Cross-Platform Developer's Tools Comparison

One of the first things with moving to or even evaluating a new platform is figuring out what is "there" on the target OS. This answers the question "What can I still do" or better yet "How do I...".  Here's my comparison list of tools across Linux, OS X, and Windows. Yes, I know that OSX is Linux under the covers, however it is enough of a "standoff-ish" platform (IMHO) with regards to user experience, development platform/tools (used to build the software I'm talking about), etc. that I categorize it separately.

Tool	Linux	OSX	Windows
Blog Writer		Qumana	Live Writer
Database Tool	DbVisualizer	DbVisualizer	DbVisualizer SQL Server Management Studio Express
Development IDE	Eclipse MonoDevelop	Eclipse MonoDevelop	Eclipse SharpDevelop Visual Studio
File Compression	7-Zip	7zX	7-Zip
File/Folder Comparison	Beyond Compare	Delta Walker	Beyond Compare
Instant Messaging	Pidgin	Adium Pidgin	Pidgin
Source Control	Subclipse	Subclipse Versions	AnkhSVN TortoiseSVN
System Tray Status/Tools		iStat Menus	SysInternals
Text Editor	Beyond Compare	Text Wrangler	Notepad++
Video Player	VLC Player	VLC Player	VLC Player
XML Editor	<oXygen>	<oXygen>	<oXygen>

Note that this list is what I've found for software that is comparable and gets the job done for me.
Tags: Apple, Linux, Tools, Windows

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Why Beyond Compare tool rocks

If a picture is worth a thousand words, here’s 10K worth for why you should check out Beyond Compare. It’s the one tool that I use every day I’m working at my computer. I’ve used it to compare not only files and folders but zip files to folders - it treats a zip like a folder and let’s you update the zip in situ. I’ve also used it to compare two Word documents, two Excel spreadsheets, MP3 files (tags), version stamps on executables. However, I wasn’t aware it could compare two photographs and show a “mask” of the differences between them!! It’s also the “external” tool I use for differencing in version control systems. If you earn your living using a (Windows or Linux) computer, how can you not afford to spend $50 to increase your productivity?

Great non-destructive partitioning utility - and it's free!

After testing Vista Beta 2 running inside Virtual PC and then on an older machine, I decided the next step was to take the plunge and setup my main laptop for dual boot. At this point, it “hovered” on my mental to-do list until I saw this article on Lifehacker. What really caught my eye was Gina's mention of a comment posted regarding GParted - an open source partition manager. After reading the article here I headed over to the project workspace and downloaded it. Bottom line - it works as advertised and is a great addition to the toolchest. The ISO is only about 30 Mb and contains a bootable version of Linux. After paying for Partition Magic v3, v4, v5, v6, and v7...I'm done shelling out money for upgrades!

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Running with a clean machine as non-admin

I've been intrigued with the idea of non-admin since around the time I went to PDC 2003. While I had dabbled around with VMWare it wasn't until I loaded Virtual PC that I took virtual machine technology for a serious tryout. At the time, it gave me a chance to play around with Longhorn but it wasn't long before I realized it could be a big part of a consultant's toolkit.

Before VPC, my average for re-paving a machine was usually 6-12 months. In that timeframe, I would end up adding and configuring software for at least a couple of clients as well as a few different development projects I was working on. Add to that the plethora of utilities and typical desktop software and you can see why it started to look like my home office desktop before long! Let's just say my wife doesn't like to go in there and swears it's impossible for me to find anything. My OS would never seem to hold up long; looking back to Win 3.1, that's a lot of repaving over the last 14 years!

Jason's article on his current setup reminded me of what I set out to do when I recently repaved. I made a point to load only the full Office suite and a bunch of essential utilities and did the following:

• Each client “gets“ their own VPC image - separate configuration, versions, tools etc.
• One VPC image for our own internal development.
• One VPC image for each test/play environment (e.g. VS2005 Beta 2)
• My primary logon account for the host machine is non-admin. I make use of Aaron's MakeMeAdmin and PrivBar tools for those utilities and times that require it.
• I have resisted installing any development tools into my host machine with the exception of Dreamweaver MX 2004 - which is almost like another “Office“ tool to me.

One caveat - I make my logon account in the development images Admin mostly because it's still too hard not to and be effective. I know there are workarounds but when I'm in “development mode” it has got to be seamless or I become frustrated too quickly. I did, however, manage to last 4 days developing as non-admin about a year and a half ago! Looking forward to, and hoping that VS 2005 can make it truly seamless.

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