Fink, Mike, 1770?-1823?, American border hero, whose exploits have been so elaborated in legend that the actual facts of his life are difficult to discover. He was born probably at the frontier post of Pittsburgh, took part in the wars against the Native Americans of the Ohio region, and subsequently became a keelboatman on the flatboats of the Ohio and Mississippi rivers. He later turned to trapping. He accompanied the first Ashley expedition (1822) up the Missouri and was killed in a shooting scrape somewhere near the mouth of the Yellowstone River. He was noted as a marksman, fighter, and teller of tall stories of his exploits. Stories of flatboat life are associated with his name in a manner similar to the Paul Bunyan stories of the lumber camps.

(born 1770/80, Fort Pitt, Pa.—died 1823, Fort Henry? [North Dakota]) U.S. keelboatman. He won fame in his youth as a local marksman and Indian scout. Later, when keelboats became the chief vessels of commerce on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, he was known as “king of the keelboatmen.” Renowned as a marksman, roisterer, and champion rough-and-tumble fighter, he became a legendary hero of the American tall tale; even in his own time, his name was synonymous with the braggadocio of Western frontiersmen. He was shot and killed on a fur-trapping expedition to the upper Missouri River.

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(born 1770/80, Fort Pitt, Pa.—died 1823, Fort Henry? [North Dakota]) U.S. keelboatman. He won fame in his youth as a local marksman and Indian scout. Later, when keelboats became the chief vessels of commerce on the Ohio and Mississippi rivers, he was known as “king of the keelboatmen.” Renowned as a marksman, roisterer, and champion rough-and-tumble fighter, he became a legendary hero of the American tall tale; even in his own time, his name was synonymous with the braggadocio of Western frontiersmen. He was shot and killed on a fur-trapping expedition to the upper Missouri River.

Learn more about Fink, Mike with a free trial on Britannica.com.

In computing, the Fink project is an effort to port Unix programs to Mac OS X. Fink uses dpkg and APT (Debian's package management system), as well as its own frontend program, fink (which is implemented as a set of Perl modules).

Implementation

Fink features a binary distribution for quick and easy installation, as well as a source distribution for users preferring more flexibility. In addition to command-line tools for handling packages, FinkCommander provides a GUI. The user can configure Fink to utilize the stable or unstable tree for packages. The unstable tree typically has newer releases, but has not stood the test of time.

Fink stores all its data in the directory "/sw" by default, rather than as part of the base system or under "/usr/local" as specified in the Filesystem Hierarchy Standard. Within fink's directory, a FHS-like layout (/sw/bin, /sw/include, /sw/lib, etc.) is used. Fink can be used to install newer versions of packages installed by Mac OS X or to install packages not included in Mac OS X.

History

The Fink project was started in December 2000 by German hacker Christoph Pfisterer The name "Fink" is German for finch and is related to the Darwin operating system (that lies at the core of Mac OS X), through Charles Darwin's study of diversity among finches.

Christoph Pfisterer left the project out of frustration in November of 2001. Since then, several people have stepped in and picked up support for Fink and as of March 2008, the project is managed by 6 administrators, 89 developers, and a very active community.

The Fink community released support for Mac OS X v10.4 on 18 Feb. 2006 and for Mac OS X Leopard on the day it was released (26 October 2007).

See also

• MacPorts (formerly called DarwinPorts)
• Gentoo/Alt
• Pkgsrc

References

External links

• Fink project homepage

it: Fink (informatica)