>nShell is the closest thing to UNIX on the mac, aside from MacTen or A/UX
>from Apple.  Its semi-freeware.  The free version isn't as powerful as the
>full version is.  Look for it in the info-mac archive.

Just so the record is straight:  nShell-Pro was released to the world as
freeware in June 1995; the author, John Jensen, released the source as
well, with the proviso that any enhanced or derivative versions bear the
name of the person who modified it.  I have in fact partially completed an
upgrade to nShell, which I hope to release early next year.

That said, I like it a lot.  It supports true multitasking of the shell
windows, regular expressions, piping, redirection, environment variables,
shell scripts with conditionals, and more.  I'm adding a mode switch to let
the user talk to it in UNIX-like path names, aliases, and hopefully a shell
command history mechanism.

>MacMint isn't great (in other words, not really good at all).

It's actually fairly usable if you have a really fast Mac, and it coexists
under MacOS while allowing you to port many UNIX utilities over for
essentially zero cost.  There's a 'gcc' available which has actually been
used to compile MacOS programs, though I haven't.  My experience after
installing utilities and applications is that MiNT behaves quite a bit like
UNIX, though it is severely limited in the number of advanced features
(like networking, X, multiuser capability) that it supports.

>Unfortunately, there are 3 choices for GOOD UNIX on a mac:  MacBSD (free),
>MacTen (something over $600), and A/UX (something over $500).  A/UX is PURE
>unix, while MacTen sits ONTOP of the MacOS.   :-(

MachTen is under $500 UNLESS you want the development system, and then it
zooms to around $900; A/UX is essentially a dead product, although you can
still buy it in a few places. :(


--
| Greg Dunn                        | "Information is not knowledge;      |
| GregDunn@aol.com                 | knowledge is not wisdom;            |
| gregdunn@indy.net                | wisdom is not truth."               |
| Greg@gdunn.nawc-ad-indy.navy.mil |                   -- Frank Zappa    |