FOSSwire

We focus quite a lot on Linux stuff here at FOSSwire, which is fine, because it is a very important open source system, but it's easy to forget that there are other platforms out there, and even if the platform itself isn't open source, there are plenty of applications you can be using which are.

In this post, I'm going to run through five top open source applications for Mac OS X.

#1 - Growl

Growl is an amazing piece of software. At heart, it is an open source notification system for OS X. All sorts of different applications can plug in to the functionality it provides, and display popup notifications on your desktop. It is fully customisable, with different themes for the notifications. Support for Growl is extensive across many Mac apps - open and proprietary, with plugins available for many Apple shipping applications that don't have support too.

At the time of writing, their site is down/unreliable, so snagging the download link directly can be a pain. However, Growl is included with Adium (the next application I'm going to look at), so keep reading to get yourself a copy.

#2 - Adium

Adium is a multi-network instant messaging client which is fully extensible and customisable with plugins. It is notable for its use of libpurple, the same underlying IM code that powers Windows and Linux program Pidgin.

It supports more IM networks than you can shake a stick at and there is a lively community of people who work on plugins called Xtras. Xtras allow you to completely customise the look, feel and behaviour of your chat client. If iChat isn't giving you enough - or you're stuck using a second rate official client for an obscure network, Adium is a great choice.

Download Adium (includes Growl)

#3 - MacPorts

If you're a hardcore Unix junkie, using OS X can be frustrating as there isn't an easy way to pull down software packages automatically like there is in almost all Linux distributions and plenty of other Unixes too. It's perfectly possible to download and compile everything yourself, but this can be tiresome, especially if what you're installing has a lot of dependencies.

Enter MacPorts. MacPorts provides you with a command line package manager which you can use in a similar way to apt or yum, for example. It ships with built-in repositories for pretty much everything most people will need, but you can add third-party repositories if necessary. If you're a Unix person at heart, MacPorts can make the Mac experience that much easier.

MacPorts.org

Also check out Porticus, which is a GUI for the MacPorts command line tool.

#4 - Smultron

OK, so this one is sort of a programmer's thing, but it is such a good app in my opinion I'm going to include it. Smultron is a programmer's text editor, with full syntax highlighting and other features such as split window view, tabs, command line scripting, AppleScript, find as you type and more.

It is a formidable competitor to some of the commercial and proprietary programmer's text editors on the Mac, and for many uses it can be a vital tool in your arsenal. The latest version is Leopard only (so that it can take advantage of the latest features), but older versions can also be downloaded for Tiger.

Because it is Mac-specific, it integrates well and provides a good Mac-like experience, rather than sacrificing that for platform independence.

Smultron

#5 - Camino

Firefox on the Mac is a little, well... rubbish. It integrates poorly, is slow and bloated and generally doesn't really feel like it fits in. Equally, Safari doesn't give you the compatibility and power that the open source Gecko rendering engine provides either.

Camino is a browser built on top of Mozilla's Gecko, but with a completely native shell built in Apple's Cocoa. The result is a browser that is fast, looks good, and behaves like a proper Macintosh application should, while still giving you the advantages of having Firefox's rendering code running underneath.

The only caveat (other than a curious lack of auto-updating facility) is you don't get Firefox's extensions, which can be one of the reasons for using Firefox over Safari in the first place. If you're not bothered about that, though, give Camino a try.

Camino

Wrap up

There are plenty more open source gems out there for the Mac, so if you think there's something worthy of mentioning, feel free to leave a note in the comments!

Feed readers are quickly becoming very important applications in people's daily workflows. Along with your email client and web browser, your feed reader is a hub of information.

RSSOwl is a Java-based application that is designed to run on pretty much all platforms - that includes Windows, Mac OS X and Linux distributions. Here, I'm reviewing version 2.0 Milestone 7 on Fedora 8, but the functionality should be identical wherever you run it.

Installation

You can quickly and easily download the right package for your operating system from the download page. With the Linux version, it's a simple case of extracting the Zip file, and double-clicking the RSSOwl binary. You do however, need Java installed, no matter where you run it.

First impressions

Once RSSOwl loads, you're presented with a screen that looks something like this:

The interface is divided into two columns, with a list of feeds on the left and the main area on the right. The list of feeds comes pre-populated with some that the developers have decided you'd like, but it's trivial to delete that whole set and either import your own feeds or add a new one.

Adding a new feed

Adding a new feed manually is pretty simple and intuitive. As you'd expect, you click on the green plus in the toolbar. Interestingly, it brands this as adding a bookmark - which might be a bit confusing for feed veterans, but might well make it easier to understand for those who are new to the whole concept.

One negative point here is that if you don't specify the direct feed URL (for example, just put down http://fosswire.com/), RSSOwl doesn't appear to actually go and auto-discover the real feed URL and fetch from there. Instead you have to put the direct feed URL in from the beginning (for example, http://feeds.feedburner.com/fosswire. Coupled with the confusion of calling it a 'bookmark', this could prove very frustrating until you work out exactly what it means and even then might add an extra unnecessary step to adding a feed into your reader.

Once you have done so, however, the feed items will be loaded in and you'll be able to select it from the source list at the left and see the items in the main pane.

Reading items

Reading items works in the way you expect it to, click an item and the bottom part of the right-hand pane and read it. I generally have no complaints.

If you're a fan of the 'river of news' metaphor, then RSSOwl won't disappoint there either. The 'New and Updated News' group on the left gives you this view, and shows you, obviously, all unread items in the right-hand pane so you can go through them. It works well, although with several hundred unread items the performance did suffer quite a bit and RSSOwl became a bit sluggish.

Importing feeds

I currently use Google Reader as my main feed reading solution, so I proceeded to export out my subscriptions as an OPML file. In RSSOwl, I simply clicked File > Import Feeds and imported the file. My labels in Google Reader became folders in RSSOwl and within a minute or so, all my feeds were loaded in and the items displayed.

I do have around 250 subscriptions, and I was pleasantly surprised with the speed at which they were imported, processed, and the items loaded into the client.

Conclusions

I actually have used RSSOwl in the past, back in the 1.x series in August 2006, and posted a review on Gizbuzz (a previous Oratos Media blog). Since then, I was pleasantly surprised with the amount of progress that has been made in making RSSOwl easier to use, faster, and particularly on Linux, easier to get started with and a better citizen on the Linux desktop.

While there are some areas in which RSSOwl could definitely improve in, overall I find it a very capable feed reader. Personally, I'm going to stick with Google Reader for the moment, as the fact that it is web-based gives me more portability, but to those people who don't use a feed reader right now, or are looking for a change, I'd recommend you download RSSOwl and give it a try.

The clipboard is one thing that we often take forgranted. The concept of copy and paste is almost burnt into our minds, and we use it to move text and objects from application to application.

Often, however, the restriction of having only one object on the clipboard at any one time can be limiting. Enter Parcellite, for GNOME. It keeps a history of your recent clipboard objects, so if you accidentally copy something else, it won't be gone forever. It is a similar concept to KDE's Klipper, which I have covered in the past.

At the moment, the only way to get it installed is to compile it from scratch. Make sure you have the GNOME development packages installed in your distribution's package manager, and then head over to the Google Code site and download the latest source code.

Once you've got it, you'll need to extract it. Assuming it's on your desktop:

$ cd Desktop
$ tar xzvf parcellite-0.5.1.tar.gz
$ cd parcellite-0.5.1.tar.gz

Now, it's a standard software compile - ./configure, make and then make install as root.

$ ./configure
$ make
$ su -c "make install"

(or sudo make install on Ubuntu etc.)

Once that's finished, it is installed. Find it in Applications > Accessories. Once it's loaded, it disappears to a discreet icon up in the menubar. Now it sits away and does its job.

When you find yourself needing to see your copy and paste history, left-click the icon. A list pops open with, by default, your last 25 entries. Click any entry in the history to bring it back onto the main clipboard, ready to paste into any application.

It's very simple to use, and can certainly save you some sanity when you realise you've just wiped out that all-important text you had on your clipboard just a moment ago.

You're not limited to just 25 items, however, and there are some other options you can set for Parcellite. Right-click the icon and choose Preferences.

I would recommend you set it to run at startup and you can also edit the other preferences as you desire - for example, upping the number of history items saved or changing the character limit on the text saved by Parcellite.

While most of the time you probably won't notice it, when you do need it, when you're using copy and paste a lot, Parcellite can be a very useful tool. It works in a very similar way to its KDE cousin Klipper, but that's no bad thing in my opinion. My recommendation - give Parcellite a whirl!