Vista Pwned?

[Yegolev]

I am mildly curious as to what the installer does on Mac OS, which I hear is some sort of linux.

[Trippy]

I am mildly curious as to what the installer does on Mac OS, which I hear is some sort of linux.

Whose installer what? The Mac OS X kernel is a fusion of Mach (or the grandchild of Mach via Next) and FreeBSD. It doesn't have anything to do with the Linux kernel.

[Salamok]

I don't use Vista but I do use Mac OS X so this is only based on what I've read but my understanding is with the default settings with UAC it comes up quite a bit. With OS X it rarely prompts you for your password to do "sudo" type stuff -- i.e. it's mostly when you are installing Apple Software Updates. Regular software installs (which are a trivial click and drag operation) and day to day stuff you never get prompted for your password.

I know that on my regular installations of Office 2008 for Mac, I'm prompted for a password. Another thing to bear in mind is that Apple isn't as paranoid as Microsoft in this regard, and can aford not to sudo everything in sight.

If Office 2008 requires an "installer" like the kind used in the Windows world then yeah I'm not surprised it requires a password. Normal Mac apps are self-contained folders and you just drag them to wherever you want install (and you can just throw the folder into the Trash to delete) and as long as you have permissions to that folder it won't ask for a password. If the install is so complicated that it has to spread crap all over the place including "system" folders (which is typically what the Apple Software Updates need to do) then you'll need your password.

This is 1 of my top 5 beefs with windows.  There is simply no "please get the fuck off my pc now" option.  Every program should be registered in add/remove programs and you should have an easy button that bypasses the need for a CD/Original Network Install Folder/Internet Connection/Registry Edit/Go to this website and look at a fucking survey in order to uninstall our product.

[kildorn]

I don't use Vista but I do use Mac OS X so this is only based on what I've read but my understanding is with the default settings with UAC it comes up quite a bit. With OS X it rarely prompts you for your password to do "sudo" type stuff -- i.e. it's mostly when you are installing Apple Software Updates. Regular software installs (which are a trivial click and drag operation) and day to day stuff you never get prompted for your password.

I know that on my regular installations of Office 2008 for Mac, I'm prompted for a password. Another thing to bear in mind is that Apple isn't as paranoid as Microsoft in this regard, and can aford not to sudo everything in sight.

If Office 2008 requires an "installer" like the kind used in the Windows world then yeah I'm not surprised it requires a password. Normal Mac apps are self-contained folders and you just drag them to wherever you want install (and you can just throw the folder into the Trash to delete) and as long as you have permissions to that folder it won't ask for a password. If the install is so complicated that it has to spread crap all over the place including "system" folders (which is typically what the Apple Software Updates need to do) then you'll need your password.

This is 1 of my top 5 beefs with windows.  There is simply no "please get the fuck off my pc now" option.  Every program should be registered in add/remove programs and you should have an easy button that bypasses the need for a CD/Original Network Install Folder/Internet Connection/Registry Edit/Go to this website and look at a fucking survey in order to uninstall our product.

Are you sure you'd like us to delete the following 87 directories located in strange places and did we mention the hook our application put in your CDROM driver?

Anyways, the whole BSD installer is pretty simple. As long as it was compiled for the OS version and the linked depenancies are there, they're just files sitting somewhere. Same deal as non installer based windows apps. You can copy the WoW directory anywhere and run it from any computer. I LIKE that in an application. Fuck 800 registry entries.

That said, I believe WoW's design is now considered Bad in windows, and you're supposed to store all volatile data and user settings in the user's home directory instead of the application's directory.

[Yegolev]

I am mildly curious as to what the installer does on Mac OS, which I hear is some sort of linux.

Whose installer what? The Mac OS X kernel is a fusion of Mach (or the grandchild of Mach via Next) and FreeBSD. It doesn't have anything to do with the Linux kernel.

Ah, suddenly I lose interest.  I was talking about the Office 08 installer for Mac, curious as to what underlying mechanisms existed on the Mac... then you said Mach and Next and suddenly I didn't care anymore.    I am supposed to know more about linux than I do, but I didn't think it had anything more complex than lib dependencies.  AIX shares a common lineage with Windows, believe it or not, and has an analogy to the registry and even an add/remove programs mechanism.  You can still plop things down in a dir and have them work, though.

[kildorn]

AIX's fucking registry crap is downright annoying and drove me absolutely batty.

I LIKE having random configuration text files for basic shit like the goddamned IP address. I do not want to use SMIT to do basic system operations. Fuck you, AIX.

[Yegolev]

Personally I don't use the ODM for anything (I usually only see it used for device drivers in third-party software) and I only use smit for NIM due to NIM being complicated enough that smit makes sense.  If I see someone using smit for basic system stuff, they get the n00b label right quick, but then I'm the kind of guy who uses undocumented commands to do things.  Disdain for the menus is good, my friend.   

An exception is when I do something new, I might do it through SMIT first and just use the smit.script to make my own script.  Saves time and effort.  But really, all of our custom stuff uses good old config files, even if they are IBMy config files.

If you have ever used YAST (SUSE), you'll have new appreciation for smit.

[Phred]

Personally I don't use the ODM for anything (I usually only see it used for device drivers in third-party software) and I only use smit for NIM due to NIM being complicated enough that smit makes sense.  If I see someone using smit for basic system stuff, they get the n00b label right quick, but then I'm the kind of guy who uses undocumented commands to do things.  Disdain for the menus is good, my friend.   

An exception is when I do something new, I might do it through SMIT first and just use the smit.script to make my own script.  Saves time and effort.  But really, all of our custom stuff uses good old config files, even if they are IBMy config files.

If you have ever used YAST (SUSE), you'll have new appreciation for smit.

Most of the freeware unix package installers were pretty badly designed. The only system I ever liked was the Debian system. All the rest just seemed  to add hassle.

[Yegolev]

Ah, yea, third-party shit doesn't fly so well on AIX unless there's real dedicated vendor support, like big apps such as Oracle.  Or rather, it didn't work so well a few years ago but IBM has gone a long way with that, mostly in using rpm and more-or-less embracing linux or maybe even Linux.  They also have put notable opensource software into the installp format, like openssh I think.  One CDROM in the AIX set is a "Linux Toolbox" these days.  This is, of course, because they can sell support packages for those applications.

In contrast, when I "installed" Vim, I just compiled the binary and plopped it into a common nfs share.  The downside there is that I cannot get Vim 7 to turn out well on AIX, so we are still using 6.4, which works fine.

[kildorn]

My distain was the AIX boxes in a 95% linux environment. Most things translated fine, and app installs went fine. It was the basic system admin stuff that I had to root around for AIX commands for, which just wasted a ton of time for some obscure method of using a basic command that you'd only ever gather from getting SMIT to tell you what the shit it wanted. Argh. Such pretty hardware, such obnoxious software.

And yeah, I used YAST once. That's it. I'm a huge fan of Debian's simplicity, but sadly most companies went "olo we need redhat for paid support!" and went down that shitstained path. I got one to rethink it when redhat would only send sales reps to tech support calls who then refused to answer technical questions since they were just sales reps.

[Simond]

See, this is exactly why we should all be using AmigaDOS and Workbench.

[Yegolev]

It was the basic system admin stuff that I had to root around for AIX commands for, which just wasted a ton of time for some obscure method of using a basic command that you'd only ever gather from getting SMIT to tell you what the shit it wanted.

This is why there aren't very many AIX specialists.  We're a small, incestuous cabal.  It's a nutty mix of System V and BSD conventions with lots of IBM-proprietary stuff like the ODM and the LVM.  I happen to love the LVM, it's sexy.

[Alkiera]

I am mildly curious as to what the installer does on Mac OS, which I hear is some sort of linux.

Whose installer what? The Mac OS X kernel is a fusion of Mach (or the grandchild of Mach via Next) and FreeBSD. It doesn't have anything to do with the Linux kernel.

Ah, suddenly I lose interest.  I was talking about the Office 08 installer for Mac, curious as to what underlying mechanisms existed on the Mac... then you said Mach and Next and suddenly I didn't care anymore.   

Most Mac apps come in a folder you just drag-drop into where you want them, and double-click to start them.  Some, however, feel the need to poke around your system for a bit first, make you agree to an EULA, that sort of thing.  Some of them add items into the system preferences.  I'd guess part of the deal for Adobe CS and MS Office are that they both install fonts and other system-wide stuff, and therefore need an admin account to write to those folders.  Adobe CS3 is also a multi-disk install, so it's gotta unpack stuff from the disks into the various locations, so it uses an installer to do it.

I don't think there's an equivalent to the Windows Registry in OSX; though a fair number of things are still controlled by BSD-style text files in /etc, like apache, php, other standard *nix type stuff.  Most of that is hidden from the non-power user, for example the standard /var, /etc, /usr, etc are all hidden in the Finder; you can get to them, but you need to go to the menu and choose 'go to folder...' and type in the path.

[kildorn]

It was the basic system admin stuff that I had to root around for AIX commands for, which just wasted a ton of time for some obscure method of using a basic command that you'd only ever gather from getting SMIT to tell you what the shit it wanted.

This is why there aren't very many AIX specialists.  We're a small, incestuous cabal.  It's a nutty mix of System V and BSD conventions with lots of IBM-proprietary stuff like the ODM and the LVM.  I happen to love the LVM, it's sexy.

Meh, I'm happy with the relatively commonly used LVM linux bastardized, which is pretty much just six degrees from kevin bacon's IBM LVM implementation.

It's the command structure that made me go "goddamnit, can I just put debian on this nice hardware and pretend AIX means Armani Exchange?"

[Yegolev]

Oddly enough you can install linux on the hardware now.  Although I don't know why you would for Serious Business.

[kildorn]

You can, with what we were doing on them it only made sense on the X series machines, the P series we had allowed it but you lost most of the functionality.

[Yegolev]

Yea, I meant the P series hardware, the X are the Intel ones, right?  Doesn't count.  I can see the Windows people from my cubicle but I don't go over there.  They use VMWare now, keke.  Also I'd have to walk past the AS/400 people and get dangerously close to the Lotus Notes people, so I'm just staying right where I am. 

[Trippy]

I don't think there's an equivalent to the Windows Registry in OSX; though a fair number of things are still controlled by BSD-style text files in /etc, like apache, php, other standard *nix type stuff.  Most of that is hidden from the non-power user, for example the standard /var, /etc, /usr, etc are all hidden in the Finder; you can get to them, but you need to go to the menu and choose 'go to folder...' and type in the path.

Mac OS X has both the pre-OS X style "preferences" files for individual (Mac) apps (.plist files) and it has the /etc stuff for the Unix stuff. It doesn't have a global database for storing this junk. Which means if you need to move a Mac app's preferences settings you just need to find .plist file (typically in your home directory). If it's a Unixy app you'll need to hunt around /etc or one if its variants (/usr/local/etc, etc.).

[kildorn]

Yea, I meant the P series hardware, the X are the Intel ones, right?  Doesn't count.  I can see the Windows people from my cubicle but I don't go over there.  They use VMWare now, keke.  Also I'd have to walk past the AS/400 people and get dangerously close to the Lotus Notes people, so I'm just staying right where I am. 

Sounds like someone works for a financial :P Actually the setup almost sounds like my old company, except we did the ESX stuff and were in another state from the AS/400 and Notes people :D

I do love the x series hardware though. Relatively inexpensive and they didn't skimp on the non banner stat parts (what, a legitimate bus and l2 cache? As opposed to my last vendor trying to explain how a huge l3 cache totally made up for the 512k l2?!)

[Yegolev]

I make soda.  Serious Business.  We have many various things, such as an IBM mainframe, AS/400, RS/6000 (the new names confuse me) and barely countable Intel boxes running God-knows-what, plus the attendant storage systems.  Couple of Sun machines, even.  I mostly contain myself to AIX and the hardware (thanks, bureaucracy).  I like my job a whole lot and I get nerdy about it, so apologies.