Getting ready to explore the world of Mac

An article by -Matt-    1 Comment

Never thought I would be saying that in my lifetime, but here I am nevertheless.  I have been running Linux on my laptop for almost a year now, and I have thoroughly enjoyed the flexibility it has offered me.  I weaned myself off of my old Windows XP VM a while back and have been living my daily development life exclusively in X Windows (Gnome).  My Gnome environment has exposed me to GnomeEdit, Compiz, CairoDock, Conky, and other utilities here and there.  Getting everything set up has been a little challenging, but not near as much as *keeping* it all set up and playing nicely together.

More than a couple of times have I installed package updates to components I use everyday only to have a library incompatibility rear its ugly head and break one of my other tools.  To date I have broken (at least temporarily) Compiz, Nautilus,  GnomeTerminal, NetworkManager, VMWare Workstation, and UEX with innocent package updates.  In many case I have been able to recover by either upgrading a tool to a newer version (not so bad) or by downgrading one or more libraries or packages (not as much fun).  In a couple of cases I have not been able to recover – Nautilus and GnomeTerminal have not worked in quite a while.  Now, this is not to say that I could not get back to a working version of either by doing the necessary digging, research, and trial/error package updates.  The problem is that I don’t have time for these activities.  My schedule is already full with work that requires these tools and utilities to be working, with little to no slack for troubleshooting one that has stopped working.

Don’t get me wrong, I am not ready to go back to Windows – not even close.  The flexibility, freedom, and power I have enjoyed with Linux are things I am not willing to give up.  The question I have is how can I get a stable desktop environment that affords me the freedom of Linux?  Actually, let’s be more specific.  How can I get a stable desktop environment *on* Linux?

Thus the topic at hand.  OS/X is Linux at its core, which immediately grabs my attention.  Mac’s are definitely growing in popularity amongst peers in my industry who are not graphics designers.  Can a database guy survive on a Mac?  Hopefully so, but that remains to be seen.  I have begun taking an inventory of the tools and utilities I use everyday that must be found in some reasonable form in the Mac world.  Here’s the list, in order of importance:

• Microsoft Office – simply a must.  And, I really need Outlook.  I have been using Mozilla Thunderbird and it has no calendar.  CrossOver for Linux allows me to run Outlook, but it is somewhat flaky and does not run natively.

• Oracle – I need a local Oracle database, at least version 10g, and preferrably an XE install (not the full blown Standard or Enterprise version).

• Oracle SQL Developer / Data Modeler – I already said I was a database guy, therefore I need 1) a query tool, and 2) a data modeling tool.  I have already made the move to the two Oracle tools I listed, and I’m not ready to move on.

• Core Development Platform (Java, Ant, Subversion) – not optional. As a side noe, I would love to be able to find an SVN client that integrated natively into the file manager like TortoiseSVN does in Windows.

• VMWare – we use VMWare for a number of things so this is also a must.

• UltraEdit – my favorite text editor.  UEX was a huge leap forward for UltraEdit, but for some reason my current openSuse config has broken UEX and it core dumps.  Regardless, still the best text editor there is.

• Pidgin – or another generic IM client that supports GMail, Yahoo, and standard XMPP.

• Conky – a desktop system monitor (and more).

• iTunes – I really miss iTunes.  Haven’t used it since I jailbroke my iPhone. Not critical, but definitely a nice-to-have.

I expect this list will grow, but these are the big ones.

Now for the hardware…  Thankfully I have access to a Mac Mini that I will use as my test bed.  I’ll get OS/X set up and running and then begin the software and configuration journey.  Having never used a Mac before, it should be interesting.  Yes, I did use an Apple IIE in my elementary computer lab, but that doesn’t count

More to come as I make progress.  In the meantime, if anyone is interested in contributing to my MacBook Pro fund…