9 ms·

Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

122 points by liangzan 14y ago

DannyPage 14y ago
It depends on what mouse or touchpad you have, but I find that I don't even use Command-Tab anymore. It lacks the precision of getting to exactly the right window. Launching Mission Control via touch allows me to switch to the window I need much faster. I hear you on the maximizing thing; I ended up finding a program called Shift (http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac) works very well to maximize, snap a window to just the left or right half of the screen, etc. Hope that helps!
- duaneb 14y ago
  How do you navigate Mission Control without touching the mouse? Surely it can't be easier than cmd-tab.
  - james4k 14y ago
    On a MacBook, I find it pretty easy to move my hand down a couple inches to swipe between full screens, and access mission control when needed. I could see it being a problem when using a mouse, though.
  - lloeki 14y ago
    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 number N of dynamic Spaces) Also: Move focus to active or next window By default and depending whether you upgraded to Lion and what your previous settings were the base mod key may be Command, Control or Command+Control. If you installed from scratch it's Control. Then, shortcuts are: - Ctrl+Up/Down to enter MC/App Exposé - Ctrl+Left/Right/1/2/3/4 to change Spaces (works on the desktop and in MC) - Command+` (and Tab/Shift+Tab) cycles apps in App Exposé. - Arrows allow one to select a window in App Exposé On a laptop, the touchpad is right below the keyboard and I usually trigger MC with a 3f swipe, F3 or Control+Down (depends on my zone level) and select the window with index (when swipe-triggered) or thumb (when keyboard triggered). When using a mouse, I'm using a Logitech MediaPlay at home and a Logitech MX900 at work, which have two awesomely placed thumb buttons, which map perfectly to Mission Control and App Exposé (the button choices appear in the rightmost combos in System Settings -> Mission Control if you have a sufficiently buttoned mouse). Using another mouse than Magic Mouse I lose the brilliant touch/inertia scroll, but the two-finger double-tab gesture is completely ridiculous and a total pain. Comparatively, Command+Tab is only fine when I'm toggling between two apps which have a single window, else the whole target app windows cover the previous one, which defeats my extensive use of Window Magnet. Also I have 1) a high chance of not landing into the proper window this way, and 2) a high chance of toggling between three apps, in which case Command+Tab is inefficient. Also I find it egregious that one keeps open Command+Tab by keeping Command down, then drill down to App Exposé, where you have to release command before moving with arrows and subsequently select a window with Return when it could be Command all the way then release to exit. Also, when moving between terminal windows and tabs I use the build-in Next Window/Tab shortcut (Command+Left/Right, with Shift for tabs). I bound the same keys in MacVim for consistency. Besides there's still lack a (non third party) keyboard way to: - navigate between window groups/windows in MC - add a new space - move windows between spaces
    - duaneb 14y ago
      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.
pudquick 14y ago
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 https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt TileWindows: http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html Mercury Mover: http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ... Or if you like mouse control of window placement: MondoMouse: http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse Zooom/2: http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html Cinch: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ ... Or if you like a bit of both keyboard and mouse: Optimal Layout: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ Arrange: http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html Divvy: http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://mizage.com/divvy/ BetterTouchTool and BetterSnapTool: http://blog.boastr.net/ http://blog.boastr.net/ Flexiglass: http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass Moom: http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/ And throwing this one in to just show that it can get exotic: http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/ http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/ .... I could go on. OS X does not lack for people who disagree with Apple's idea of window management. There's lots of tools out there, if you just look for them :)
- lloeki 14y ago
  You're missing Window Magnet (fits in the "both" case)
- tuananh 14y ago
  also (DoublePane)[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doublepane/id409737246?mt=12 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doublepane/id409737246?mt=12]
- aaronblohowiak 14y ago
  i use and like ShiftIt
- zmmz 14y ago
duaneb 14y ago
TL;DR use SizeUp.
stevengg 14y ago
why not just run arch on your mac laptop?
- psadauskas 14y ago
  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.
  - lloeki 14y ago
    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 devices help a lot). Conversely unplugging either makes it go to sleep, back in laptop mode.
    - jrockway 14y ago
      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 :)
      - lloeki 14y ago
        > 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 Oh I perfectly know that, the problem is that it's manual. With OSX I play a song, soundcard comes alive from its powered off state and plays sound, song stops, soundcard powers down after a little idle timeout. The same goes for the webcam, ethernet board and various other components. With Linux I have to either write some suboptimal wrappers to programs to kick devices in or out, or do it manually, or sacrifice battery life. Comparing battery life, Linux is two~three full hours behind OSX out of seven~eight (after thorough analysis involving powertop1/2). That's a 30% drop and brings me to almost a day to a little more than half a day of work per cycle. Well, it was so a year ago, because now my battery has crossed the 600 cycle count bar so it holds an hour less. And don't start telling me "oh that was a year ago, Linux has improved on that front since then", since OSX improved in that area too (I've looked at hard data battery metrics). > 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. You're missing the point, I perfectly know that too. Find me a single PC that can do this: 1) asleep with lid closed, you plug in an external screen and if you're on AC power the computer wakes up and makes the external screen primary, else it does not even wake up and stays asleep. 2) awake with lid closed, AC and screen plugged in, you plug out external screen or AC power and the computer goes to sleep 3) awake with lid closed, AC and screen plugged in, you open the lid and it becomes primary while external screen becomes secondary. 4) awake with lid open, AC doesn't matter but you plug in an external screen and this one becomes secondary, retains its specific configuration including relative position, wallpapers, resolution and color calibration settings from previous times per external screen device. I've written my own extendable acpid handler in Python to achieve various schemes, react to complex events, and take complex actions. I know exactly how to do 2, 3 and 4, and I know exactly how much hackery and time is needed to achieve this, and it's not really reliable in the end. As for 1 it might as well be downright impossible. > 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. As I said my battery is getting past middle-aged and the more minutes, the happier. Also you can consider not only "instant" battery life (i.e time it takes to go from full to empty) but long-term battery life (time it takes before the battery is a complete brick): the longer the cycles, the less wear it takes, so the longer it lasts before going to the trash. > If you like OS X I do :-) If only Lion's "full-screen" would really be a chrome-less tiling window manager I'd be completely happy. Things, like Window Magnet, fullscreen Terminal.app and tmux help a lot though.
julioc 14y ago
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_addons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#3rd_party...
- bjg 14y ago
  Bug.n is the closest thing I've ever found. However it still leaves much to be desired. http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/ http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/
- to3m 14y ago
  I wrote a program for use with AutoHotKey that helps create tiled layouts. I haven't used xmonad, so I don't know how it compares, but I've found it useful. https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2 https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2 If you like align_window2, you might also like dispswitch: https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch (dispswitch and align_window2 will coexist.)
- silentbicycle 14y ago
  On the "move window / switch focus to workspace N" front, there's VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/). You need to set up the Alt-1, Shift-Alt-1, etc. keybindings, but it works quite well.
- technosmurf 14y ago
  I've had good success with an open source tiling window manager for Windows called HashTWM [1]. I use it inside my Windows XP virtual machine to manage a bunch of hairy situations with multiple windows. I like that it actually does reposition new windows to fit inside the grid, and that I can easily adjust the middle "split" line so that my main window can become thinner or thicker. Where it falls down is when you deal with modal dialogue windows, like the "Save File As..." window of Firefox, or the "Find and Replace" window of Excel. I haven't found a good way to overcome the issue of those modal windows being hidden, even with the "-i ConsoleWindowClass -i #32770" ignore options. It seems like Firefox, Excel, and Photoshop implement some non-standard ways of opening smaller windows. In these situations, I quit HashTWM, deal with the modal window, and then start HashTWM again (using quick keyboard shortcuts). [1] https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM
maximumsteve 14y ago
I know I have -8 karma because of a Richard Stallman joke transgression, but I'll try again commenting. I'm curious why no mention of tmux? Personally, I've found a pretty satisfactory workspace method with: Full screen terminal, always running tmux. This gives me tiling inside of the terminal. Other than that, I use mainly a web browser. You can install a vim keybinding plugin for Chrome or Firefox. I generally keep that in fullscreen mode, and those are my two main windows. It's not xmonad, but if you use mainly cli tools, there's not much difference.
tyler_ball 14y ago
Tyler WM (http://www.tylerwm.com/ 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.
- tomlu 14y ago
  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.
  - nickbarnwell 14y ago
    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)
    - moe 14y ago
      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.
    - tomlu 14y ago
      Oh, stuff like windows becoming unmanaged, Tyler becoming disabled until a restart, windows moving around without you wanting them to. It's pretty much an alpha product - don't spend yet, wait a couple months and see how it goes.
Void_ 14y ago
Spark: http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php You can create shortcuts for anything. I have Alt+S for Safari, Cmd+~ for Terminal, Alt+M for TextMate, etc.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
pimeys 14y ago
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.
- josephkern 14y ago
  Thinkpad. Great build quality, Linux friendly.
  - pimeys 14y ago
    I've been watching Thinkpads very closely. I used to own X40 until it broke and before 600x (which never broke, but it's kind of old now). What model is preferable nowadays? There are not lots of shops to test them at least in Berlin. I want 13" and lightweight, but still powerful enough laptop. Lots of ram, i7 CPU and a SSD disk. The most important thing is an excellent keyboard and touchpad. I heard Lenovo is not using the old and excellent keyboard in their laptops anymore and I haven't tested the new one yet.
    - peterwiese 14y ago
      Don't take the t series. Lenovo basically transformed this to pure trash. The only thinkpad series that lives up to ibms quality is the x series. Truthfully I wouldn't by thinkpads anymore. The only notebook you can by nowadays is the MBA.
      - iron_ball 14y ago
        Counter-anecdote: I have a T520 and I'm perfectly happy with it. Get the full HD screen, it's worth it. I admit that I'd prefer the old 4:3 screen size, but that's just not the way of the world anymore.
gurraman 14y ago
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.
evangineer 14y ago
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.
ditoa 14y ago
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?
- shellox 14y ago
  I think his Thinkpad died, because of a fan error. Maybe it overheated or something like that.
moe 14y ago
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.
- pyre 14y ago
  He did seem to imply that his usage of Xmonad was 1 app per workspace, which isn't really 'tiling' per se.
  - pimeys 14y ago
    One app per workspace is great for a 13" laptop. When having two big screens, it's not enough anymore.
lubutu 14y ago
A slight tangent, but dmenu-4.5 uses token matching, which allows you to search somewhat fuzzily: "foo rb" will match "foobarbaz". How it looks compared to Alfred and co. is a matter of one's aesthetic... Disclosure: I'm a dmenu developer.
- mwyvern 14y ago
  I've always wondered -- is it suckless as in suck less than something else, or as in without suck?
  - mgurlitz 14y ago
    It says right on the suckless.org home page, "software that sucks less," so probably the first.
    - mwyvern 14y ago
      I've been saying that wrong in my head for a long time now. Thank you :-).
- technomancy 14y ago
  Thank goodness; been waiting for this forever. I actually ported dmenu to OCaml solely to add this feature: http://technomancy.us/152 http://technomancy.us/152
batista 14y ago
"Or you could, you know, just use Xmonad" comments considered harmful. (plus ignorant/simplistic: it's not like everything else related to one's OS use and needs will be the same).
bcl 14y ago
Or you could install Fedora 17 on your Mac and just run xmonad
zdw 14y ago
What I use (both are free/open source): Slate for window management: https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate Quicksilver for launching: http://qsapp.com/ http://qsapp.com/
tilltheis 14y ago
I haven't used Xmonad myself but with all the talking why hasn't someone ported it to OS X (Cocoa) yet?
- ef4 14y ago
  It's not just a question of porting it to cocoa. To really do its job, it needs to take control of every other window. So you need to hack Apple's existing window manager. FWIW, you can easily compile and run it on OSX, under X. But of course it can't reach out and control any of the native applications.
mwyvern 14y ago
Comment to the author: use cmd-` while you are command tabbing if you go too far! Similarly useful, hold cmd-tab and it will stop at the end. Also, cmd-esc if you decide not to switch. I used a 15" MBP for a long time without missing a tiling window manager that much... but the problem was exaggerated when I started using a 27" imac. So I looked around and started using spectacle. Great utility. I use Quicksilver's "open application" custom triggers to get the app switching behavior, so I finally have a use for F15-F19 (on the very left side of my keyboard)! It has made a big difference for me. One problem I would like to solve is switching between multiple emacsen. I have an 8:00-5:00 job and work on my own stuff after that, and I like to keep my buffer lists separate (so I can't just use multiple frames). Therefore, I open emacs again from the terminal and I wish I could switch between them with quicksilver's shortcut. Alas, quicksilver always brings up the first one. Has anyone dealt with this?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

122 points by liangzan 14y ago

It depends on what mouse or touchpad you have, but I find that I don't even use Command-Tab anymore. It lacks the precision of getting to exactly the right window. Launching Mission Control via touch allows me to switch to the window I need much faster. I hear you on the maximizing thing; I ended up finding a program called Shift (http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac) works very well to maximize, snap a window to just the left or right half of the screen, etc. Hope that helps!

duaneb 14y ago
How do you navigate Mission Control without touching the mouse? Surely it can't be easier than cmd-tab.
- james4k 14y ago
  On a MacBook, I find it pretty easy to move my hand down a couple inches to swipe between full screens, and access mission control when needed. I could see it being a problem when using a mouse, though.
- lloeki 14y ago
  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 number N of dynamic Spaces) Also: Move focus to active or next window By default and depending whether you upgraded to Lion and what your previous settings were the base mod key may be Command, Control or Command+Control. If you installed from scratch it's Control. Then, shortcuts are: - Ctrl+Up/Down to enter MC/App Exposé - Ctrl+Left/Right/1/2/3/4 to change Spaces (works on the desktop and in MC) - Command+` (and Tab/Shift+Tab) cycles apps in App Exposé. - Arrows allow one to select a window in App Exposé On a laptop, the touchpad is right below the keyboard and I usually trigger MC with a 3f swipe, F3 or Control+Down (depends on my zone level) and select the window with index (when swipe-triggered) or thumb (when keyboard triggered). When using a mouse, I'm using a Logitech MediaPlay at home and a Logitech MX900 at work, which have two awesomely placed thumb buttons, which map perfectly to Mission Control and App Exposé (the button choices appear in the rightmost combos in System Settings -> Mission Control if you have a sufficiently buttoned mouse). Using another mouse than Magic Mouse I lose the brilliant touch/inertia scroll, but the two-finger double-tab gesture is completely ridiculous and a total pain. Comparatively, Command+Tab is only fine when I'm toggling between two apps which have a single window, else the whole target app windows cover the previous one, which defeats my extensive use of Window Magnet. Also I have 1) a high chance of not landing into the proper window this way, and 2) a high chance of toggling between three apps, in which case Command+Tab is inefficient. Also I find it egregious that one keeps open Command+Tab by keeping Command down, then drill down to App Exposé, where you have to release command before moving with arrows and subsequently select a window with Return when it could be Command all the way then release to exit. Also, when moving between terminal windows and tabs I use the build-in Next Window/Tab shortcut (Command+Left/Right, with Shift for tabs). I bound the same keys in MacVim for consistency. Besides there's still lack a (non third party) keyboard way to: - navigate between window groups/windows in MC - add a new space - move windows between spaces
  - duaneb 14y ago
    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.

pudquick 14y ago

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 https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt TileWindows: http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html Mercury Mover: http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/ ... Or if you like mouse control of window placement: MondoMouse: http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse Zooom/2: http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html Cinch: http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/ ... Or if you like a bit of both keyboard and mouse: Optimal Layout: http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/ Arrange: http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html Divvy: http://mizage.com/divvy/ http://mizage.com/divvy/ BetterTouchTool and BetterSnapTool: http://blog.boastr.net/ http://blog.boastr.net/ Flexiglass: http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass Moom: http://manytricks.com/moom/ http://manytricks.com/moom/ And throwing this one in to just show that it can get exotic: http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/ http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/ .... I could go on. OS X does not lack for people who disagree with Apple's idea of window management. There's lots of tools out there, if you just look for them :)

lloeki 14y ago
You're missing Window Magnet (fits in the "both" case)
tuananh 14y ago
also (DoublePane)[http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doublepane/id409737246?mt=12 http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/doublepane/id409737246?mt=12]
aaronblohowiak 14y ago
i use and like ShiftIt
zmmz 14y ago

duaneb 14y ago

TL;DR use SizeUp.

stevengg 14y ago

why not just run arch on your mac laptop?

psadauskas 14y ago
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.
- lloeki 14y ago
  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 devices help a lot). Conversely unplugging either makes it go to sleep, back in laptop mode.
  - jrockway 14y ago
    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 :)
    - lloeki 14y ago
      > 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 Oh I perfectly know that, the problem is that it's manual. With OSX I play a song, soundcard comes alive from its powered off state and plays sound, song stops, soundcard powers down after a little idle timeout. The same goes for the webcam, ethernet board and various other components. With Linux I have to either write some suboptimal wrappers to programs to kick devices in or out, or do it manually, or sacrifice battery life. Comparing battery life, Linux is two~three full hours behind OSX out of seven~eight (after thorough analysis involving powertop1/2). That's a 30% drop and brings me to almost a day to a little more than half a day of work per cycle. Well, it was so a year ago, because now my battery has crossed the 600 cycle count bar so it holds an hour less. And don't start telling me "oh that was a year ago, Linux has improved on that front since then", since OSX improved in that area too (I've looked at hard data battery metrics). > 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. You're missing the point, I perfectly know that too. Find me a single PC that can do this: 1) asleep with lid closed, you plug in an external screen and if you're on AC power the computer wakes up and makes the external screen primary, else it does not even wake up and stays asleep. 2) awake with lid closed, AC and screen plugged in, you plug out external screen or AC power and the computer goes to sleep 3) awake with lid closed, AC and screen plugged in, you open the lid and it becomes primary while external screen becomes secondary. 4) awake with lid open, AC doesn't matter but you plug in an external screen and this one becomes secondary, retains its specific configuration including relative position, wallpapers, resolution and color calibration settings from previous times per external screen device. I've written my own extendable acpid handler in Python to achieve various schemes, react to complex events, and take complex actions. I know exactly how to do 2, 3 and 4, and I know exactly how much hackery and time is needed to achieve this, and it's not really reliable in the end. As for 1 it might as well be downright impossible. > 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. As I said my battery is getting past middle-aged and the more minutes, the happier. Also you can consider not only "instant" battery life (i.e time it takes to go from full to empty) but long-term battery life (time it takes before the battery is a complete brick): the longer the cycles, the less wear it takes, so the longer it lasts before going to the trash. > If you like OS X I do :-) If only Lion's "full-screen" would really be a chrome-less tiling window manager I'd be completely happy. Things, like Window Magnet, fullscreen Terminal.app and tmux help a lot though.

julioc 14y ago

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_addons http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#3rd_party...

bjg 14y ago
Bug.n is the closest thing I've ever found. However it still leaves much to be desired. http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/ http://www.autohotkey.net/~joten/
to3m 14y ago
I wrote a program for use with AutoHotKey that helps create tiled layouts. I haven't used xmonad, so I don't know how it compares, but I've found it useful. https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2 https://github.com/tom-seddon/align_window2 If you like align_window2, you might also like dispswitch: https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch https://github.com/tom-seddon/dispswitch (dispswitch and align_window2 will coexist.)
silentbicycle 14y ago
On the "move window / switch focus to workspace N" front, there's VirtuaWin (http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/ http://virtuawin.sourceforge.net/). You need to set up the Alt-1, Shift-Alt-1, etc. keybindings, but it works quite well.
technosmurf 14y ago
I've had good success with an open source tiling window manager for Windows called HashTWM [1]. I use it inside my Windows XP virtual machine to manage a bunch of hairy situations with multiple windows. I like that it actually does reposition new windows to fit inside the grid, and that I can easily adjust the middle "split" line so that my main window can become thinner or thicker. Where it falls down is when you deal with modal dialogue windows, like the "Save File As..." window of Firefox, or the "Find and Replace" window of Excel. I haven't found a good way to overcome the issue of those modal windows being hidden, even with the "-i ConsoleWindowClass -i #32770" ignore options. It seems like Firefox, Excel, and Photoshop implement some non-standard ways of opening smaller windows. In these situations, I quit HashTWM, deal with the modal window, and then start HashTWM again (using quick keyboard shortcuts). [1] https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM https://github.com/ZaneA/HashTWM

maximumsteve 14y ago

I know I have -8 karma because of a Richard Stallman joke transgression, but I'll try again commenting. I'm curious why no mention of tmux? Personally, I've found a pretty satisfactory workspace method with: Full screen terminal, always running tmux. This gives me tiling inside of the terminal. Other than that, I use mainly a web browser. You can install a vim keybinding plugin for Chrome or Firefox. I generally keep that in fullscreen mode, and those are my two main windows. It's not xmonad, but if you use mainly cli tools, there's not much difference.

tyler_ball 14y ago

Tyler WM (http://www.tylerwm.com/ 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.

tomlu 14y ago
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.
- nickbarnwell 14y ago
  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)
  - moe 14y ago
    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.
  - tomlu 14y ago
    Oh, stuff like windows becoming unmanaged, Tyler becoming disabled until a restart, windows moving around without you wanting them to. It's pretty much an alpha product - don't spend yet, wait a couple months and see how it goes.

Void_ 14y ago

Spark: http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php You can create shortcuts for anything. I have Alt+S for Safari, Cmd+~ for Terminal, Alt+M for TextMate, etc.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

pimeys 14y ago

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.

josephkern 14y ago
Thinkpad. Great build quality, Linux friendly.
- pimeys 14y ago
  I've been watching Thinkpads very closely. I used to own X40 until it broke and before 600x (which never broke, but it's kind of old now). What model is preferable nowadays? There are not lots of shops to test them at least in Berlin. I want 13" and lightweight, but still powerful enough laptop. Lots of ram, i7 CPU and a SSD disk. The most important thing is an excellent keyboard and touchpad. I heard Lenovo is not using the old and excellent keyboard in their laptops anymore and I haven't tested the new one yet.
  - peterwiese 14y ago
    Don't take the t series. Lenovo basically transformed this to pure trash. The only thinkpad series that lives up to ibms quality is the x series. Truthfully I wouldn't by thinkpads anymore. The only notebook you can by nowadays is the MBA.
    - iron_ball 14y ago
      Counter-anecdote: I have a T520 and I'm perfectly happy with it. Get the full HD screen, it's worth it. I admit that I'd prefer the old 4:3 screen size, but that's just not the way of the world anymore.

gurraman 14y ago

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.

evangineer 14y ago

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.

ditoa 14y ago

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?

shellox 14y ago
I think his Thinkpad died, because of a fan error. Maybe it overheated or something like that.

moe 14y ago

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.

pyre 14y ago
He did seem to imply that his usage of Xmonad was 1 app per workspace, which isn't really 'tiling' per se.
- pimeys 14y ago
  One app per workspace is great for a 13" laptop. When having two big screens, it's not enough anymore.

lubutu 14y ago

A slight tangent, but dmenu-4.5 uses token matching, which allows you to search somewhat fuzzily: "foo rb" will match "foobarbaz". How it looks compared to Alfred and co. is a matter of one's aesthetic... Disclosure: I'm a dmenu developer.

mwyvern 14y ago
I've always wondered -- is it suckless as in suck less than something else, or as in without suck?
- mgurlitz 14y ago
  It says right on the suckless.org home page, "software that sucks less," so probably the first.
  - mwyvern 14y ago
    I've been saying that wrong in my head for a long time now. Thank you :-).
technomancy 14y ago
Thank goodness; been waiting for this forever. I actually ported dmenu to OCaml solely to add this feature: http://technomancy.us/152 http://technomancy.us/152

batista 14y ago

"Or you could, you know, just use Xmonad" comments considered harmful. (plus ignorant/simplistic: it's not like everything else related to one's OS use and needs will be the same).

bcl 14y ago

Or you could install Fedora 17 on your Mac and just run xmonad

zdw 14y ago

What I use (both are free/open source): Slate for window management: https://github.com/jigish/slate https://github.com/jigish/slate Quicksilver for launching: http://qsapp.com/ http://qsapp.com/

tilltheis 14y ago

I haven't used Xmonad myself but with all the talking why hasn't someone ported it to OS X (Cocoa) yet?

ef4 14y ago
It's not just a question of porting it to cocoa. To really do its job, it needs to take control of every other window. So you need to hack Apple's existing window manager. FWIW, you can easily compile and run it on OSX, under X. But of course it can't reach out and control any of the native applications.

mwyvern 14y ago

Comment to the author: use cmd-` while you are command tabbing if you go too far! Similarly useful, hold cmd-tab and it will stop at the end. Also, cmd-esc if you decide not to switch. I used a 15" MBP for a long time without missing a tiling window manager that much... but the problem was exaggerated when I started using a 27" imac. So I looked around and started using spectacle. Great utility. I use Quicksilver's "open application" custom triggers to get the app switching behavior, so I finally have a use for F15-F19 (on the very left side of my keyboard)! It has made a big difference for me. One problem I would like to solve is switching between multiple emacsen. I have an 8:00-5:00 job and work on my own stuff after that, and I like to keep my buffer lists separate (so I can't just use multiple frames). Therefore, I open emacs again from the terminal and I wish I could switch between them with quicksilver's shortcut. Alas, quicksilver always brings up the first one. Has anyone dealt with this?

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]