Mac community could benefit? Name two things Linux has given OS X, and they can't be trivial
Easy !!!
Most open-source projects that Unix (and Mac OS as de facto Unix) today uses were originally made for Linux. For instance, Mac OS uses Samba engine to share files with Windows. Webkit, Safari's engine, was created on khtml project for KDE.
I'll add
OpenOffice which free both Mac and PC users from the
Windows Office Suite
Even if iWork is my favourite, Pages is 1 solar system beyond too far for many people and their use of a word processor.
Then
Gimp ... As a designer, I work everyday with Photoshop but when I started to mod, I was very very happy to find this treasure which directly comes from Linux world. The great advantage of Gimp on Photoshop on Mac is its DDS plugin inclusion. Now I use
Squich DDS 1.1.3 ( another free tool ) directly on Mac
But why staying at 2 ?
VLC is a software used by many people. Some do not even know sometimes it is a software Open Source. The voluntary nature of this media player is, however not his only quality. VLC supports many different video and audio formats, including H.264, Ogg, DivX, MKV, TS, MPEG-2, MP3, MPEG-4 AAC. It also allows read and distribute streaming feeds, to achieve the encoding and format conversion ... With QuickTime, my favourite player for sure !
Audacity is an audio editor and recorder Open Source. It can record an audio stream live, import and export in various formats, converting records analog to digital, as well as to perform multiple actions assembly ... Of course, not as sublime as Soundtrack Pro or Logic Pro but for many pieces of work, well enough and ... free !!!
Inkscape is a vector graphics editor comparable to proprietary software like Illustrator or Corel Draw. Inkscape is compatible with SVG, a W3C standard. Thus any image in SVG created or edited with Inkscape can be imported into any other editor complying with this standard. Inkscape which has a very dynamic community and many tutorials for novice users to learn to master this tool ... Thanks Inskape to exist ...
Despite the large spread of instant messaging, IRC clients are not dead yet. Some users continue to use this type of chat application, including consultants and network administrators. And
X-Chat 2 is probably to this day one of the best IRC clients ... I'm not an IRC chatter so, I use
Adium ( free, thanks again Open World ! ) which works much better than LiveMessenger which year after year is still buggy on any Mac OS X ... iChat is great but doesn't work with MSN accounts ...
Blender which is an open source, cross platform suite of tools for 3D creation and largely used around isn't it ???
Should I mention the
nif tools or not ?
Should I tell more ? Since Open World rise, we ALL benefit of many stuff from it. It's becoming so obvious and so daily that we easily forget this benefit !
Only the Gaming world remains closed to Open Source and Linux and Mac world ... Maybe because the world of gaming is a selfish PC geeks world which is surfing on the fact that so many many young people play more and more until forgetting what is real life ??? ( money ... money ... )
Right here, how many people play with mods or added units made for most with Open Source tools !!! Firaxis knows this fact but like all others game editors, not so
"open-minded" ...
When I see around so many PC users telling that Windows 7 is
"only" 115 $, I don't laugh because some of them are fellows and I dislike argue each day ( english is not my mother tongue ) ... But do they know a Mac comes always with OS X included ? and that Linux is really free ? The price comparison of computers is not anymore a decent argument. Civ 5 itself requires a Quad to play really fine ...
I'm still OK ( and I'm not the only one ) with the fact to pay more my Civ game than any PC user, but it sounds like a neverending story.
Every creator and each modder and each mod user here on CivFanatics should plead for a multi-platform Civ 5 too since they largely use open source tools and benefit from Linux world for their creations
That's decent.
I'm not a Linux boy but I don't bite the hand who feeds my pleasure ...