On Jan 2, 2015, at 4:34 PM, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) <[email protected]> wrote: > >> From: [email protected] [mailto:discuss- >> [email protected]] On Behalf Of Eric Chadbourne >> >> I just got a new mac mini for the holidays. I’ve been living on gnu/linux for >> the last decade and it’s kind of fun to play in another OS. Learning lots of >> new stuff. > > BTW, if you're used to linux and new to osx, here are a couple of useful tips: > > OSX uses a case insensitive filesystem. Don't expect anything different and > don't try to change it. You'll shoot yourself trying. > > Absolutely embrace timemachine. It sets the gold standard that everyone else > should strive to. > > Also enable filevault. There's *almost* no reason not to, and you'll see > what others have been missing out on. (* The reasons not to enable filevault > are basically fear of your own data loss, if you don't trust yourself to > maintain good backups and forget your own password. Or if you need the > system to boot itself unattended.) > > Although MS Office is available for macs, it's not as powerful and not as > good as the windows alternatives. If you use them regularly, you're best off > to have a windows VM. > > Anytime you hear somebody say "It's just BSD" shun them and call out their > ignorance. Nobody says that who knows jack about macs. To say that OSX is > BSD is just as smart and useful as saying Windows is VMS. There's a kernel > of truth (see what I did there?) that has no application in the real world. > They are 100% different OSes with no similarities. > > You are learning about launchd. Keep it up. Don't mess with it too much - > generally speaking the out-of-the-box configuration is right, and you'll > cause problems for yourself by disabling stuff. But for academic and/or > troubleshooting purposes, valuable knowledge. > > Forget about macports and fink - Install homebrew. You'll notice > occasionally, some tool is missing, which you would like to install via yum > or apt, but of course, there is no package manager in OSX. The first one > you'll probably notice is wget. In 2 seconds, you can install homebrew, and > then "brew install wget." > > Before you go crazy installing stuff with homebrew, install XCode and the > XCode command line utilities. This will get most of the stuff you are > missing - build tools, which I think include make but not automake, or > something like that. But at least it includes stuff like svn and git and gcc > and most of what you care about. In my world, I install XCode and XCode > command line tools, homebrew, and brew install wget. And generally speaking, > that's the end of the story. Rarely ever need to install any command-line > utilities beyond that. > > Newbies do a lot of browsing the "Applications" folder, and linking a zillion > things to their dock. That's good while you're a newbie, learning what's > available. Before too long, you just hit Command-Space and type the name of > what you want into spotlight. > > Under system preferences, go to your mouse and trackpad. Actually watch > their tutorials. Extremely useful to learn the gestures, so you know about > launchpad and mission control and multiple desktops. Literally in the > hundreds of users that I've supported using macs - as soon as somebody got > used to the trackpad, they never go back. It's universal that all users > prefer the mac trackpad over a mouse or any alternative that's available in > windows or other platforms. It actually becomes the #1 repeat mac-buying > factor in peoples' choices for a new system in later years. > > Personal preference: > > Launch Finder. > Change to View As List. > Click on View / Show Path Bar >
Excellent info Ed! Thanks, Eric _______________________________________________ Discuss mailing list [email protected] http://lists.blu.org/mailman/listinfo/discuss
