Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad • Hacker News Board

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#31

Post by duaneb » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 9:37 AM UTC

lloeki wrote: post #19

duaneb wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you navigate Mission Control without touching the mouse? Surely it can't be easier than cmd-tab.

Going to System -> Preferences -> Keyboard -> Keyboard Shortcuts and looking for Mission Control and Keyboard & Text Input reveal a number of shortcuts which may or may not be enabled (the same way swipe settings are 3f or 4f) Here you will find the following shortcuts: Mission Control Application windows Move left a space Move right a space Switch to desktop N (number of entries up to N appearing varies with current…

Ah. I work on a laptop, and I can't stand it when a window isn't using up the entire space, so I just make everything fullscreen and flip between them with cmd-tab (slow) or ctl-left/right (fast). I switch between ~4-5 macs a day and ~30-50 a month, so I can't be bothered to use anything but default keybindings and software.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#32

Post by keithpeter » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 9:45 AM UTC

psadauskas wrote: post #8

stevengg wrote: 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.

When I was reading the original article, my second thought was 'why not just install Linux'. My first thought was 'call a friend who has too many computers and borrow one for a bit until you can get the thinkpad fixed'.

Now I have two further thoughts..

How does one use a data projector from an Apple laptop these days? Most projectors I come across are staunch VGA.

Is the X11 environment still available under the current MacOS? Just run Xmonad under that...

http://xquartz.macosforge.org/trac/wiki

Looks like a new version released a few days ago for current Mac OS X

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#33

Post by gurraman » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 9:52 AM UTC

I'm in a similar situation (hooked on Xmonad, but cannot run Linux). I've tried various solutions over the years, but the only one I've found acceptable so far is a full-screen iTerm2 running tmux.

I use `bind t split-window \; select-layout main-vertical` to emulate Xmonads default layout behaviour.

It works because I spend most of my time in the terminal anyway. I miss having the browser - and the video player when doing repetitive or otherwise boring tasks! - in a pane, but keeping other apps out of the tile-management is fine as I'm, more often than not, switching context anyway.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#34

Post by culturestate » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:10 AM UTC

keithpeter wrote: post #32

psadauskas wrote: post #8

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.

When I was reading the original article, my second thought was 'why not just install Linux'. My first thought was 'call a friend who has too many computers and borrow one for a bit until you can get the thinkpad fixed'. Now I have two further thoughts.. How does one use a data projector from an Apple laptop these days? Most projectors I come across are staunch VGA. Is the X11 environment still available under the cur…

>How does one use a data projector from an Apple laptop these days?

I carry Thunderbolt-to-VGA, DVI, and HDMI adapters with my laptop at all times. It's kind of a pain, to be honest.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#35

Post by evangineer » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:33 AM UTC

Having made a similar transition a few years ago from a mouseless linux desktop using ruby-wmii on a thinkpad to osx on a macbook, I find ShiftIt works for tiling windows using the keyboard.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#36

Post by moe » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:43 AM UTC

nickbarnwell wrote: post #24

tomlu wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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)

Last I tried (admittedly a few months back) it was still alpha-quality. I.e. the entire screen would get shuffled unpredictably, windows would end up misaligned (partly overlapping each other) etc. - nowhere near usable.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#37

Post by stevengg » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:45 AM UTC

liangzan wrote: post #15

stevengg wrote: 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

Linus uses a macbook air [1]

Linus Torvalds: "That said, I’m have to admit being a bit baffled by how nobody else seems to have done what Apple did with the Macbook Air – even several years after the first release, the other notebook vendors continue to push those ugly and clunky things. Yes, there are vendors that have tried to emulate it, but usually pretty badly. I don’t think I’m unusual in preferring my laptop to be thin and light."

http://techcrunch.com/2012/04/19/an-interview-with-millenium...

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#38

Post by faulty » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:45 AM UTC

culturestate wrote: post #34

keithpeter wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When I was reading the original article, my second thought was 'why not just install Linux'. My first thought was 'call a friend who has too many computers and borrow one for a bit until you can get the thinkpad fixed'. Now I have two further thoughts.. How does one use a data projector from an Apple laptop these days? Most projectors I come across are staunch VGA. Is the X11 environment still available under the cur…

>How does one use a data projector from an Apple laptop these days? I carry Thunderbolt-to-VGA, DVI, and HDMI adapters with my laptop at all times. It's kind of a pain, to be honest.

Which hardware does use thunderbolt? Never heard of anything that used it. Except for apple stuff, of course.

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#39

Post by ditoa » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:45 AM UTC

You bought a new computer because of a fan error?! You could have got a new fan with next day delivery (so Tuesday in your case) for a hell of a lot less than a new computer and all the time it took you to get OS X setup how you want.

Or do you earn such crazy amounts of money that you made enough money on that Monday to cover the cost of the new Mac and your time configuring it?

Re: Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

#40

Post by moe » Sun, Jun 03, 2012, 10:54 AM UTC

I haven't used XMonad but I've been a heavy ion3 user for many years.

Last I checked none of the available bolt-ons (including Sizeup which the author proposes) would come anywhere near a true tiling WM.

The only candidate that would even try to automatically tile windows was TylerWM - but that was buggy as hell. All the others only act on keyboard-shortcuts, which largely defeats the purpose.

I'd happily pay $200+ for ion3 as a native OSX WM. The OSX window manager is just absurdly terrible.