Next week I’ll come into owning my first Mac; a 12″ Powerbook, and with it will come the “switch”, although in my case it’ll be from Linux to Mac, as opposed to the intended market.

I started writing this article from the perspective that I’d lose a few of the cool features I’ve become accustomed to over my years of using Linux, however as my research expanded I found that someone has solved, or at least claimed to have solved, every one of my needs, so without further delay, this is what I found will make my switching all the more easier;

Amarok: Since I started using Kubuntu - the KDE version of Ubuntu, I’ve been using Amarok as my music player. Amarok leaves iTunes for dead as a music player, as you can sync to your iPod, bring up artist information and song lyrics, compile playlists (and then sync them plus their songs to you ‘pod) and interface to last.fm and Musicbrainz from the default install - no plugins required. There’s ways to install Amarok on OSX, but it requires compiling and tweaking, which is something I gave up on when I dumped Gentoo Linux in favour of Kubuntu. We’ll see how desparate I get for a decent music player.

Mature Terminal Applications: I’ll admit I’m a terminal bunny. When I’m not using Firefox, I’ll likely be in a terminal. My default these days is Konsole, the KDE terminal emulation program - which features, much like Firefox, a tabbed window with the ability to show lots of tabs without having lots of windows. Luckily, there’s geeks out there who wanted the same thing and made iTerm. One less problem for me.

Multiple Desktops: Back in the days of Windows before I discovered Linux, I had everything on the same desktop. Hours of my life have been wasted because I would have to minimise, maximise and other-mise the windows to switch between tasks. Then Linux came along with multiple, virtual desktops, allowing a hot key to arrange all the windows I needed for one element of my task to be displayed. Another hotkey away was another set of windows pertaining to a different task, and then another and another. For example, one desktop contains my graphics programs, while the other contains a web browser showing how the graphics look in the web world. “Alas“, I thought, “Mac uses Exposé, a wicked and beautiful window switching technique, but not quite what I need“. Though I’ve used Exposé extensively, I’ve always found I’m better off with multiple desktops - which is why this application, seems to fit the bill perfectly. Check out the movies of the various desktop switching here.

Mplayer: Granted there’s Mplayer for OS X, I just wanted to make sure everyone knew about it, since it’s the best movie player available - it literally plays everything.

GIMP: The GIMP is a graphics application that’s, in my opinion, good enough as to be a free version of Photoshop. There’s a list of ways to install on OSX on the GIMP homepage (of which Gimp.app seems the most painless), so at least it’s possible.

Inkscape: A free vector drawing program, Inkscape come in an OSX package too. Splendid.

Open Office: The free, and frankly superior office suite forked from Sun’s Star Office. There’s an OS X Version called NeoOffice. Koz reackons it takes ages to load, but it’s free, so I can occupy myself while it loads.

All in all, my trip over to the other side looks to be rather more tempting than I had originally thought, and to be honest, I couldn’t wait to change. Now I’m salivating at the prospect. Bring on next week!