In other news, I've created an AFP shared folder on my Debian home server, now it's quite easy to copy files around.
Just a little heads-up, AFP has (usually) a limitation of 2GB per file. So if you copy, say, a DVD image over AFP, it might truncate it at 2GB. Before Mac OS 9, 2GB used to be the max file size, that's why (which is why I find Mac OS 8.6 and earlier "unusable", so to speak). Because of this, I like using FTP instead (FileZilla Server on Windows and Fetch 4.0.3 on Mac as the client). Just beware that FTP and most other protocols (unlike AFP) do not recognize anything other than what is known as the "data fork". For some file types (not all), a data-fork-only file is a broken file. To preserve all forks and data, FTP etc. files are usually encoded (.bin, .hqx) or "Mac-compressed" (.sit, .cpt, special types of .zip etc.).
As for what programs are "essential", people often discuss that. The Mac Garden is the defacto go-to place for Mac software, although discussion boards are many. Anyway, generally, most seem to agree with at least these:
- StuffIt Expander, to decode and/or decompress 99% of files out there (v6.0 comes with Mac OS 9.2.2 usually. The latest version is 7.0.3, although many like and use 5.5.1 for certain archives)
- Classilla 9.3.4b, the most up-to-date browser, although not ready for "regular" web use (outdated). I often am using that when writing here.
- USB Overdrive 1.4, utility that allows you to use the "right-click" as you would in Windows etc., plus the scrolling wheel. Else they don't function (without taking special action, anyway).
After that, it's more up to you to walk the journey, and see what you like at first, then you will discover even better things later, and so on. For starters, I really like also FinderPop and DefaultFolder, and never use Mac OS without them. It is all in the Garden.