On the rare occasion, I find myself in front of a Macintosh. In its default state, the OS feels rather barren. The default set of applications is quite sparse, and you have to put some work into installing the software you need to get going. As a GNU/Linux user, I’m accustomed to installing an operating system and getting a full suite of applications without putting in any extra work. Mind you, OS X is not nearly as bad as operating systems from a certain other vendor.

Here is a list of software that I recommend to Mac users. Most of these apps are free software and also work on GNU/Linux (or a suitable analogue exists), so switching between the two operating systems is easy.

Desktop navigation:

• Quicksilver
• Desktop Manager

Audio/Video playback:

• VLC Media Player
• MPlayer OS X

Web browsing (like Safari or Internet Explorer):

• Firefox
• Camino (which is based on Firefox; you can find extensions for Camino here)

Office suite (like Microsoft Office):

• OpenOffice (get the Mac version here)
• NeoOffice (which is based on OpenOffice)

Desktop publishing (like Adobe InDesign):

• Scribus

Drawing (like Adobe Illustrator):

• Inkscape

Painting/Photo editing (like Adobe Photoshop):

• The GIMP (get the Mac version here)
• Seashore (which is based on The GIMP)

Printer drivers:

• Gimp-Print/Gutenprint

Get more free applications:

• The Fink Project

Windows compatability:

• Boot Camp
• Parallels