Re: Which version of Octave?

[Michael Martin]

On Mar 23, 2004, at 8:28 PM, Joe Koski wrote:

> As I see it there are several contributing reasons to our problems. 
> First,
> UNIX is still relatively new to the Mac, and Mac users are still a 
> minority
> within the UNIX community.

	I would venture to mention that there are more Mac OSX installations 
than any other particular brand of Unix out there, including Linux. I 
dare say Linux will likely that the lead one day, simply because of the 
sheer number if Intel platforms out there and people realizing that 
there is more to life than Windows. However, at least for now Mac OSX 
is in the lead.


> This leads to "critical mass" problems. How many
> Mac octave users are there? A dozen? A hundred? There simply are not 
> enough
> Mac users (yet?) to to justify a simple .dmg type installation of 
> octave and
> octave-forge.


	That, I think is the problem. While there are lots and lots of Mac OSX 
users out there, how many are actually into open source? With Linux, by 
definition one has chosen an open source solution and will need to deal 
with open source installation issues. Mac OSX opens up the Mac to open 
source solutions, but that does not mean all its users will 
automatically use open source solutions (other than those installed by 
Apple). Right now I can think of a dozen or so Mac users here at work 
and I am really the only one to use open source solutions.

	I suspect that there are several reasons for resistance to open source 
solutions on the part of many Mac users. Most Mac users are Mac users 
by virtue of ease of use. Open source applications are not always top 
notch for ease of use by unwashed masses. They can be cantankerous to 
install and then their interfaces can be quite frankly bewildering to 
them. Because of this, I suspect there is some reluctance to adopt open 
source applications by some Mac users.

	But as to the installation issue, no easy to use install, less 
openness to open source solutions, I suspect. Some groups are trying to 
fix that in various ways. As for me, I prefer fink, in part, because of 
ease of use and access to quite a few open source solutions. It has its 
share of problems, but generally speaking I have found them to be 
minor. However, while I like fink, something even easier/pre-compiled 
is very desirable for the command line challenged.


	As to shells, it really does not matter. It is whatever shell you can 
run and whichever you like best. Like people, all have shells have 
their idiosynchracies. I have always been a tcsh man myself and for the 
present I will certainly remain that way. I have **a lot** of sh & tcsh 
scripts I'd rather not convert. When Panther came out, I remained with 
tcsh. Now bash is certainly popular in Linux, and that is why Apple 
went with it as the default with Panther. However, from what I have 
seen, bash not nearly so popular on non-Linux systems. Now it is, 
perhaps due to Linux, being used more and more and perhaps one day will 
be as popular on non-Linux systems as it is in Linux. So pick one.
        

On Mar 24, 2004, at 10:33 AM, Jonathan Stickel wrote:

> I don't have much basis to post to this thread since I have touched a 
> Mac only a few times in my life.  That said, what about installing 
> linux directly on your Mac hardware, perhaps dual boot with MacOSX?  
> Gentoo Linux is available for the ppc architecture, and octave is 
> available for easy install through Gentoo's portage system 
> (http://packages.gentoo.org/search/?sstring=octave).


Well, it might make installing Octave easier, but now one has to deal 
with TWO operating systems. Two sets of updates, two sets of sw, etc. 
etc. etc. This application won't run here, only runs there, etc. No 
thank you!


----------------------------------------------------------------------
Michael W. Martin                   Phone: (281) 333-2177
Draper Laboratory                   FAX:   (281) 333-5276
2200 Space Park Dr.                 EMail: address@hidden
Houston, TX 77058                   WWW: http://www.jsc.draper.com/
USA                                 Mail Code: EG/Draper
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