Currently written for Tiger.
- Partition: Think about if and how you want to partition your hard drive before installation. Partitioning an internal hard drive gives is like splitting one drive into two. You may want to do this if you want to keep your data separate from OS X, etc. A lot of people, however, just go with one partition.
Leopard Note: Disk Utility in Leopard lets you create and resize partitions non destructively, so you can partition without deleting all your data.
- Install X11: available via the X11User.pkg under Tiger, which can be found on Tiger Disk 1 in the directory System/Installation/Packages/ . It's also available when installing Tiger under the advanced option. You can see some screenshots back at MacSingularity
Leopard Note: X11 on Leopard is very different than on Tiger and may cause some issues. Options include installing Tiger's X11 or installing some patches. The latest X11 patches from XDarwin appear to fix the majority of the issues with the possible exception of X11 full screen mode. See
Macsingularity for more X11 news.
- Install XCode / Developer Tools: This includes the gcc compiler which is needed to install further software (mostly Unix utilities from Fink). The developer tools are somewhere on your installation CDs. You can also download the latest version of them free from Apple but you will need to register for free "online" Apple Developer Connection status.
- Install Firefox, Camino, Opera, OmniWeb? (or any Browser you may prefer over Safari)
- Install DesktopManager (Tiger Only) In Tiger, and on PPC macs, this gives you a multiple desktop option. Spaces will replace this in Leopard and I don't think Desktop Manager is Universal. Note : Most of the non-Apple virtual desktop programs are going away, due to Spaces (such as VirtueDesktops).
- Install IRAF
- Or Install via Scisoft
- See some additional additional notes on this Wiki
- Scisoft is kitchen sink of astronomy distributions containing an insane amount of packages. For someone who wants many of them, including things hard to install like Pyraf, it can be useful. For someone who only wants IRAF and a few external packages, the installers at Macsingularity may be a better option.
- Comes with tons of astronomy applications (IRAF/Pyraf, SM, skycalc, etc.)
- Install IDL (this should be its own page?)
- Install the IDL application.
- Download the IDL ASTROLIB
- Unpack to some appropriate location, for example /users/you/idl/astrolib/ and then add that to your IDLPATH
setenv IDL_PATH "<IDL_DEFAULT>:+/users/you/idl/astrolib"
for tcsh.
- Install Fink - Fink makes it easy to download Unix utilities. Sometimes, you have to compile things though, which can take a while. Once installed, some of the Unix utilities I installed using Fink include:
- ghostscript
- gv
- tetex (or just install Texshop)
- g77
- enscript
- grep
- less
- gawk
- svn - Subversion Source Control Server
- svn-client - Subversion Source Control Client
- xmgrace (GUI plotting program)
- Install LaTeX (teTex and TexShop)
- Install TeX emulateapj:
- Download emulateapj (just save on home directory for now). Then execute the following:
cd /sw/share/texmf-dist/tex/latex
sudo mkdir emulateapj
sudo mkdir apjfonts
sudo cp ~/emulateapj.cls emulateapj/
sudo cp ~/apjfonts.sty apjfonts/
texconfig
- Install NFS Manager (if you need to mount NFS disks).
- Install a Text Editor: emacs, textwrangler, nedit, etc. (should be a new page)
- Install Microsoft Office X (or Open Office, NeoOffice?, iWork if you prefer (perhaps a page with links to all these)
Here are a few additional setups. These are mostly user preferences.
- Enable X11 Click Through: In a terminal, do the following:
- defaults write.com.apple.x11 wm_click_through -bool true
- Setup a 3-button Mouse: This sets up right click and paste with middle mouse button in Terminal/X11.
- System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Mouse
- Set left button to Primary Button
- Set middle (scroller) button to Button 3
- Set right button to Secondary Button
- Swap Control and Caps Lock Key: Easier on the fingers for emacs/unix users.
- System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard -> Modifier Keys
- Just switch the two with a drop down box.
- Enable Expose and Spaces in user preferences
![[hide]](javascript:icntoggle('mod-mnu_application_menu','mo.png');)
