Panther Discs

For those of you who will likely install Panther at some point, I just wanted to give a rundown of what you get on the discs. Panther ships with 4 CDs. Disc 1 is the main install disc. At some point you must be able to customize the install because when it asked for Disc 2 it said “You have specified options which are on another disc, please insert disc 2.” Disc 2 just contains a boatload of languages that you will likely not need, like Finnish and Norwegian. It installs about 12 languages at least on the default and I know for a fact that those language files take up a fair bit of space. There are programs for removing the extra languages that are listed in my MacWorld magazine - I will post those when I get home.

The third disc isn’t required during the install. A lot of people won’t need it at all. It contains Additional fonts for languages like Arabic, Cherokee and a few I didn’t even recognize. Skipped that. It contains drivers for some sort of Epson printer - shipped that too. Interestingly it had software for reading a Common Access Card, which I guess is some sort DND thing. Don’t need that. The only interesting software on it was the Panther version of X11. If you are a traditional Mac user, you likely won’t care about this, but people with Unix/Linux backgrounds will be interested in the upgraded X Server from Apple. It now supports full screen and is supposedly faster than before. I will know more once I get a chance to test it. And the forth disc - the Developer Tools is where you find XCode and other goodies that allow you to turn your Mac into a sexy development house. Good luck and enjoy Panther.