intertwingly

I didn’t buy the mac-mini for iTunes, iPhoto, iMovie, GarageBand or the like.  While I may explore those later, I probably won’t.  Nor is it my intent to move my mail.  My intended use for this machine is mostly to run a browser and a few shell windows.

While Ubuntu’s approach is a delightful mix of YAGNI coupled with the ability to quickly and easily snap on more function as you need it; this Mac’s approach is definitely batteries included.  I say “this Mac” because I see Dave Thomas pointing to instructions that require quite a bit more than I had to do.

First step of any desktop OS (at least on Windows, Ubuntu, and OS X) is the same: locate the command prompt / terminal and drag it to the taskbar / panel / dock.  Much to my surprise, the fonts on the terminal window wasn’t all that great.  Turning on anti-aliasing and switching to Courier helped.

Initial version of .bash_login:

source /etc/bashrc
set -o vi
export PS1="\u@\h:\w\$ "
export RUBYOPT=-rubygems
export PATH=/Users/rubys/bin:$PATH
export EDITOR=vi

# If this is an xterm set the title to user@host:dir
case "$TERM" in
xterm*|rxvt*)
    PROMPT_COMMAND='echo -ne "\033]0;${USER}@${HOSTNAME}: ${PWD/$HOME/~}\007"'
    ;;
*)
    ;;
esac

I found that most tools I care about are already installed: vim, svn, ssh, apache, ruby, gem, irb, python.  With the exception of Python, none of those are automatically installed on Ubuntu.  On the Mac, all I needed to do is go into System Preferences -> Sharing and enable Web Sharing and Remote Login.

To date, all I’ve installed is Xcode (insert CD and click) and rails (gem install rails).  Both went smoothly.  The majority of the time was spent trying to figure out how to get the CD to eject.  Installing MYSQL is still yet to be done.  Perhaps that will be harder.

Much to my surprise, the Mac seems well suited for someone who prefers the keyboard over the mouse.  A number of differences to learn, things like: ⌘-W instead of Alt-F4.  Home and End are page oriented instead of line oriented.  Creating a second terminal isn’t done from the dock, it is done by entering ⌘-N from the keyboard when a Terminal window has the focus. I’m sure that all of this is tailorable, but I want to learn the system before adapting it too much.  The mouse is nice too: this is the first time in my life that I have a scroll wheel, and I’ve already found it to be quite handy.

A few things definitely have a cygwin-ish uncanny valley feeling to them.  vi /Users/rubys/Sites/index.html, for example.  Yech.