Apps That Matterhttp://norman.walsh.name/2004/09/03/apps71572004-09-03T07:17:10-04:00$Date: 2005-09-11 10:27:02 -0400 (Sun, 11 Sep 2005) $NormanWalsh2004Norman WalshLinux or OS X? Who cares! It’s the
apps that matter! I’m not sure that’s going to help much, but it’s
worth a shot.I’m finding this
laptop decision making process
terribly painful.
GeoffArnold
suggested I should
quibble less about the OS and worry instead about the apps I run.
I’m not sure that’s going to help much, but it’s worth a shot.I need
bash,
ssh,
gpg,
cvs
(maybe soon,
svn), and the standard
suite of Unix utilities plus
Perl and
Python. I expect all of those to
be available on both platforms. My top three applications are
emacs,
emacs, and
Firefox.
I say “emacs” twice not simply for emphasis, but because I always have
two copies running, a general edit anything copy and a copy running
gnus in which I read all my
mail. (Sorted and collated with
SpamAssassin and
procmail.)
In any event, no worries there, I expect. I also rely on a bunch of
Java apps
(JAXP,
Saxon,
Xerces,
catalog resolvers,
etc.)
but they should be no problem
(WORA, baby!).
I need
pilot-link to sync
my
Palm with XML using Perl. I run
OpenOffice
when some bozo sends me that sort of goop.I must have virtual desktops. I’m getting that with
Fvwm
today, but I used a commercial tool
(Perfect Screens)
when I had to run Windows and
there appears to be a commercial tool
(VirtualDesktop)
for OS X. There may be others, and free ones too, I haven’t looked that hard.After that, I want a multi-protocol IM client. I’m using
gaim
now, but I’ve used others in the past.
I need a decent IRC client, like
XChat. I run
GKrellM to monitor the
status of a few things (I would miss
Sun Clock
if I couldn’t continue to use GKrellM, but I can’t really call that a show stopper) and
xconsole
to watch the console messages. I expect those are all functionally available
on both platforms.As I said, my browser of choice is Firefox and I run the
Apache web server
and the
WWWOffle
proxy cache. I don’t mind getting my hands dirty, and I
usually build things with
gcc of the 2.9x vintage when I do.
None of those should be a problem.I run the
ImageMagick tools and
Gimp to edit photographs.
I use
XPlanet
to make a background
on one of my desktops and for travel maps.
I use the Internet Printing Protocol to communicate
with the printer on the server in my closet. And wifi, of course (802.11b
today, “g” tomorrow).That’s about it. At least, that covers everything running right
now and all the things I can think of off the top of my head. I may have
forgotten a few things, I suppose.I will
say there are some interesting sounding things for OS X that I don’t
(yet?) use. The
Rendezvous
stuff with apps like
SubEthaEdit
looks interesting. And most folks seem to say good things about the
iLife
apps.I just don’t know.