This post originated from an RSS feed registered with Java Buzz
by Thomas Gideon.
Original Post: Useful OS X Apps for *nix Users
Feed Title: Command Line Interface
Feed URL: http://www.gideonfamily.org/roller/rss/cmdln?catname=Java
Feed Description: The blog of a programmer-hacktivist-curmudgeon who occasional rants about society, work, and technology, among other things. Now how do I get to a command prompt on this thing?
Being primarily a Linux user and spending equal time administering my Linux server and surfing, etc. on my PowerBook, my first priority has been to find apps to make working with Linux easier. First, the built-in Terminal.app just doesn't cut the mustard. Even changing the default shell to something more useful, like bash, really didn't help since the term capabilities just weren't working at all well with any ncurses apps I ran in an ssh session on my Linux server. Enter iTerm. Very configurable, with tabbed windows, this terminal emulator is as useful as the one I usual use under Linux, Konsole. I recommend going into Preferences, clicking Default Session... and changing the Command entry to /bin/bash.
Speaking of ssh, I've been using rsa/dsa authentication for a while with my other Linux clients and my server. Entering a passphrase once at the beginning of a session and being able to open as many ssh sessions as I want is really quite useful. Unfortunately, OS X doesn't have an Aqua ssh-askpass program so I can't use my usual trick of setting the appropriate environment variable and calling ssh-add from .xsession. Oh, and using .xsession would be a pain since while I have a nice X server, Apple's beta 2, it has to be launched separately. Poking around Mac OS Hints I found SSH Agent. The documentation was sufficient to get the agent running correctly so that I can easily enter my passphrase once and open ssh sessions at will without having to worry about pass phrases and what not.
The last application I had been looking for, not as critical as the first two, but something I had been missing was an Ogg Vorbis capable media player. I had tried the QT component I found while Googling, but my guess is it isn't working with the latest version of QT or iTunes, yet. I tried Mint Audio for a while, but it doesn't appear to be under active development and I didn't really like the illegibly small UI. I was able to install xmms and esd with Fink, but, again, I have to start up the X server, which can be a bit of a pain, since if I happend to shut it down, I have to logout to be able to launch it again--a known bug that will hopefully be fixed in Panther.
I found on Apple's site a link to Whamb which has a nice UI, is still active, as well as free. Seems to work pretty well, as well as having some nice features, such as Rendezvous support and being wholly skinnable. Now I just need to figure out how it stores playlists and convert my existing playlists.
I've also decided to give Safari a try, since I realized it supports tabbed browser, one of the features in my normal first choice browser, Mozilla Firebird, that I now cannot live without. So far, the fact that Safari is more integrated with Aqua is a bit more pleasant than the OS X version of Firebird's sometimes rough edges. It'll be a while before I make up my mind completely and I'll keep tracking Firebird's releases on Linux anyway, so hopefully each successive OS X release will be a bit more polished.
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