So after having a Macbook for 3 months, here’s a list of some apps that have made the transition from a Linux notebook to a Macbook:

1. Adium – after being used to using Gaim/Pidgin, I was really concerned that whatever I was going to have to use on MacOS was just not going to stack-up. Adium is proving to be a worthy replacement.

2. iTerm – I just started using this, and again, after being used to using a tabbed shell like kshell, I was really missing not have a good shell program. iTerm has really filled the bill.

3. Parallels – I relied on VMware Workstation 5 on my Linux machine extensively. Parallels was one of the easiest moves to make and it blows VMware Workstation 5 away on features and performance. Plus I was able to convert my virtual machines using the Parallels transporter. It worked perfectly. Of course by now, you’ve heard of concentric mode, but if you haven’t tried it, you really don’t know what you’re missing, especially if there is an app like Visio, that you rely on. Also, seamless integration between the guest and the host allows you to do some really cool things like drag and drop from Windows to Mac and vice-versa.

4. Handbrake – When I had a Linux desktop, to convert a DVD to mp4 format for my iPod, I had to run dvdshrink, then move the mpeg into Windows and run Videora on it. Now, with Handbrake, I pop the disk in, and tell it which track I want… a few minutes later, I have a ready-to-go mp4 that I can import right into iTunes.

5. iPhoto – I really like F-Spot a lot, but the Mac native photo management tool is awesome. I love playing with the slide-show feature and the “Ken Burns Effect”. Plus, since I found a Flickr uploader to go with it, iPhoto is good substitute for F-Spot.

6. MacFuse – a GUI for sshfs. A neat little tool to create drive-mounts via SSH. Nothing fancy, just easily mounts drives.

Some other Apps I used on Linux and still use on Mac:

7. Thunderbird – I suppose Apple Mail or whatever is pretty good, or so I hear, but a bird in the hand is always worth 2 in the bush… Thunderbird I know. Thunderbird integrates easily with GPG. Thunderbird has great spam control. You get the point… it’s really the best thing out there, and having available for Mac OS made the switch really easy to bear.

8. Firefox – same as Thunderbird… however, I am tempted to start using Safari more after seeing a an article describing image rendering between the two, and being better in Safari.

9. Dia – I am a network engineer, so I have to do a lot of diagrams. Dia has been my preference over Visio for a long time, even though people get irritated with me because I don’t send them documents they can edit. I always just tell them, “get Dia, and you can!”

10. Gimp – do I really need to say anything… maybe just getting an incredibly powerful image editing tool without having to shell out the same price as Photoshop is proof-positive that open-source software not only can work, but actually does!