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p>Many Mac users apparently aren’t familiar with some standard IRAF tricks to getting the delete key to work properly. Most people insert a line like this:
!stty erase ^H
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p>into their login.cl file so as to make the delete key work properly. Another issue is the delete key working right on laptops after the “e” IRAF command that lets you tap the up arrow and see your previous commands. My solution for this has been to change by default editor in IRAF to emacs, so my login.cl file has a line:
set editor = emacs
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p>Evidently IRAF pulls in some keymapping from your standard text editor. Since I never invoke the iraf editior (be it vi or emacs or whatever) this change works for me. I believe there are ways to edit your vi.ed file somehow too.
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p>I have made The IRAF Button 0.96 available for download. The new version is the same as 0.95 (which quashed some bugs) but also adds some requested features. Those would menu items to refresh the main window and bring the main window back if it is closed.
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p>The latter should not be neccesary because the program is supposed to quit if the window is closed but that is not working anymore for some odd reason. Anyway, you’ll find the new menu items in the File and Window menus.
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This is a quick list of tips and things to do when you have just bought your first Macintosh and want to get rolling with the power of UNIX and the simplicity of a Macintosh that MacOS X has to offer. I write this for my friend Maggie, but I’m sure it will be helpful to many.
It may seem like a lot of work when you want to get going with your new computer, but there’s work to be done and then your Mac will be a joy to use for years to come.
Decide if partitioning your Hard Drive is worth it.
Before you start playing with your new Powerbook consider if you want to partition your hard drive. New Macs have very large hard drives, sometimes 80 GB or larger and it can be advantegous to have a drive like that chopped up into partitions, say two 20 GB and one 40 GB, or what have you. By partitioning your hard drive and keeping all the operating system software away from, say, your astronomical data or games, you can better backup or re-install OS X if need be.
When I first got my new iBook the first thing I did was wipe it clean and install 2 partitions. It’s no fun because you have to wait and spend a lot of time installing things before you can get playing, but it’s something you should probably do. You can also move your home directory off of the boot disk if you really want, there are some tips for this at MacOS X Hints.
However, if you won’t really use the extra partitions to store your data, this may not be worth the trouble. Further, it can be difficult to re-install individual applications from the Software Restore Discs. And the latest versions of OS X allow for Archive and Install procedures that make reinstalling OS X a bit easier.
Further, if you fill up a partition that’s never a joy, especially with say iMovie data or such. Partitioning may be something only for power users. If you do choose to partition, do it sooner rather than later, so you haven’t installed any personalized stuff on your new Mac yet.
Note: Upon re-installing MacOS X Panther customize your installation and turn off the unneccesary foreign language localizations, extra fonts for languages you can’t read, and printer drivers for printers you will not need. This will save disk space and most importantly, TIME.
Decide if you want to change your shell, and fix tcsh if need be.
You may like bash, you may not. If you want to use tcsh, go ahead and switch to it sooner rather than later. That way, a lot of the tips and things on this site will make sense. I have already explained how to change your shell. Also, Apple hasn’t provided tcsh in Panther with the best initialzation. Apparently they had a lot of cool tcsh customizations in Jaguar that were not UNIX-standard so they took them out but I think it’s much better with them. There’s also an issue with one of the files Apple provides that will lead to weird issues.
Download the fixed version of the csh aliases file and place it in the same directory as the script before you run it. Here is the csh shell script to fix tcsh. Download and execute with a
sudo csh fix_tcsh_panther.csh
Also, be sure to add /usr/local/bin, /usr/X11r6/bin to your PATH in whichever shell you choose.
Make sure X11 is installed.
If you want to run IRAF, you’ll need X11, which comes with Panther. However, I don’t know if it’s part of the default install on new Macs, and if you partioned as I recommended be sure to pick it as an optional install. If you need to install it still, check out the X11 section.
Install the Developer Tools (Xcode)
You may never become a developer, but the dev tools contain the gcc compiler and other tools that you may one day need to build some IRAF task or IMFORT option or who knows what. The Dev Tool CD is included with the Panther retail box but may or may not come with new Macs. (It’s on the Tiger DVD) If it does it may be a disk image file on either the hard drive or on one of the included CDs or DVDs. You can get them for free online but you must register as an Online Member (free) with the Apple Developer Connection. Note: If you don’t feel like you’ll actually do much programming, you can custom install and turn off the Documentation and examples which take up a lot of space.
Use Apple Software Update to upgrade your system software.
Run “Software Update” from the Apple Menu and upgrade anything you actually use, and install whatever security updates have been issued since your Mac’s included software was written. Sometimes, there are things like iPod software or other things that you don’t really need – you can ignore these things by picking “ignore update” in the Update menu of the program. The first time you run it, it will likely want to download and install quite a bit of stuff so let it churn for a while.
Install Fink and LaTex
Fink is a marvelous collection of UNIIX software that has been ported to OS X. You can almost always install binaries, for such things as window managers, astronomy software like xephem, etc. This is a must have, and the latest version includes the marvelous FinkCommander program which gives Fink a graphical interface for installing software.
Fink can be used to install binaries of teTex which can serve as the engine for the wonderful LaTex program TexShop. Remember to go into the TexShop “engine” preferences to tell it where your tetex installation lies, if you installed via fink it is in /sw/bin/
You can also use Fink to install a cool window manager like the enlightenment (turn off all the opaque window drags and resizes to speed it up), if you prefer to run X-Windows full screen (as I do.) Fink can also install The GIMP, a powerful and free, but somehow hard to use, Photoshop-clone.
One note about Fink, it can install binaries or it can compile from source. It wants to do all of one or the other. If you try to binary install something and it can’t find a binary for say one needed libary, pdf-shlibs or something, just install from source that one missing library and then binary install the larger package you were trying to do in the first place. This happened to be when installing Grace (an X11 GUI 2D plotting program) and I did not want to compile the whole thing from source.
Download the software recommended in the UNIX section of the site.
At the UNIX Page I mention a couple of pieces of software, BBEdit Lite for one. There’s a better text editor from Bare Bones now, and that’s TextWrangler. Be sure to grab it, it’s free. ManOpen, and these are definitely things you should get, UNIX newbie or not.
Install IRAF, X11IRAF, ds9, STSDAS, etc.
The whole site is about this part – create the IRAF user and install IRAF first as has been described in the Install IRAF link on your left first. There have been some issues with the PATH not taking in X11 with the tcsh shell … if it acts up on you you may need your own .xinitrc file to add a SETENV command to. Just do this:
% cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
and then use BBEDit’s open hidden feature to add a SETENV PATH line to your .xinitrc file towards the end, as you would normally put in your .cshrc file. Note: Make sure BBEdit is saving files with UNIX line breaks. You can change this is the “Text Files: Saving” preference. Also be sure it’s translating line breaks too which is in “Text Files: Opening.” You can see the line break format of open documents in the third mini tool-bar widget that looks like. It should almost always be unix.
Setup Mail
Mail is a fairly nice email client for those of you new to OS X, and has a great spam filter. You can pick IMAP and always leave the mail on the server, or you can pick POP and download your email. I choose POP, download new mail only, and remove it after it’s been on the server after one week, so that both my computers will download my mail. Mail supports SSL for both SMTP and POP so you can secure your email password and content if you like.
Turn on SSH and file sharing if you like.
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p>This section is a bit of a joke, you see turning on ssh is painless. Just goto the System Preferences pane and pick Sharing. Within you can turn on apache, ssh (remote login), Mac file sharing, windows file sharing, etc. Furthermore, burning DVDs, using USB “key” disks, etc. is all as simple as plugging them in or inserting a blank disc. The elegance of a Mac will soon leave you astounded as you search for the hard way to do something when in fact it is almost always very simple.
Put the Terminal in your dock.
You never know when you’ll want to ssh somewhere, it’s best to have the Terminal in your dock if not running at all times. The OS X Terminal program is in /Applications/Utilities. If you prefer to run rootless X11 you’ll likely have xterms and xgterms open often too.
Download venerable Mac shareware and freeware.
Some Mac shareware and freeware programs are legendary. GraphicConverter is just an amazing tool that anyone who does anything with computer graphics should have. Fugu is an excellent sftp graphical front end. Fire is a marvelous multi-protocol chat client that does AIM, MSN, ICQ, Yahoo, and more. You can find tons of Mac freeware and shareware at sites like Versiontracker and Macupdate.
Configure your firewall
If you’re going to be on the internet, it’s probably a good idea to turn your firewall on. You can find it in the Sharing Sysetm Preferences pane. Apple’s interface for customizing your rules is fairly simple, no IP blocking just decide what ports you want open or closed. When you turn on ssh or file sharing, the firewall will automatically open the correct ports. If you do anything fancier you’ll have to tell it which port to open. Apple includes some common ports to open, including the ones needed for iTunes sharing, AIM, etc.
Use Safari for Web Browsing.
New Mac users often see the familiar Internet Explorer logo in Applications and start using this for web browsing. Do not do this. Under no circumstances would any self-respecting Mac user use IE. Safari is Apple’s own browser and is very fast with cool features. It’s also in your Application folder.
If you prefer a Mozilla based browser I recommend Camino, which uses MacOS X native widgets and feels Mac-like, unlike Firebird which has a very weird feel to me.
Use the Location feature for different networks
There’s no reason to manually type in a different IP address when you move your laptop around or to have to open up any control panels to switch to DHCP. You can create different locations in the Network Preference pane. One for work with a static IP, one for home with DHCP and a cable modem, one for Airport and the internet cafe you like. You can then switch between them in the always present Apple menu “Location” item. As far as I know, Windows still doesn’t have any kind of location manager.
Learn by feel.
There are so many preferences in each program, and in the System Preferences, don’t be afraid to poke around. Simlilarly, in all Mac programs you’ll find the preferences in the application menu (the bold menu featuring the application’s name.) Always poke around there too. There’s online help in the “Help” menu for all programs, which can be hit or miss. There are lots of programs in /Applications and /Applications/Utilities, such as Printer Setup.
Oh, don’t forget Exposé – which is just the coolest thing. Hit F9, F10, and F11 when you have a lot of windows open and watch the magic.
I may update this in the future with more things if I think of them. I made a list of things to do when I got my iBook and maybe I’ll remember more things from it or actually find the old list itself. All in all, your first day with the Mac will involve some work but then you should be set to cast aside Linux and hopefully Windows for a long time to come. 
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