Being a Free Software developer, I try to use, as much as I can, Free Software and Free Operating Systems; unfortunately, I also need rocksolid hardware, and from time to time access to a proprietary OS to run some software I need for my daily jobs.

My first laptop was an iBook G4 running Mac OS X Panther (10.3), while currently I'm using a Mac Book Pro Core2Duo running Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) and Gentoo Linux.

In this page I'll try to provide some links to Free Software that you can use either to replace stock software or instead of proprietary software that you can otherwise easily find.

As first thing, you should take a look to Fink project, where you can find a lot of GNU's and others' Free Software ported from Linux/Unix both in binary and source form, quite all graphic programs have unfortunately only X11 support, so you probably want Aqua-based software for many things.

Browsing and mailing

Safari and Apple's Mail are good clients, but if you prefer Free Software, you can look at Mozilla Projecte, where you'll find at least 3 browsers (Firefox, Camino (with native OS X look&feel) and Seamonkey (the suite formerly known as Mozilla)) and two e-mail clients ( Thunderbird and Seamonkey). If you need GPG support in Mozilla or Thunderbird, you can use the Enigmail plugin.

If you instead want to use GPG with Apple's mail client, you need to use GPGMail together with a GPG distribution like MacGPG.

Chatting and Messagging

Internet can't be internet now if you haven't a messagging program or you don't chat. So here we are :)

• X-Chat Aqua is an IRC client based on famous X-Chat engine, but completely using an Aqua GUI (the one of MacOSX for who don't know).
• AdiumX is a messagging software with support for a few different protocols, is based on libgaim library.
• Fire is a native messagging multi protocol client, which supports meta contacts and other good things.

Games

Time to play, time to play! Some free games can be found on the net :)

• Frozen Bubble has an unofficial port for MacOSX. Unfortunately, the official project avoids to merge ports to other platforms in a (IMHO) foolish way of thinking. Anyway you can enjoy it :)
• A port of VisualBoyAdvnace GBA emulator for MacOSX can be found here. It works very well!

Productivity

Productivity suites aren't truly a need for MacOSX general users, because quite all the computers are shipped with Apple's AppleWorks, and you can buy Microsoft Office X for Mac, but for free software's users, I can list some productivity tools you can use on a MacOSX system.

• OpenOffice.Org has a binary of version 1.1.2 for MacOSX (X11 version), and is going to support Aqua in the 2.0 release.
• NeoOffice/J is a modified OOo, with frontend in java, which doesn't use X11, uses aqua menus, and also some aqua dialogs. Is still alpha release, but seems to work fine, also if the first times could be slower than the X11 version (java's fault as usual).
• A MacOSX-ized version of Gimp is available, though is only an X11 version, it can be used without big problems.

Development

Development is my primary need, so I need a good environment to work with, I found it using the applications below:

• JEdit is a java-based text editor, with many interesting functions and plugins useful for developers, I suggest to install at least BufferTabs plugin. Seek the other plugins for functions you need.

Other software

Other miscellaneous free software I found useful on my MacOSX.

• Books is a good application for indexing books.
• Chicken of the VNC is a good VNC client for MacOSX. I use it with KDE's desktop sharing system to control my linux box from the iBook.