Introducing Seregil, my new MacBook Pro

Yesterday I received my new 15″ MacBook Pro from FedEx and I’m sure I’ll be spending the next several evenings getting it all set up. I’ve christened it Seregil from the character of Lynn Flewelling’s Nightrunner series. (I always name my computers from characters in books — usually those I’m reading or have read recently.) It is spec’d out thusly:

• MacBook Pro
• 15″ high-density anti-glare screen
• i5 2.4GHz CPU
• 8GB RAM
• 128GB SSD

For the past 4 years I’ve used Linux systems exclusively and when it came to purchase a new computer I decided to jump to Mac. Moving to Linux from Windows was the most productivity-enhancing change I’ve ever made and I’m hoping the swap to Mac doesn’t set me back. What appeals to me so much about Macs is that they have the classic unix underpinnings with an elegant GUI.

Currently I have a Windows VM which I use solely to put music on my iPhone. That’s going straight to /dev/null. Instead I’ll be creating a Fedora 13 (14?) VM as a backup for those things that just need a Linux touch to them. For instance, I’m going to give Apple Mail a chance, but if it just doesn’t pan out, I’ll run Evolution on the VM using VMware Fusion with Unity. I’m interested to see if The Gimp, Inkscape, and other X-Windows dependent apps behave better running in the VM rather than directly on the OS X X-server. While they function well, they just aren’t really integrated into the OS X UI.

I already have Adium, Unison, Moneydance, LibreOffice (aka: OpenOffice), and Chrome installed and configured. My iPhone library is moved over and correctly synching with my phone thanks to a bit of work getting the Library IDs sync’d between the two. Now to get VMware Fusion installed and that Linux VM created.