Real World Computing

To use Fink, you first need to have Apple's Developer Tools installed on your Mac (they come on the operating system DVD). Then you simply download the basic package, which comes as a standard Mac installer. Once that's been installed, fire up the Terminal and type 'fink install ' - for instance, 'fink install ethereal' - to have the system automatically download and install the software for you. Finked software is placed in the /sw/bin directory, so you can just navigate there and then double-click on its icon (or run it from the command line, of course).

Usually Fink works without a hitch, although in fact we did have a slight problem with the Ethereal package. When Fink installs a package, it also installs any "dependencies" - other packages required to make it work - but for some reason one of these was missing for Ethereal, which resulted in some ugly error messages and no sign of the program running. A quick ten seconds on Google turned up the answer: just type 'fink install gtk+2' (which is the missing dependency), relaunch the program and you're away. It runs, as do all of the Finked packages that use a graphical interface, under Apple's X11 environment, which should have been installed when you installed the Developer Tools.