libertus

It’s been out of the box for a couple of days now. Liberta has had her wicked way with it, now it is my turn.

My requirements are complex because I want to use the Mac as a portable development workstation. Therefore, I need the following applications, in order of importance;

Communication tools

web browsers, an e-mail client, a telephony client, an IM/IRC chat client and a RSS aggregator.

Development tools

programmer’s text editor, SSH client, source code control tool, file difference/merge tool.

Languages

PHP, XSL, XML

Servers

Apache SSL, MySQL, SSH

Manuals and Documentation

W3C standards, PHP, MySQL

My current development system is split across two computers; a Windows laptop that hosts my vital communication tools (e-mail, telephony and IM) and manuals, and a Ubuntu Linux desktop that hosts my development tools, RSS and IRC programs. Generally, I talk with Windows and work with Linux, but on occasion I cross over.

The applications I currently use (L=Linux, W=Windows) are;

Web browsers

Firefox (L,W), Konqueror (L), Opera (W), Internet Explorer (W), w3m (L) and lynx (L)

E-mail clients

Thunderbird (L, W), KMail (L)

Telephony client

Skype (W)

Chat clients

Trillian (W), Skype (W), Konversation (L)

RSS Aggregator

Akregator (L)

Editors

Kate (L), Crimson Editor (W)

SSH clients

ssh (L), PuTTY (W)

Source code control

Subversion (L, W), TortoiseSVN (W)

Difference/merge tool

Kompare (L), WinMerge (W)

Continuing (updated 14^th Nov)

I have tried a few times now to install a standard Linux distribution on the Mac, in addition to Mac OS X, but have failed miserably. I’m going to wait for few weeks, to allow the Open Source Wizards to mull over the problem a bit, and see what they come out with next.

The details: using Ubuntu 6.10 “Edgy Eft” Desktop Install CD, Apple’s BootCamp and the rEFIt boot manager. The OS boots from CD fine and goes through all the automated installation steps fine, until the GRUB boot-loader installation step, which fails. The advice I have used so far recommends manually updating the partition table, which by default complains about the /Media/EFI System Partition mount point, and insists on a swap partition, which pushes me off-book. I’m installing GRUB to (hd0). I have tried manually installing GRUB to other locations, such as (hd0,2), but grub-install complains that it cannot find /boot.

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