My budget has been stretched of late from thin to non-existent.
Be that as it may, I'm still a geek and still interested in new software and new platforms.
So… the Mac Mini I have had lo this past year and a half has suddenly garnered a lot more attention.
Tonight, I found Smultron for HTML editing. It looks simple and powerful and so far I like that. I'm used to editing my HTML in Notepad in Windows. Only recently have I learned the joy of editing in a proper code editor. If I had the money, I would invest in BBEdit. I know it is *the* editor for the Mac. But as I said earlier, I have no money to budget for software or hardware. It was very clear to me instantly on opening Smultron what it does and what it's for. I downloaded NVu as well. Lots of people seem to like it, but I am not a fan of WYSIWYG editing. Though it has a proper and adept code editor, it seemed like a lot of application for someone who as a rule edits a single page at a time and is completely comfortable opening four different web browsers simultaneously to see what happens to his code. Tonight I used Camino, Opera, FireFox and Safari. This was Mac OS night. And FOSS night.
Next, I realized that I needed to edit images. So I pulled down GIMPshop for Mac OS. I am a long time user of Photoshop in the Mac OS and in Windows. Let me just say that, while much improved, I still don't like the GIMPshop interface. Yet, for free, it does exactly what I needed. What's more, I was able to stumble around and finish what I set out to do: I was able to edit three GIF images of the seven at my Hjalmer.com home page. (I know: GIFs. Proprietary format. One of these days I'll modify the images to PNG format, I just haven't got there yet.)
I have been diving headlong into Open Source. And headlong into Mac.
I am a longtime Windows user. Not since the first release like some could say, but I really cut my teeth on Windows 95. For work and for personal use, I have used every operating system Microsoft has released since then.
At this point in my life and my career, however, I'm really getting enamored of the elegance of the Mac OS. Even though I anticipate it will hurt performance, I will likely upgrade my Mini to Mac OS 10.5. I'm not a programmer or a gamer. Despite the fact that the Mini is a G4, it feels a lot faster than a Pentium III running XP—which is what I have been using at home forever. So for browsing, email, RSS and light web design, it's completely adequate and dare I say competent.
I'm still playing with Ubuntu on laptops. I like the Gnome desktop, again simpler as a rule on the surface, despite the fact that I seem to prefer more KDE apps. I'm currently really enjoying the working version of Gutsy Gibbon with the UbuntuStudio interface and applications installed. I think it's as pretty and functional a Linux interface as I have ever seen. The new Ubuntu desktop effects are elegant and they actually work on my dated Pentium M platform.
I'm rambling.
I get giddy learning new things.