4 ms·

Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to. The Intel Skull

by sudhirj 10y ago

Trying to do exactly the same thing - I still have a maxed out rMBP 2013 that works great, so setting up alternatives now before I'm forced to. The Intel Skull Canyon NUC is what I'm using, with Elementary running on Virtualbox in Windows 10 (waiting for the Samsung 960 EVO to sell globally before setting up a native install). The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating the command and control keys. And no other OS is currently able to do so. I use the basic emacs shortcuts for navigation in all the apps that support them (crtl a,e,n,p), and the command key to issue commands like close tab, save, new tab etc. This is absolutely impossible to replicate on any other OS (AFAIK). I can map the command key to the control key, but that's about it - it just becomes a new way to hit control. Being able to consistently map and access the command key (as SUPER) simply can't be done.

wezm 10y ago
Yes I suspect the keyboard shortcuts will bother me too. One of the things I like about Elementary is that there are a bunch of things bound to Command out of the box. They also refer to it as ⌘, which has a nice familiarity about it.
- sudhirj 10y ago
  The underlying Ubuntu still refers to it as the Super key, but elementary uses the clover to symbolise it when it can. Still can't get to Mac like setups, though - apparently in Linux it's the applications that intercept the Super key, so it's never going to be possible to get a consistent experience.
  - stormbrew 10y ago
    Window managers definitely get a first crack at keyboard input. For example, I have a bunch of super-related keyboard combos set in i3wm that always go to it. I doubt that's the problem you're referring to. More likely it's that the window manager has no consistent means to make any given window/app do anything in particular, like copy or paste. The app decides its own key combos for those. There's no universal way to do it globally short of using nothing but apps that are specifically intended to work with gnome or kde or another uberenvironment's configuration system. Basically, you could bind super-c at the WM level, but you couldn't make it always copy.
    - sudhirj 10y ago
      Yeah, I think you're exactly right... there's a feature request here that goes through this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-keyboard/+bug/1624189 https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-keyboard/+bug/16...
kps 10y ago
> The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop > is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating > the command and control keys. The saddest thing is that *nix systems generally did likewise, before the this-is-finally-the-year-of-desktop-Linux crowd arrived to insist on imitating every Windows mistake. No one else was boneheaded enough to screw up the Control key's function of generating control characters. Traditional X11 programs have (had) fully configurable key bindings in their app-defaults. Today, KDE (and other Qt) programs at least allow individually changing shortcuts to use Super. Qt has an internal switch to use Super everywhere, but it's hard-coded to the Mac platform. Perhaps eventually there will be enough pressure from OS X refugees to make it a user configurable setting.
unhammer 10y ago
GTK has always supported Emacs bindings, configurable with a setting: http://tiborsimko.org/emacs-bindings-in-gtk-apps.html http://tiborsimko.org/emacs-bindings-in-gtk-apps.html I use these settings and find them quite handy. Of course, that doesn't give you new-tab/close-tab/save on M-t/w/s, for that you have to install some Firefox addon etc. – not quite OS-wide consistency :(

by sudhirj 10y ago

wezm 10y ago

Yes I suspect the keyboard shortcuts will bother me too. One of the things I like about Elementary is that there are a bunch of things bound to Command out of the box. They also refer to it as ⌘, which has a nice familiarity about it.

sudhirj 10y ago
The underlying Ubuntu still refers to it as the Super key, but elementary uses the clover to symbolise it when it can. Still can't get to Mac like setups, though - apparently in Linux it's the applications that intercept the Super key, so it's never going to be possible to get a consistent experience.
- stormbrew 10y ago
  Window managers definitely get a first crack at keyboard input. For example, I have a bunch of super-related keyboard combos set in i3wm that always go to it. I doubt that's the problem you're referring to. More likely it's that the window manager has no consistent means to make any given window/app do anything in particular, like copy or paste. The app decides its own key combos for those. There's no universal way to do it globally short of using nothing but apps that are specifically intended to work with gnome or kde or another uberenvironment's configuration system. Basically, you could bind super-c at the WM level, but you couldn't make it always copy.
  - sudhirj 10y ago
    Yeah, I think you're exactly right... there's a feature request here that goes through this: https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-keyboard/+bug/1624189 https://bugs.launchpad.net/switchboard-plug-keyboard/+bug/16...

kps 10y ago

> The one massive problem for me that keeps me going back to the laptop > is that the Mac absolutely nailed keyboard layout by separating > the command and control keys. The saddest thing is that *nix systems generally did likewise, before the this-is-finally-the-year-of-desktop-Linux crowd arrived to insist on imitating every Windows mistake. No one else was boneheaded enough to screw up the Control key's function of generating control characters. Traditional X11 programs have (had) fully configurable key bindings in their app-defaults. Today, KDE (and other Qt) programs at least allow individually changing shortcuts to use Super. Qt has an internal switch to use Super everywhere, but it's hard-coded to the Mac platform. Perhaps eventually there will be enough pressure from OS X refugees to make it a user configurable setting.

unhammer 10y ago

GTK has always supported Emacs bindings, configurable with a setting: http://tiborsimko.org/emacs-bindings-in-gtk-apps.html http://tiborsimko.org/emacs-bindings-in-gtk-apps.html I use these settings and find them quite handy. Of course, that doesn't give you new-tab/close-tab/save on M-t/w/s, for that you have to install some Firefox addon etc. – not quite OS-wide consistency :(