| I'm coming from using Linux full-time at work and home, so I do miss a number of apps, including a few that I wrote in Perl-Gtk2. To use those, I've been ssh'ing to my Linux box and opening them on here. Seems to work well enough, aside from things like tray icons, of course.
Gimp has come a long way; even the interface is nice these days. I'm not sure if the version I have on OS X is as recent as what is out there on Linux. I haven't really played with it much yet on here.
I think using Fink is a good idea for anyone. Not only does it save you the worries of gathering all the necessary libraries for compiling source, but also, it's kind of like "Software Update" for your X11 software, assuming it works as apt and yum do, which I do believe it does. As new versions of a program come out, you can easily upgrade them via Fink. At work, most everything we install is an rpm via yum; we also make our own rpm's for our in-house software. They make it so much easier to distribute applications to the end users.
OpenOffice...I love what it is and what it stands for, but man, that is one memory-hogging app. Even at work I despise using it. Still, it beats paying Billy Boy the big bucks for Office. One of these days they're going to get it right too.
Abiword is great if you just need a word processor; nice interface, good features, lightweight. I haven't compared it to Text Edit though.
Evolution -- I wish this one was out there for the Mac. I'd be using it right now. My only complaints are that it still crashes occassionally, and the import/export ability is total crap compared to Thunderbird and even Outlook (did I say Outlook?!?).
Keep an eye open for Thunderbird getting a fully-integrated calendar. They're working on that at Mozilla...I think.
I always thought Gaim was the best IM app out there...not so sure now that I've seen Adium a little.
ethereal -- not really my thing, but a very good tool.
mplayer -- I haven't tried this yet on OS X. That thing plays everything though. I probably couldn't have used Linux at home without it.
Oh yeah -- don't use the built-in Mac terminal. If you customize xterm, it looks and works much better. iTerm too for that matter. Also, if anyone sees mrxvt (tabbed version of rxvt) out there for OS X, please let me know!
Dale  |