"Fink" is a piece of software that manages the installation of open source software for OS X. Fink is derived from similar programs on Unix based operating systems such as Linux and BSD, which OS X is based on. Fink is very handy. With it, you can automatically install and update dozens of free software programs on OS X. These programs include many different text editors, Internet programs like email clients and Usenet browsers, programming tools, and more. You can even install the "X Windows" software that allows you to run graphical Unix software like games, graphic editors, and entire office suites of programs. Each day, more and more of these programs are being brough to OS X and can be installed using Fink!
1) Get Fink. Fink itself installs easily and comes as a PKG on a .dmg image. You can download Fink (7.7 MB) from the SourceForge server. Follow the easy install instructions that come with Fink. Fink Documentation is available online if you need help or want to learn more.
2) Open Terminal.app, which will open a new window (see below). Once you've got a terminal window open, type: <code>pico .cshrc </code> 3) Configure your Shell. What you've just done is opened a text filed with the name ".cshrc" using a simple text editing program called Pico (this is pretty much the Unix equivalent of SimpleText). Now that you've got the .cshrc file open, insert the following text (shown below): <code>source /sw/bin/init.csc </code> 4) Save your changes. Now, hit "Control-O" and this will save your changes to the file. 5) Start installing software! (NOTE: In order to procede further, you will need to have "superuser" privileges. To gain these privileges, you will need to login as "Root" and procede from there. If you haven't done so already, there is a page that will show you how to setup your Root user account.) Now that you have Fink installed and setup, you can begin installing Unix programs with Fink. There are several ways to use Fink, but the easiest is probably with the "Dselect" utility. Since you have Fink installed, you can just type the following to start using Fink: <code>dselect </code> Once you've opened dselect, you will see its Main Menu:
6) Using Dselect. The Dselect tool presents you with a menu of options. The interface is somewhat arcane but if you play around with it, you'll get the hang of it. The screenshot above shows you the Main Menu that Dselect presents you with. Our next step will be go through each of the options to show you what they do: <u>U</u>pdate - Select this option and dselect will connect with a server and determine the latest versions of all available software packages. This ensures that whatever you install will be the most recent version available. Since Fink also allows you to upgrade software that you've already installed, using the Update feature will also ensure that those software packages are kept up-to-date as well. <u>S</u>elect - In this area of dselect, you can select which programs you'd like to install. We'll be covering this part of Fink in more detail in just a bit. <u>I</u>nstall - Once you have your software packages selected, this is the option you select to actually install them. <u>C</u>onfig - Running this option will configure the software packages you've just installed. For the most part, it's unnecessary, since you can take care of any configuring without Fink at any time. <u>R</u>emove - As you might expect, Fink allows you to safely and completely remove any software packages you've installed using Fink. 7) Select a program to install. In this example, we will install a program called "dict". Dict is a program that allows you to connect to an Internet server that stores diciontary information -- words and their meanings. This is a very handy utility if you are in the Terminal.app and need to look up the meaning of a word in a very quick manner. Returning to the main menu in Dselect, choose the "Select" option. Press the space bar a couple of times to get through the automatic "help" screens, and you'll be at the list of software packages you can install. Scroll down to "Dict" as shown below: 
8) Make Selection and Return to Main Menu. Once you've got "dict" highlighted, press the "+" key to select Dict for installation (note that in order to make a "+" sign, you will need to press and hold "Shift" and then hit the "+=" key on your keyboard). Once you've done this, you can hit "Return" to go back to the main menu. 9) Install! Once you've returned to the main menu, simply select "Install" and you're off! You will be asked to hit enter "Y" if you want to continue (go ahead!). When the software is done downloading and unpacking, you'll be asked if you "want to erase any previously downloaded .deb files?" Type "Y" and hit "Return." Last, you will be asked to "Return" to continue. Do so. 10) That's All. When your software is done being installed, you will be kicked back to the Main Menu. From here, you can simply select "Quit" to get out of Dselect, or go back and install more stuff. 11) Using Your Software. Because Fink wants to install software in the safest way possible, it puts your software into a folder called "sw" on the root level of your hard drive. The actual programs themselves are located in "/sw/bin". The benefit of this is that if you ever want to get rid of something, you know you needn't look further than the "sw" directory. However, it also means that programs aren't put in the default folder where OS X knows to look for software applications. Thus, if you merely type the name of the program you just installed, OS X won't know what you're talking about. That's why you need to go tell OS X where your program is by typing the full path when you call it by name. For example, if I wanted to look up the word "Macintosh" with my newly installed copy of "Dict," I would type: <code>/sw/bin/dict macintosh</code> The result of this command is below (the actual result is very long and scrolls for several screens): 
If you want to learn more about the Dict program, type: /sw/bin/dict --help This will return a list of commands for Dict that you can use to retrieve whatever information you want. That's all! Now you can go back and explore other useful Open Source programs that have been ported to OS X. Happy Finking!
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