Need to have Mac OS side by side Ubuntu, suggestions and tips are welcome.

[legolas_w]

Hi,

I am getting a new computer, actually a macbook pro and I will need to keep Mac OS side by side with Ubuntu. It is after 4 years that I am going to use another OS in addition to Ubuntu.

Any tip specially on the following subjects are welcome.

- speeding up with mac, tips that one should know when switching to Mac.
- Common software that I everyone should have?
- choosing between iwork 9, ms office 2011, and openoffice when I use word processing intensively
- choosing media player? Shall I go with SongBird or I should keep Itune?
- Shall I stay with Thunderbird or go with Mail.app or outlook included in office 2011?



Thanks.

[KiwiNZ]

I have a Mac Book Pro ( and a iMac and MacPro ) to use Ubuntu and any other Linux I use VM Ware. Parallels is also very good.

I have had no issues with VM ware and can easily use multiple OS's on all my Macs along with Snow Leopard.

To use windows 7 on any of them I use Bootcamp that is built into Snow Leopard and is excellent.

[KiwiNZ]

I use MS Office in both Windows and on the Mac
The Mac Mail app which is excellent or .me when out of Mac
Itunes
If you use MS office for work etc I would not recommend iWork. If or budget does not run to MS Office on the Mac go for Open Office which run fine on the Mac.

[kerry_s]

the very first thing i put on mac is:
http://www.freemacsoft.net/AppCleaner/

next is:
mplayer os x, grab from mplayer site.

next:
transmission

i use openoffice.

[Bachstelze]

next is:
mplayer os x, grab from mplayer site.

No, MPlayer should always be compiled from source.

For email, mail.app is good but doesn't have GPG support (there was a plugin for it, but it's not compatible with the newer versions), so I use Thunderbird. I also use Firefox instead of Safari, mostly for NoScript and AdBlock.

If you work with the command-line a lot, you might have to build a couple things from source (wget, Python 3, the GNU coreutils and binutils, maybe an assembler like yasm, gettext, OpenVPN, etc.).

For VMs I use VirtualBox. There's also a very good TeX distribution, and a decent Emacs one. WINE is a bit of a pain to compile, but it can be done.

[legolas_w]

Thank you all for the comments. I will not need Windows at all.

I will go with either parallels or VmWare as the budget is not an issue. But I am not sure which one I should choose.

I will try to install VLC, I am not sure whether I will be good enough to compile stuff from source.

For email, I will go with either Mail.app or the outlook express. I am not sure whether these two can syncronize with google calendar and google tasks or not?

I will go with Ms-Office as most of our documents has a ms-office type template. I was using both ms office and open office in ubuntu and I think I will stick with both of these. AFAIK the ms office 2011 does not support open document formats like odt, odp, etc.

I am looking for a good terminal application and a good chat client in addition to skype. I know that Adium is a defacto chat client but I do not know whether it support voice and video or not.

Thanks for the comments.

[Bachstelze]

I am looking for a good terminal application

If you mean a xterm-like virtual terminal, Terminal.app is good enough. If you mean a serial terminal type of thing, minicom can be built from source.

[kerry_s]

what is with the building from source?

i didn't do nothing like that, everything was drag & drop in to the applications folder. it was simple.

legolas_w, the quicktime x can also play media if you add the codecs. which it will point you to when you try to play an unsupported file.

vlc, is okay, i just prefered the mplayer os x more, it's this 1, check out the screen shots:
http://mplayerosx.sttz.ch/

there are 2 kinds of terminals in the utility's folder so you can pick what you like.


i might install slow leopard again, some time next week. i'm waiting to see if ubuntu 10.10 improves any, i currently find it kind of slow.

[DoubleClicker]

One app I will highly recommend to you is Path Finder (http://www.cocoatech.com), which in my opinion, is the best file manager of any I've seen, on any platform.

[kerry_s]

One app I will highly recommend to you is Path Finder (http://www.cocoatech.com), which in my opinion, is the best file manager of any I've seen, on any platform.

that is awesome! wish i had heard of that sooner.

[legolas_w]

Hi,

any comment on which one to go with, Parallels or Vmware Fusion?

Thanks.

[KiwiNZ]

I tried both and went with VM Ware. I just found VM Ware more polished and easier to work with.

Give them a try then decide.

[LMP900]

If you're going to have more than one system, I highly recommend Dropbox. I have it on Mac OS, Windows, Ubuntu, iOS, and Android and it's one of the most useful applications available.