On Fri, 2 Jan 2009 10:41:00 -0800, "John Velman" <vel...@cox.net> said: > I'm a long time Linux user (RedHad, Slackware), and last year when the > new > iMac with OSX 10.5 came out, I couldn't resist -- but with a lot of > trepidation. > > My worries were completely unfounded. True, some things work differently > than what you may be used to. You'll have to find those yourself. The > following goes beyond your question, but maybe you'll find it useful. > > In my case, after doing a lot of googling, I immediately installed both > Fink and MacPorts in order to "get some things I was used to". Turned > out > to be unnecessary (at least for me), and eventually, I got rid of them > both, completely. The console things I wanted that weren't included, I > compiled using the built in tools with no problem. The GUI things I > wanted, I was able to find Mac versions of. Except Ghostscript. Haven't > found a postscript reader (free) for OS X. But I just got used to the > builtin ps to pdf converter. I had trouble finding a decent (free) > newsreader, but finally settled on OSXnews 2.081. It has some issues, > but > generally works pretty well (http://OSXnews.sf.net). I would advise > holding off on Fink and MacPorts unless you find they are absolutely > necessary. > > Another thing -- I thought I'd be using the built-in X-windows a lot. > Eventually decided it was a pain in the neck (although it works pretty > well, except for not using some of the native mac capabilities and look > -- > and cluttering up the toolbar). The things I really wanted a gui for > were > available in a mac-cocoa or carbon version. > > Things to get: First thing: get MacVim. Uses the core vim but with a > Mac > cocoa gui wrapper. It's great. http://code.google.com/p/macvim/. I'm > using MacVim to write this email as the editor used by Mutt. I compiled > mutt from source with no problem. > > Another thing you might want to look into: NeoOffice as the OpenOffice > version for OS X, (I don't have the url handy, but it's easy to find). > There are a lot of choices for a web browser (and for text only browsers > to > use with mutt.) I used Firefox for quite a while, and while I like it's > plugins, it started starting an X which it seemed to not be using, and I > had to terminate by hand. Strange. I submitted a bug report, but got no > response. I finally switched over to Camino (http://caminobrowser.org/). > > And the final thing I'll mention: The XCode IDE, the Cocoa platform for > programming Mac applications, and Objective-C, the language used by > Cocoa. > But that's another story. > > Best, > > John Velman >
Thanks John. That was some great info. I have a lot of the same questions around things you've already been through. I'll give MacVim a try. Plus it looks like there's a way to access the Mac addressbook so that I don't need to use abook anymore. Much appreciated info. -- Trey Sizemore t...@fastmail.fm
