As I did a fresh install of Mountain Lion the day it was released, I’ve been slowly installing the tools I usually need as I’ve needed them. I thought it’d be interesting for the like-minded geeks to se how I roll. I’m planning to release this information as a series of posts, this being the first one.
iTerm 2, the Terminal replacement
I tried the default Terminal on 10.8 but as I’ve grown so accustomed to iTerm 2, I downloaded and installed it instead. It’s a great Terminal replacement with nice features such as split panes. And page up/page down work straight away with irssi, with zero configuration.
Oh-my-zsh, the Bash replacement
Oh-my-zsh brings zshell with awesome default configuration. I’m sure Bash can be configured to act & look similar, but this thing just makes sense out-of-the-box, so why not? From the top of my head, some nice features:
- Case insensitive autocomplete (where multiple hits of the tab key go though the alternatives)
- Git integration
- Fancy themes (yes, really) featuring colours in e.g. file listings
- Handy aliases, such as .. instead of cd .., – instead of cd –
Chrome, the Safari replacement
I don’t fancy Safari. Even though I’ve bee flirting with Safari 6 that comes with 10.8 (unified location & search box! crazy fast and smooth scrolling! no Flash!) it still has some things that drive me next to crazy. For instance, Safari has a lot to learn about tab handling from Chrome. Tab duplication is nowhere to be found (except as a flaky plugin).
And Chrome just happens to be the least bad option. There are some things that I don’t like with Chrome, but it’s mostly good.
Adium, the Messages replacement
Well, Messages is the mess of ages.
I’ll be back with more apps in part two. Stay tuned, and as always, for comments & feedback you can reach me on Twitter as @anttti.