I apparently missed the start of this thread but will comment with the understanding that some info would be unknown to me. Thus with your numbering:
1. Right off the bat here I'm wondering why you are not moving directly to Lion? As to X11 & Fink there is not a direct relationship, or to put it another way Fink is not X11. Given all of this I would suggest at this point clearing the hard disk and completely reinstalling everything. As to Fink and MacPorts I divested myself of those solutions a long time ago, HomeBrew is a far better solution.
2. Would a recompile be required? I'm not sure this is true. However it appears that this machine has been around a long time. For a practical matter you may be better off with a rebuilt system.
3. If you have to ask you will be better off reformatting the drive. Not to be crude but cleaning the drive completely will put you back on track with no questions asked.
4. This is a common issue, that is the machine is too important to take time to do an update. So you are not alone here. The obvious things to do are to know what your critical apps and data are. Back up the data and make sure the apps run on Lion before even considering an update. At this point I wouldn't even bother with an update until I knew everything was ready for Lion, then I would do a clean install of Lion. As to Lions performance it isn't that bad at all, I run an early 2008 MBP and it is bearable with 2GB of RAM. For optimal performance more RAM should be installed and right now RAM is dirt cheap. Note too that Lion, even on this old hardware, actually enhances performance in some areas. I don't want to sound like a champion for Lion but it really isn't as bad as some have made it out to be performance wise. UI wise lion does take a little adjustment time (a couple of days for scrolling) but any update brings with it learning challenges. What I'm saying here is basically don't drag your feet. Do the work required to be ready for a complete update and don't look back.
As to Fink, it basically is dead. MacPorts was and from what I can still see a terrible solution. MacPorts was so bad that I gave up on it and just installed software from source that I needed. Luckily I was focused at the time on a limited set of apps. It was about two years latter that I discovered HomeBrew. So far HomeBrew hasn't been too bad, I've only have had one major issue with it. The good thing is HomeBrew allows me to install my apps with a minimal of effort and a minimal of disk space. The number of things I now install manually is greatly reduced and amounts to Aquamacs and Eclipse. I'm not saying HomeBrew is perfect because it has it's shortcomings too, just that it is the best choice for me.
Sent from my iPad
On Dec 7, 2011, at 5:18 AM, Pierre Baguis < email@hidden> wrote: Thank you guys for the great info. There are some points though that need clarification.
(1) I am a little bit confused about the fate of an existing X11 installation. What I have in the Macbook is the initial (from the DVD) X11 installation on top of which the XQuartz updates were applied. So, if I just update the system (Leopard --> Snow Leopard) without erasing the hard disk and wishing to use the existing Fink installation, should I just apply the latest XQuartz version for SL?
(2) I understand that the Fink packages would need recompilation, likely to take days on this machine. Does the Snow Leopard DVD contains the developer tools also? If not, how do I get them and install them when previous versions
would be present?
(3) Let's say that I update the system as explained previously (just updating without reformatting) and I decide to go MacPorts which comes with its own X11, if I understand well. Could this cause any trouble since there would be already in the system an older X11 installation? If yes, how do I clean up the system from old X11/XQuartz components before proceeding to MacPorts?
(4) The Macbook is an old one ( see here http://tinyurl.com/c6qylc2 ) but 64-bit nonetheless. I am not sure if it can run Lion but even if it can, it is probably not a good idea to install it on such an old machine, almost four years old now. The plan is to use it for about one more year, probably less, and then give it to my daughter for music and light work after erasing everything and reinstalling OS X from scratch. I am
approaching system updates very carefully because some of the work carried out on this machine is of critical importance (tight deadlines and the like). But since Leopard software becomes increasingly scarce, I decided to give Snow Leopard a try.
My biggest issue with Fink so far is that, when packages are starting to pile up, it has a hard time dealing with the clutter of dependencies which leaves me with a system that cannot be updated any more. During the Panther days it worked better but not now. This is why I keep an eye on alternative solutions.
Thank you again, Pierre
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