I recently purchased a Mac Book Pro – primarily for software development. As a long time Linux and Windows user I though it would be time to try something new and join the hype.

To work with Mac OS efficiently I needed to install quite a bit free extra software.
Here is a list of what I found useful for my purposes.

Awesome and free:

• Firefox – I like it much better then safari
• Perian – adds support for many popular video formats such as divX
• Open Office – used this under Linux and Window as well
• Google Notifier – check for new Google Mail and Google Calendar entries
• Google quick search box – search for anything from your taskbar
• iChat with Google Talk – use iChat to chat with your google buddies
• Virtual Box – free virtual machine to run Windows or any other OS
• Skype – I use skype since many years to stay in touch and do my calls
• Seashore – easy to install free image editor based on gimp

Free development tools:

• Xampp – save yourself the hassle of setting up Apache, Mysql, PHP, etc
• Eclipse – my favorite development platform
• jEdit – a free editor for programmers, written in java
• Cyberduck – handy opersource ftp, sftp, webdav browser for Mac OS X
• Wget – Mac OS X only comes with curl. But curl does not provide the same functionality as wget
• NVU – NVU is a handy and free HTML and CSS Editor
• Free Ruler – measure things on your screen with this useful little tool

Commercial Tools:

• Path Finder – replacement for mac finder with great features like tabs and split pane

A cool website listing all opensource mac applications