[OT] Re: apple mac laptop.

[John Almberg]

>> I don't think it's far OT, either, since IMHO, Mac desktops and
>> FreeBSD servers are the perfect, practical combination for many
>> organizations, including my own.
>
>
> 	This might better be asked offlist, but there may be others like
> 	me who are clueless, and since you are familiar, I'll ask you.
> 	How "interact-able" are FBSD and (say) MacBook?  E.g., is there a
> 	"BSD-way" of my creating an account of the Apple and using is?
> 	It's got @G of RAM, and a 160G drive [!].  Apple says in plain
> 	text that is is UNIX.  (or maybe Berkeley Unix).
>
> 	So besides the mac firewall [whatever], the laptop will be
> 	behind my pfSense box.  So... --and to be completely honest, the
> 	main reason for this >> $1000 laptop is *security*.  When she was
> 	younger I wasn't that concerned is some kiddie cracker learned
> 	that her favorite pet was a kitty.  Different now.
>
> 	Another question: can I install X11 without it bothering whatever
> 	kind of mac front-end windowing comes with?  Be great if I could
> 	admin this BSD-based computer from my office.
>
> 	thankee much!
>

X11 is integrated with the Apple desktop, so you can run X11  
applications, like OpenOffice, from the desktop, more or less  
seamlessly. The only difference that I've noted is that X11  
applications use Ctrl-C, etc., for copy/paste instead of the usual  
Apple-C, etc, that normal Apple applications use. This is a minor  
inconvenience, but it reminds me that there are two different types  
of applications on the desktop.

Basically, OSX *is* BSD so you can mount server disks, etc., as usual.

The main benefit to me is that administering Apples is very similar  
to administering a FreeBSD server, so I don't need to learn two  
completely different OSs (one is more than enough for me!)

I basically think of OSX as BSD with a really, really good GUI. Blows  
the doors off the usual Unix desktops (which is why I switched.)

-- John