In my hands the X-windows version of pymol on OS X went from unusable to almost as fast as the native version. [as a result of Apple's new X11 release]

0. Upgrade to 10.2.3 if you have not already done so.

1. Download X-windows from apple and install it

(more details in the blue box here: http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/%7Ewgscott/xtal/page1.html )

currently free but once they get everyone addicted....

2. Download Apple's December 2002 developer tools and install it (this includes compilers)

http://developer.apple.com/tools/macosxtools.html

Free but you have to register.

3. Download fink and install it (more details here: http://chemistry.ucsc.edu/%7Ewgscott/xtal/page3.html)

4. type fink install pymol (this installs pymol and all of its dependencies like python).

William G. Scott

Associate Professor

Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry

and The Center for the Molecular Biology of RNA

Sinsheimer Laboratories

University of California at Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz, California 95064

USA

phone: +1-831-459-5367 (office)

+1-831-459-5292 (lab)

fax: +1-831-4593139 (fax)