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Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

blog.liangzan.net

21–30 of 88 posts

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#21
post #3

I see you found SizeUp. That's also my application of choice. But it doesn't look like you did a lot of research into the available choices, or at least didn't bother listing them. Here's but a handful, for others who are interested: ShiftIt: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt TileWindows: http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html Mercury Mover: http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ... Or if you like mouse c…

also (DoublePane)[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doublepane/id409737246?mt=12]

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#22
post #7

Is there anything like xmonad for Windows? Edit: found [some options on wikipedia][1], but maybe you have any other sugestions. [1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#3rd_party...

Bug.n is the closest thing I've ever found. However it still leaves much to be desired. http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#24
post #17

Tyler WM ( http://www.tylerwm.com/ ) shows a lot of promise. It's a pretty good 1.0 but there are some edge cases that still prevent me from using it full time.

To chime in here, IMO what sets Tyler apart is that it takes control of a window as soon as it is created, whereas AFAIK all other offerings leave the windows alone until you use keyboard commands to resize them. It is indeed promising, but like you I cannot recommend it to anyone until they have fixed several critical bugs.

Could you elaborate on what some of the bugs you ran into were? I came across it the other day and was eager to try it, but reticent to spend the $10 without a demo (currently in between jobs)

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#25
post #5

why not just run arch on your mac laptop?

I did consider, but I bet that the solution would feel like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. Even if I use Arch Linux, I want to be sure the hardware is working

How? Thinkpads are Intel reference designs with a plastic black case, and Macbooks are Intel reference designs with an aluminium case.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#26
post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No thunderbolt support, for one, so you can't use the beautiful 27" external monitor. The nVidia/ATI drivers on Linux aren't nearly as good, either.

I really love Arch, but for me the reason it's segregated to a VM is: - power management: Linux does not hold a candle to OSX (which is able to shutdown entire components like soundcard, webcam dynamically when not in use) - Lion's external display+lid+sleep behavior: external screen+AC power makes lid-close sleep inoperant, so I can just plug both lid closed and my laptop wakes up to be a desktop (bluetooth input de…

The Linux kernel is capable of commanding individual devices to power off. Run powertop and it will show you what's using power and offer to turn it off. My experience with Thinkpads (from two or three years ago) is that running Windows gives you about 10 hours of battery life while doing essentially nothing, while running Linux gives you 8 hours. Both are so high that it doesn't really matter. My X220 has never run out of battery, and I fly a lot and don't really plug my laptop in at home, so 8 hours is apparently enough.

For your second point, just explicitly command your computer to do what you want. If you want it to go to sleep, type "acpitool -s". If you don't want it to go to sleep, don't type that.

If you like OS X, use it, but if you hate OS X and are only using it because of the two issues you list above, that's crazy :)

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#27
post #5

why not just run arch on your mac laptop?

No thunderbolt support, for one, so you can't use the beautiful 27" external monitor. The nVidia/ATI drivers on Linux aren't nearly as good, either.

The nVidia/ATI drivers on Linux aren't nearly as good, either.

In what way?

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#28
post #3

I see you found SizeUp. That's also my application of choice. But it doesn't look like you did a lot of research into the available choices, or at least didn't bother listing them. Here's but a handful, for others who are interested: ShiftIt: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt TileWindows: http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html Mercury Mover: http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ... Or if you like mouse c…

i use and like ShiftIt

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#29
I use Arch + Xmonad at work and I simply love it as the OP does. Sometimes I need to work from home and I don't want to keep two laptops here, so I need to use my old 2008 unibody Macbook.

Working in OSX with Vim and console is painful after the Linux experience. Installing lots of utilities might help, but I chose to install Ubuntu with Xmonad and after couple of hours I had my favorite environment ready for productive work.

I know that the support for newer Apple technologies is not so good in Linux, so when this old laptop finally dies I need to buy a new one from some other manufacturer.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#30
post #3

I see you found SizeUp. That's also my application of choice. But it doesn't look like you did a lot of research into the available choices, or at least didn't bother listing them. Here's but a handful, for others who are interested: ShiftIt: https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt TileWindows: http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html Mercury Mover: http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ... Or if you like mouse c…

I will also add that with many of these "window managers" you get the terribly annoying behaviour of one window's shadow disturbing the content of its neighbours.

Just yesterday I found ShadowKiller[1] that removes window shadows for all OSX windows, making it feel even more like a true tiling window manager.

[1]:http://unsanity.com/haxies/shadowkiller

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