Happy to be here

[ramin.honary]

Hello, I just joined here, and I am looking forward to being part of a Linux community! Here is a rather lengthy self-introduction.

I am a USA Citizen living in Japan (for no real reason other than that I like it here), and a student of computer science at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. At the time of this writing, if the global economy doesn't collapse, I should be working at Sun Microsystems by April of next year. I've accepted the position, but it doesn't begin until then.

Recently, when installing some free software onto Mac OS X, I discovered that the standard C library for OS X, while Posix compliant, is only a subset of the GNU C standard library. A lot of missing header files in the OS X version of "libstdc" makes it impossible to compile some GNU software. A loyal mac fan my whole life, I was enthralled in 2001 when I got my first UNIX-based Mac OS X system. But over the past few years my patience has been worn thin by Apple's secretive nature with iTunes and the iPhone, and this lack of GNU compatibility was really the final insult.

I decided to switch to 100% open-source software.

I use Gentoo, but I chose it because I have an Apple PowerBook G4. In my experience, it is VERY difficult to find binaries for the PPC platform. I almost always install from source code anyway, so I thought Gentoo would be the best system for me.

I thought about Yellow Dog linux, but I was tired of the details of the Linux system always being taken-care-of for me by fancy distributions, and I wanted to have the chance to actually learn about the internals of the things that make a Linux desktop work.

So far, I have an OK linux system. But some of the problems I have been working on for two weeks now and still no resolution in sight. I have been very frustrated with how difficult it is to find information about things like X11 or UIM. If you have already read all the instructions that were written to help the nOObs, and your problem still isn't solved, you are stuck reading the esoteric developer documentation, or sometimes no documentation at all.

So that is why I joined this forum, hopefully I can solve the remainder of my problems with some discussion here on these forums.

I am looking forward to being a member here!
-- Ramin

[jayd512]

Hi, Ramin! Welcome to LinuxForums!

Congrats on landing a job with Sun, I hope it works out well for you! I don't have anything on UIM at the moment, but as for X11 I wasn't sure if you ran across this: X11-Basic Homepage

Other than that, post whatever problems your having issue with in the appropriate section of the Forum and I'm sure you'll find some answers. See you on the boards!

[glaston]

I come from a Mac background too.
Really got into it all in 2001 with OSX also.

Had some minor Linux experience before that though.

I'm sure you're aware of the Macports project, Rudix, and now there's one called X11 extensions.

The latest version of Xcode includes the iPhone SDK.
I can't use it myself, I don't have an intel mac and I'm still on Tiger and the latest version is Leopard only.

[ramin.honary]

Hi, Ramin! Welcome to LinuxForums!
.... as for X11 I wasn't sure if you ran across this: X11-Basic Homepage

Thanks, it's nice to be here. Wow... Basic. That makes me feel very nostalgic. I'll give it a try, thanks for letting me know.

I come from a Mac background too.
Really got into it all in 2001 with OSX also.

I'm sure you're aware of the Macports project, Rudix, and now there's one called X11 extensions.

I used mac-ports at first, but I didn't like how it installed binaries into it's own separate tree, which often required that I have two copies of each library, one installed by macports, and one installed by me with the ordinary "./configure --prefix=/usr && make && make install"

The latest version of Xcode includes the iPhone SDK. I can't use it myself, I don't have an intel mac and I'm still on Tiger and the latest version is Leopard only.

Yeah, like I said, I have had it with Apple and all of their little secrets and restrictions -- it's always like "buy the upgrade or don't use our stuff." I used to love Apple because they were not Microsoft. But now their business practices are too similar to Microsoft. No iPhone for me, thanks. It's sad, because every time I go to the Apple store I think to myself, "Man, I really need one of these new Apple computers", those things are so sleek.

However, as soon as I get a little more money, I am buying a Neo FreeRunner running OpenMoko.