Going OS X

From BB-ZONE

Some thoughts from a Linux Geek about getting into close contact with Apple's OS X
January 2007

Having to choose a new Laptop for my new position at OTRS I decided to give in to a long term desire to learn more about Apple's OS X and decided to get a Apple MacBook. The machine arrived a few days before Xmas, so I used the holiday break to accustom myself with OS X and to create a productive environment for myself.

Focus on Open Source

Being a long time Open Source Fellow, I'm eager to minimize the use of commercial apps as much as possible. So far it worked out well. The only commercial application I purchased is Paralles Desktop to run openSUSE in a virtual machine. I was pleasantly surprised by the good availability of OSS for the Mac. Most of my favorite apps are available as OS X (Intel) versions which make the switch so much easier. I compiled a list of the add-on applications I ended up installing at the bottom of this page. I'll extend the list as time goes by.

Preinstalled Applications

OS X provides a fair variety of basic applications. Being curious I spent quite some time playing around with most of them. I like FrontRow for watching DVDs, photo slideshows etc. I never thought a remote control could be a useful accessory for a Laptop, but in combination with this application it actually makes sense. When it comes to productivity apps the most important for me are a good mail tool, a web browser and some kind of Office Suite. Very useful app is Apple's X11 implementation. In combination with Parallels it allows me to run any Linux app on the OS X desktop.

A nice gimmick and a great add-on/replacement for Apple's System/Activity Monitor is MenuMeters. It displays all system statistics in the menubar and can be customized to fit your individual needs.

  • Mail
    On Linux I'm used to Evolution and I must say that Apple's Mail comes pretty close. It lacks PGP support though. But with GPGMail there is a decent plugin to add this functionality to Mail.
    In an earlier incarnation of this article, I wrote I use Mail on OS X, but I probably would switch back to Evolution if there would be a OS X port.. So people pointed me to the OS X port of Evolution. I just tried it and must say I'm not too impressed. Almost all icons are missing and it's not integrated with the addressbook and the calendar at all. Both I like, as they sync well with my Palm etc. So I guess I'll stay with Apple's Mail for now.
  • Browsing the Web
    I gave Apple's Safari a fair trial, but quickly made Firefox my default browser again.
  • Graphics and Media
    QuickTime 7 is nice, but (at least in the preinstalled version) limited in support for different file formats. I found Mplayer OSX a must have to fill this gap. Another very nice media player is the VideoLan VLC media player. For encoding videos, ffmepegX seems to be a great tool. It comes with a mplayer for playback as well.
    The preinstalled Preview application provides the most basic image editing capabilities only. To get a much more capable application I looked for and found GIMP for Mac OS X. Isn't OSS great? You can switch your OS and still keep your dearest applications.
  • Communication
    Even though video conferencing with iChat is cool, iChat misses support for SIP and IRC. XMeeting adds SIP support and enables me to make VoIP calls from the Macbook. For IRC, X-Chat Aqua seems a good solution. I also found Chax a plug-in adding some useful features to iChat.

Integrating with Linux

For the last 10+ years I used Linux exclusively. So my home setup is built from several Linux machines and well networked. As Linux offers good Windows integration and OS X is based on BSD, getting OS X and Linux to talk to each other, share files and allow for remote logins in either direction was not too complicated. What was new however is the use of mostly graphical tools and the different paradigm Apple uses for system administration. I collected the pointers I used to solve some of the mysteries of OS X in links section below.

But as I do development under Linux, I still need to have a native Linux environment to carry around with me. Enter Paralles Desktop. Using Parallels' virtualization suite, I installed openSUSE as guest on OS X. I also tried Apple's Bootcamp, but a dual-boot setup is not really what I wanted. My current setup uses a virtual Linux instance running in the background. I don't use X11 under Linux, but utilize OS X X11 functionality to run Linux apps on teh OS X desktop ('ssh -X user@virtual-machine application' does the trick). I also exported the root filesystem via NFS to the OS X host to make file sharing an easy task.

The advantage of this solution compared to dual boot are that it pretty much eliminates traditional Linux weaknesses like issues with suspend and wireless networking. The virtual machine goes to sleep when the host goes to sleep and the virtual machine suspends to disk when the host goes down. Using the shared network feature Linux piggy backs on OS X' network connection, and doesn't have to care if it's wireless or wired. Performance (2GHz Macbook with 2GB RAM, 120GB HD) is sufficient. I still have a bootcamp partition with Linux installed, but as soon as space on the disk gets tight, it will go away again.

For seamless ssh integration SSHKeychain is a must. It links ssh to Apple's keychain to ssh and acts like ssh-agent in Linux environments. There also is Vine Server, which allows you to access the OS X desktop remotely using a standard VNC client. Kinda nice if you don't want to work with the small screen and keyboard.

Even More Software

Even though you get a nice set of applications preinstalled, there are a few things missing. What follows is a list of apps I use frequently.

  • Virtual Desktop
    It must be because I'm using virtual screens for more than ten years now, but it's a miracle to me how one can live with just one screen. Even though Apple build some nice features into OS X to make it easier to stay organized, it's still no match for modern Linux desktops utilizing virtual screens and now getting fancy animations to make those more intuitive to newbies. I found VirtueDesktops a workable solution for OS X. But I still miss something more complete like Beryl is on Linux.
  • Office Suite
    I'm not too much into creating presentations and alike but sometimes there is no way around it. Not everything can be done in plain ASCII and some people need to be pleased with colorful documents. I found NeoOffice a very nice adoption of OpenOffice.org for OS X. And if you want to get the remote control to work for presentations etc, iRed Lite is a great add-on to have fun with your remote.
  • Mind Map
    To organizing thoughts and sketch out ideas I like to use Mind-Maps. Even if it's very slow to start, FreeMind is a workable tool for this. And it being available on OS X, Windows and Linux is an advantage if you like to exchange mind-maps with other folks.

Final Thoughts

After almost exclusively using the Macbook for two weeks now, I must say I'm pretty satisfied with what it has to offer and am looking forward to have this machine as my primary Laptop for the time to come. I'll try to keep this page up-to-date as I go along and find more useful utilities or ways to get around annoyances. I'm always happy about feedback. So feel free to drop me a note.


Most Useful Links

English Sites:

German Sites:

Add-On Apps I felt I needed

All these apps are free to use, most are OpenSource. Maybe you'll find something that is of use to you...


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