New to Mac from Linux World

Just got my new PowerBook 17" and the 30" Apple display. Gotta say this setup is pretty sweet for work. I have been using Linux for several years now and have found the switch over to pretty straight forward. My Mac is definitely much better use than any windoze machine I have used and Looks much cooler than most pc laptops I have seen.

I love that is based on BSD - I feel like just upgraded my window manager to something very stable and super functional and useable. Every thing just seems to work better than before.

i know what you mean .. congrats on the PB and the display .

and welcome to the forums .

Coming from the linux world to the Mac world as I did is quite a breeze. The only thing I really miss is the virtual desktops. I found something out of sourceforge that works pretty well to restore that in the OS X world, but once I got used to expose' I find that I haven't bothered to fire it up at all.

Oh, and find the Terminal app in the Utilities folder and stick that in your dock. Coming from the Linux command line world you should be completely familiar with it and will use it quite a bit despite the slick 'wow this looks really cool!' GUI. I know that I'll more likely whip over to a terminal shell that I usually have running to vi or emacs some text file rather than use textedit, which doesn't seem to want to save as straight text, but rather RTF for some reason. I also use it to ssh to my old linux box from time to time when I need to still use some functionality that I used that for.

walkerj said:

Coming from the linux world to the Mac world as I did is quite a breeze. The only thing I really miss is the virtual desktops. I found something out of sourceforge that works pretty well to restore that in the OS X .

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Yeah -- I have already got the terminal customized and running all the time and got the ssh server setup. THe only thing I haven't quite figured out is a replacement for the GIMP. I am trying out ImageConverter right now but it just doesn't have t he funtionality of GIMP.

I am not really sure what Expose is but I guess I'll just have to do the old linux RTFM on that .

walkerj said:

...I usually have running to vi or emacs some text file rather than use textedit, which doesn't seem to want to save as straight text, but rather RTF for some reason.

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TextEdit Preferences will let you specify plain text as the default.

Better yet, grab a copy of TextWrangler or BBEdit.

technologist said:

TextEdit Preferences will let you specify plain text as the default.

Better yet, grab a copy of TextWrangler or BBEdit.

Click to expand...

20+ years of vi experience and I just don't know any better Thanks though.

Expose: hit F9, F10, and F11 while you have some windows open. It's way cool, and quite useful.

linmacs said:

Yeah -- I have already got the terminal customized and running all the time and got the ssh server setup. THe only thing I haven't quite figured out is a replacement for the GIMP. I am trying out ImageConverter right now but it just doesn't have t he funtionality of GIMP.

Click to expand...

You don't have to replace the GIMP. You can just get GIMP for OS X :black:

YEP -- I got the GIMP now and am happy with it.