Linux versions of mac applications
A couple of months ago I gave up waiting for Apple to release a slight, small notebook. The Macbook Air is too big. I didn’t need a paper-thin laptop that still required a large bag to put it in. I needed a small thing I could throw in my backpack and not have to make the daily decision as to whether I really needed to take it with me. Cue the Eee PC 901. I bought the XP version as I wasn’t sure how I’d find working with linux. After about a week of using XP I wiped it and installed Xubuntu. It’s lighter than Ubuntu as it uses XFCE rather than Gnome as its desktop. As a total mac-head I needed to find some equivalent apps to put on my new toy.
The Easy Stuff
Some apps didn’t need replacing, Firefox is available for linux and Photoshop runs brilliantly under Wine. And of course linux has a Terminal.
Text Editor
I’ve been using TextMate for a while now, it’s probably my most used app, it’s the only one I actually miss when using my laptop. jEdit is a reasonable substitute, it allows you to configure your own syntax colouring, so I copied my favourite TextMate colour scheme.
FTP
Initially I tried FileZilla but I had problems with it disconnecting from servers, it got painful having to navigate to the same folder over and over again each time I wanted to update a file. gFTP fixes this, plus it is quick to load and run.
Chat
Pidgin is available for both windows and linux. It supports MSN, AIM, Google Talk, ICQ and Bonjour among others.
Music Player
Exaile doesn’t do everything, it won’t sync my iPod for instance. It does play MP3s however and that’s all I needed.
PDF Reader With Annotation
Mac: Adobe Acrobat
Linux: PDF Xchange Portable
This one’s a bit of a cheat, being a Windows app it needs to be run under Wine. I searched in vain for a native linux app that handled annotation in a standard way; I need to be able to read my annotations on my mac as well as my Eee. PDF Xchange Portable runs very well under Wine.