Blizzardboy | A Kiwi in Japan

It has been about a year and a half since I bought this powerbook and made the change to using a mac. From a design point of view Apple have done a wonderful job and overall I think OS X is an excellent operating system. Coming from a linux background I am used to using open source software and tools, and that is probably the biggest limitation to using Apple computers.

One of the main tools that is missing is a free ftp client. I grew up using gFTP, which is about as solid as a piece of 2 by 4. The most popular FTP clients for OS X are Fetch (off topic, but in Japanese that means fetish), and Transmit - both have 15 day trial policies, after that you have to pay to use them.

I did a bit of a search around last year for an open source ftp client and couldn’t find much of a solution. The answer came when I updated firefox. Now I know a lot of Mac users are reticent to use anything other than safari, but if you install a firefox plugin called FireFTP then you have an FTP client.

FireFTP doesn’t support some things like sFTP or SSH or unicode character filenames. But I haven’t had any problems with using it. When it installs it takes you to a page asking for donations for orphans in the Balkans which is a nice idea - you don’ have to pay.

If you need a copy of firefox you can download one here,

and the FireFTP client can be downloaded from the FireFTP site.

Other Random Posts from Blizzardboy. Enjoy:)

• A life-line for ex-Nova Instructors
• In response to: From Golden Bay to the Golden Fish
• Unseen Japan Photo Contest