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Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

lapwinglabs.com

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Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#131

Post by sanderjd »

616c wrote: post #42

I do not wants to flame, but is there a reason people dislike Macports so much. I tried Homebrew when it was 1-2 years old, but stuck with ports bc it was so stable, compiles from source, and I never heard a serious problem. I heard the opposite complaint on the net, but almost all Macports hate was from many years before. I am the only one who chose not to rely on Homebrew!?

I think homebrew is much easier to contribute to. I started using it when I wanted something that neither Macports nor homebrew had at the time, and it was very simple to add it to homebrew. It seems like things are generally more up to date and comprehensive in homebrew, and I think it's because of how easy it is to add things.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#133

Post by tjl »

616c wrote: post #42

I do not wants to flame, but is there a reason people dislike Macports so much. I tried Homebrew when it was 1-2 years old, but stuck with ports bc it was so stable, compiles from source, and I never heard a serious problem. I heard the opposite complaint on the net, but almost all Macports hate was from many years before. I am the only one who chose not to rely on Homebrew!?

I stopped using Macports for two reasons. First, it was taking a long time for some of the ports to get up to date. That doesn't seem to be a problem now, but it was. The second reason is that it insists on using its own versions of tools that OS X already has. I'd prefer not to install new versions if I don't have to. I understand their reasoning, but that's why I don't use Macports.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#135

Post by tjl »

unspecified wrote: post #32

You still have to replace /bin/bash and /bin/sh binaries, even after doing a `brew install bash`. ...right? `brew install bash` will just give you /usr/local/bin/bash, and then use that as your interactive shell.

Or you can update your bash from Apple's Support Site,

http://support.apple.com/downloads/

I don't know if it fixes the more recently found bash vulnerabilities, but I know it fixes the first one that was reported.

You can find versions for Lion and Mountain Lion if you search.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#137

Post by LowDog »

This is interesting given that OS X is anything but a hacker's paradise. The platform is very locked down, discourages tinkering and customization, and given how expensive Apple hardware is, this is the least accessible and most exclusive out of the three main players. Even worse is when developers make it the leading platform for their software, like in the case of Atom, where the Windows support is awful given that they started out focusing on OS X.

I'm guessing it takes a lot of work to create and maintain things like homebrew in order to make the OS X experience more palatable, but why not just use your Linux flavor of choice and cut to the chase? I used to use OS X and I loved homebrew, but it feels like it's cut off from the rest of the operation system, which has often caused me a lot of headaches in the past.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#138

Post by tkubacki »

sanderjd wrote: post #130
drzaiusapelord wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just like PC's, Macs have entered the world of, what I call, "car guys." Car guys are always fiddling with things for a tiny performance or perceived security boosts without really thinking things through. In the Windows world you'll hear them tell you how you must disable the UAC, must install registry 'cleaners', must use $av_vendor_x because $av_vendor_y sucks, fiddle with some obscure registry change, use drivers…

This is a great analogy. In high school and college, I believe I was a Windows and then Linux "car guy". One of the things I liked when I (mostly) switched to OSX from Linux was that I no longer had to spend any time fiddling with stuff. I used to find it fun, now it just feels like there's way too many interesting things to be learning about and doing to spend any time tweaking crap on my computer!

That's why I use Ubuntu's default Unity on desktop and OSX Macbook these days. For me it just works.

Ubuntu has even more powerful window managing key bindings by default (on OSX I need Spectacle).

For all other things I just don't care.

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#139

Post by aftbit »

morganvachon wrote: post #12
jug5 wrote: post #6

Step 1. Install linux

I get the joke, and it was the first thing that popped in my head too. But in all seriousness, OS X is Unix as well, and can do pretty much any Unix based task that GNU/Linux can. Sometimes the best tool for the job is the one you already own.

Unfortunately, it has terrible filesystem support. How do I read/write ext4 volumes!?

Re: Hacker's Guide to Setting Up Your Mac

#140

Post by oinksoft »

unspecified wrote: post #82
oinksoft wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you change your user shell to the shell you want. You can do this in the "Accounts" preference pane by control-clicking a user, selecting "Advanced Options" from the context menu, and changing the "Login shell" setting to your preferred shell.

Right....but your user shell has nothing to do with shellshock. Shellshock involves things like Apache invoking system calls that need a shell, and those system calls don't care what your user shell is. They care what /bin/sh and /bin/bash are (or wherever your system shells live, it's /bin for OSX). This guide is claiming that updating your login shell to bash via Homebrew will mitigate shellshock, which is flat-out…

OK, but nothing in your comment implied that you were talking about the "Shellshock" vulnerability. I believe that a very recent OSX update patched this vulnerability, anyhow.
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