Applications

The biggest problems I will have in this move are going to be in finding applications to replace those I use every day:







Eclipse:
My everyday Java development is done using eclipse. Somehow, I expect the replacement for this will be .... Eclipse! But it will be interesting to se ehow easy Java 6 is to set up on Ubuntu and how easy Eclipse is to get running.







Mail:
Apple's mail will be a tough act to follow. In general, it's really quite quick. It filters junk well. It works super fast with IMAP, integrates with the Address Book, renders HTML well. The list goes on. To replace this, I am probably looking at either Evolution or Thunderbird. Although back in my uni days, I used pine - if I can think of some really good reason, maybe the super duper speed of this might appeal....maybe?








Safari:
At the moment, safari is my browser of choice, but I do have a tendency to flick between Firefox, Safari, Opera and even Flock. I've been using Safari, because it seems like the fastest on the mac. I don't think Safari has anything over Firefox generally. I may try and use Flock, because I'd like to be a bit more web 2.0-ish!








iTerm:
My work does involve a fair bit os SSH-ing, so I need a good terminal, and iTerm is absolutely excellent. It has a great bookmark feature, with tabs, so I have more SSH servers seet up with short cut keys to open them in tabs. It has been a while since I saw a Linux terminal (XTerm, probably). I assume (hope) they have improved.








Address Book:
Like Apple's Mail, the Address Book as amazing. It's integrated into every application that could want to use it and it is synchronized between my work and home Macs (via .mac). I love the way that contacts come up in searches with Spotlight and Quicksilver. It even works with my Windows Mobile phone (via Missing Sync from Markspace). I have no idea how to replace this in Linux.







iTunes:
I own an iPod, so iTunes is my obvious choice as music player. If I can find a way to run iTunes in Linux, that would be great. Otherwise, I may just find myself using my iPod instead :( Using another music player doesn't seem that appealing, because my iPod picks up TV that I record at home automagically







Cyberduck:
I only recently discovered how useful this program is for SCP file sharing. I had always used the command line and SCP to move files around, but this app is great. I assume there is something similar for Linux these days.








Newsfire:
I got to get me my daily RSS fix. Anyone that's used Newsfire will tell you how cool it is. I just sit there hitting 'space' and I can troll through hundreds of of totally unmissable, essential news from Digg and Reddit. I really hope there's a good RSS reader for Linux. I'll start off trying Flock, but as I remember, while it's pretty, the RSS reader built in isn't for the real news junky.






iChat:
I probably shouldn't be using iChat, but there you go. With the Chax plugin, I can have iChat be quite subtle - tabbed chats and disappearing when it's not active. I doubt Gaim does quit the same things, but I don't know what else is available, really.














Quicksilver:
The most useful thing in the world, ever. Having ctrl-ctrl mapped to quicksilver means I hardly ever hunt around for anything - contaxts, documents, songs, applications. What are the chances that someone has done this for Linux? Slim to none?