Using a mixed environment - OS X and Debian

Some time ago, I wrote about my first experiences with an old eMac I got from my parents. I've been pretty happy with the system, even if the OS X 10.3.9 is not as fancy as the latest incarnations of this extremely user friendly OS.

I decided to keep the best of two worlds: I kept the OS X installed (no Debian or NetBSD on this system!). Thus I can still use Excel that is unfortunately absolutely necessary for anyone studying economics and business administration. Of course one can probably calculate everything with OpenOffice Calc, but using OpenOffice at home just does not help me in learning for the spreadsheet exam I have to pass using Excel in the computer lab at the school.

For word processing and some occasional hacking, I decided to install Aquamacs. For typesetting the texts, I installed MacTeX.

As I have too much old boxes in my room in the dorm, I decided not to install more open source apps in the eMac. At the moment I mostly use the Debian box (eVectra 1 GHz, 256 Mb RAM) in the console mode using a ssh connection. The box is not connected to a monitor or to a keyboard, but it does have a pair of loadspeakers for playing my collection of ogg files ripped with ripit. In addition, the Debian box is used for doing some math with GNU Octave.

I am sure, there are many readers who would just "liberate" the eMac but, alas, we are not living in a perfect world where we could freely decide which software to use. The world is a dirty place, just like Ivo Welch writes in Corporate Finance: An Introduction after a discussion of finance in perfect markets:

The real world is definitely dirtier than our perfect one, and you can't just close your eyes and wish you were still in Kansas.

Problems with open source on OS X

A couple of weeks ago, I got an old eMac (1 GHz, 640 MB RAM) that is a wonderful addition to my collection of hardware. I've been pretty happy using OS X, and at the moment I don't plan to install Debian on this box. After all, I use Debian already now on an old iBook (600 MHz, 384 MB RAM). Furthermore, using OS X makes it possible for me to edit the Excel and Word documents when necessary for my studies.

I just would love to install more open source applications on this system to make the computing experience even better than it is now. Unfortunately, this is not as easy as it is with Linux. It is probably easier even with Windows than with this box.

The problem is caused by the fact that this computer has OS X 10.3.9 installed. Most of the open source projects do not consider it necessary to support a few years old version of OS X - even the Firefox cannot be installed on this old version. Fink project should provide a great selection of open source applications ported to OS X. Unfortunately, Fink has ended the support for 10.3 more than a year ago. MacPorts targets the latest OS X versions, as well.

I am not going to invest in a new version of the OS X just in order to install a few open source applications. It seems that I have to learn to use the OS in the way it is most probably not meant to be used - that is, the hard way.