For fellow Mac users I know (actually, some of these are cross-platform so apply to Linux and Windows too), here is a list of software I frequently use and would recommend:
- iTerm – Open source tabbed terminal client (Mac only)
- Ecto – Blogging client (Mac and Windows versions)
- Firefox – Open source browser. Fast, full featured, and lots of great plugins (love the web developer tools). Cross-platform.
- Freemind – Open source mind mapping software. Pure Java so it runs on all major platforms.
- MacPorts (formerly darwin ports) – This is a collection of open source Unix/Linux software ported to Mac OSX/Darwin as well as a packaging system for easily installing the ports. I’ve used it to install Python 2.5, memcached, MySQL, PostgreSQL, and many more packages.
- Adium – Open source multi-protocol IM client. Adium uses the Gaim libraries for the multi-protocol stuff. (Mac only)
- Colloquy – Open source IRC client. I don’t use IRC that much, but when I do, this is the client. (Mac only)
- Quicksilver – Quicksilver lets you carry out many tasks using a few keystrokes – launch applications, find and open files, send an email to someone in your address book, etc. (Mac only)
- Growl – An open source notification system for Mac programs – get unobtrusive notifications of chat messages, received emails, finished downloads, etc. (Mac only)
- NeoOffice – A port of OpenOffice for the Mac.
- MyEclipse – A commercial distribution of the open source Eclipse IDE with additional plugins.