If you login with the username >console with no password you will bypass the Aqua interface and be presented with a text login screen. I came across this hint at daemonnews.org. I hadn't seen it here and so I thought I would share the info.

[Editor's note: Simply typing logout will return you to the GUI login screen.]

[Editor's note: Please see the comments for some useful suggestions]

I have been having some nagging difficulties compiling c code into X ... Can any one explain the full path to doing this this successfully ?

I mean this must be one of the most appealing aspects of OS X, the ability to run any shell based unix app.....if you could get it to actually work.... :-(

I keep getting the compiler demanding a machine type when using the ./configure command. However when I specify a system like BSD, Darwin, PPC or whatever nothing seems to work. A typical result is:

There are many people who use a software router to share one DSL connection among multiple networked computers. The most popular programs are IPNetRouter and SoftRouter. Under OS X, neither one of these will function, since OS X is handling the networking chores.

However, BSD UNIX contains a built-in network address translation (NAT) function, which can do the job that either package used to do.

Configuring it under the beta is non trivial, but it's not that complicated, and there are some pre-written scripts to help with the task.

There's a great thread here on the MacNN forums that discusses all the relevant steps, and includes some links to additional information.

You should be comfortable with your terminal and file-editing skills before attempting to configure NAT -- it's much more like UNIX work than typical Macintosh work!

If you need to uninstall MacOS X, and you don't want to/can't erase the partition, here is one of the better discussions on how to do it on MacFixIt:

Uninstalling OS X - Is it possible?

The key is making sure that the invisible files are deleted, otherwise on a reinstall of MacOS X you will be faced with a login window instead of the setup assistant.

Tip: Use Sherlock to delete invisible files: custom -> edit -> More search options, select 'is invisible', then drag the invisible files/folders to the trash.

Editor's note: You can also try this article on about.com's Mac OS X site for some additional tips.

If you are short on disk storage space and would like to reclaim some, try

/Applications/GrabBag/QuickTime Movies

There are 156 megabytes worth of trailers there that can be deleted, unless of course you can't bear to get rid of Charlie's Angels.

Open the Terminal and type

man perl

There's practically a textbook on how to use Perl.

For those not familiar with it, the unix commands nice and renice can be used to alter the priorities (think percentage of CPU time) given to running tasks. However, like many UNIX commands, they are not 'user friendly' by any stretch. First you need to do a ps to see what's running, and then you need to remember the command syntax to change the values.

I spotted a thread on the Mac OS X Forums that discussed this very topic. Forum user "Iambob" took it upon himself to write a GUI wrapper for nice, which would present all the jobs with their current priorities, and allow easy tweaking of the values. Quite logically, he named his program nicer.

You can find nicer here, and I must say it's a very useful progam. There's some work he'd like to do relative to optimization, but the basic functionality is there, and it's basically self-explanatory: double-click a process to change its priority. It takes a while to launch, but don't worry, it's not crashing your OS.

I think this program is a great example of what we'll see as we progress towards OS X 1.0: GUI wrappers around the core UNIX commands to make them more useful to the typical Mac user. Thanks, IamBob!

[Editor's note: Version 1.0 of nicer is now available at the above link!]

jedit is an amazing Java/php/text processor. It comes with a large number of installable plug-ins, is capable of color-coding syntax for java, php, HTML, perl, and other languages, stores each open document on a tabbed window, and has an aqua-ish appearance theme! And, best of all, it's open source and totally free. You can read more about it on the jedit home page.

Kris Kopicki has created a pre-compiled package version of jedit for OS X PB, and I've been using it for a day or so. It's written in Java, and runs fine on the PB (perhaps it's a tick slow, but not enough to bother me). You can find it on Kris' page right here.

Highly recommended if you do coding of any sort, or just want to see a slick Cocoa/Java app.

I noticed something sorta funny, when you open up the applications list, by mashing cmd + opt +esc, the menu bar disappears when the list becomes active. Does anyone have any clues to why this happens?

Also , The whole concept of the preferences being xml files is pretty cool. Does anybody know of any sites that have more stuff you can add, such as the translucent terminal window. OS X PB seems like there is a bunch of stuff that is disabled and only takes a little bit of hacking to enable it.

[Editor's note: Search elsewhere here for the command line hacks, as there are a bunch of them!]

Thanks

Carbon applications like Internet Explorer, Desktop and Napster cannot choose applications because Navigation Services doesn't recognize packages yet in Mac OS X. However, you can work around it easily. Simple type the application's path (like /System/Applications/Music Player.app) in the "Go To" field at the bottom of all Open windows.

Rember to add the .app extension to the application name! it is actually part of the folder (bundle) name but the Finder hides it automatically.