] The Fink project wants to bring the full world of Unix
] Open Source software to Darwin and Mac OS X. We modify
] Unix software so that it compiles and runs on Mac OS X
] ("port" it) and make it available for download as a
] coherent distribution. Fink uses Debian tools like dpkg
] and apt-get to provide powerful binary package
] management. You can choose whether you want to download
] precompiled binary packages or build everything from
] source.

Fink is great! Its basically drops a Debian based package management system down on Mac OSX. Everything lives in /sw, so it works side by side with anything Apple lays down on the system proper, and it also leaves you /usr/local for your own uses. It can install binaries or compile from source. I have had _zero_ problems with fink. Thus far, everything I have installed or compiled, has installed without a fight and run perfectly.

OSX suffers slightly from what I call "The Solaris Syndrome" (even though I know fully well its not aptly named). In short the elemental *nix commands that ship with it are grossly inferior to their GNU counterparts.. A little fink'ing will get you the good versions of fileutils, findutils, diffutils, patch, egrep, sed, gawk, etc, etc.. Fink is also not missing the other "critical" *nix progies like bash, vim, gnupg, rsync, wget, etc. Security tools are not left out either, you will find nmap, nessus, ethereal, tcpdump, etc. Both Gnome2 and KDE are fully represented.

Use the "unstable" branch, otherwize certain programs such as Evolution are not available for install. Standard Debian style..

There is a GUI frontend for Fink called FinkCommander, but its not really all that helpful. Its just a GUI wrapper for the command line tools.. And you don't get to see file transfer progress..

Fink - Unix software for your Mac