I know, but I know it also ships with tcsh and probably others, too.

Since you've used Linux, you've probably used bash, and bash will be the same on OS X. There are differences on how the file system is structured and which command line programs are available, but the bash shell and the shell commands are exactly the same.

 

[Mernak]

the shells included in OS X are the bash, korn, tcsh, csh, zch, and tclsh. If you are going to use the command-line I would suggest <a href="www.fink.sourceforge.net">Fink</a> to get more programs.

 

[Shananra]

Ah, the joys of starting with the Mac platform for the first time. Like you, I switched from windows, but for me, points 1, 2 and 4 weren't questions at all- they were selling points.

You will find that OSX is a dream to use, especially if you're used to windows. Part of the reason Apple was able to make everything so clean was because they dumped everything at one point and started over with something entirely new (the then-called neXT operating system) which gave them the freedom to model scalable system that would be easy to expand without hogging resources.

The question has been asked why it's taking so long with Vista. The answer is simple. Microsoft doesn't want to give up support for old software programs, in an attempt to mantain their domenance. The result is a messy, bloated, difficult to expand system that can come crashing down by one faulty line of code by a third party developer.

apple got it right by starting over with something that could be easily modified and expanded upon. Just look at what they've done with it. If microsoft did this, Windows Vista would have probably been a much better and faster operating system. (though it would probably have taken just as long to make, as they would be starting from scratch, whereas neXT had been in development for some time before Apple brought them aboard)

Now, because this is unix based, you are given a unix terminal. A real one. Here is a web page with some walk-throughs to get you started: http://www.macdevcenter.com/pub/ct/51 (I think they're trying to sell you a book there, but a bit more searching in google can find you a better resource I'm sure)

Good luck, I hope your first experience turns out to be as good as mine.

 

[kotbehemot]

I see, that my questions were not so lame, if I get so many nice responces

You could always use the Font Book that comes with OS X. I'm not sure what Font Folio offers but Font Book is a good place to organize and use your fonts.

I didn't explain that - Font Folio is an Adobe set of over 2000fonts. That is why I asked, if installing them will mess up my system and if Mac Os will slow down.
Now I read this Apple pdf (link somewhere above) about the build-in font managing program - Font Book. After reading this pdf it seems to me, that I can install the fonts and decide, whether I will be using all of them or only the part. I will have to check it out

The OS X default shell is bash,

And that is exactly the answer I needed. If it's bash, I'm home

Ah, the joys of starting with the Mac platform for the first time.

That's right! When I was using Linux for the first time it was also joy

Thank You all!

 

[aaron.lee2006]

1) Mac OS X is very stable, even in the long term. Only in rare circumstances will you have to perform a clean install.

Yes reh is right. I have onl had to do an archive and install because my network preferences. Mac OS X is very stable and it starts up so fast and runs fast aswell!

 

[projectle]

Installing a ton of fonts, and having them activated will bring most applications to their knees...

Try waiting 45 minutes for any MS Office app to open while it verifies fonts, every time. I had 3500 fonts on my system for a while, got pissed, deleted them, moved to iWork 06, killed Office, put back fonts.*

Problem solved for me.

With my font load, Photoshop took 4 1/2 minutes to load, which was bearable, but not really enjoyable.*

Most apps do not have an issue with it though.

It is only the rare f***ed up ones that do (namely ones with a Microsoft logo).