[CentOS] Experiences with CentOS & MacBook Pro?

[Sébastien Arnaud]

Hi Benjamin,

I agree with you. Mac OS X is far from perfect and has its  
annoyances. Nevertheless it's desktop capabilities have sold me on  
it, even though I administer linux servers & write apps for them on a  
daily basis. I find OS X much more productive than any Linux distro,  
but that is my personal preference and work habit that makes it so.

A couple of pointers though for you, that might help reduce your  
frustration with OS X

1) You can use Virtue (http://virtuedesktops.info/), it works well  
and pretty neat.

2) You can Apple+Tab between applications, then Apple+` to go cycle  
through the window of one app. Let's not forget Expose as well if you  
have a multi button mouse (I personally have a MX1000 and each button  
is programmed to fire a different Expose action - really convenient)

3) The dock can be fully disabled if you hate it so much and it is  
not enough to hide it. Look on macosxhints.com

4) No solution here - It is true it requires a little bit of mind  
games here to find the right window, first click the app, then cycle  
through the windows using the keyboard or explode them via Expose. I  
use NX to connect to my Linux Desktop and I have to get re-accustomed  
to the task-bar myself each time, while it is more direct to your  
app, it is not workable when you have 10 apps open with several  
window in each where you are back hunting for your window.

If you are luck enough to own a MacBookPro, then buy Parallels and  
run Windows & Linux as a guest virtual machine, the performances are  
very good and you will have the best of each world. If you use Virtue  
like I suggest in 1), you can have each OS running full screen in a  
virtual desktop which makes it look so transparent and pleasing...

Anyway, hope those hints help!

Cheers!

Sébastien




On Oct 25, 2006, at 7:32 PM, Benjamin Smith wrote:

>> Just out of curiousity, why replace OSX with Centos?
>>
>> Mike
>
> 'Cause it's just better. Among other things, MacOS has the  
> following problems
> that DRIVE ME UP THE WALL:
>
> 1) Multiple Desktops, or, at least, the lack thereof. Yeah, Leopord  
> will come
> with 'spaces', but if it isn't released, it isn't released.
>
> 2) Application windows don't alt-tab between them. So, if you have  
> two or
> three terminal windows open, you have to use the mouse to switch.  
> (AGUHG!)
>
> 3) The dock is easy to use, but just irritating to me. It succeeds  
> in being
> pretty and consuming useful desktop space without providing much  
> useful
> information at all. It's like a pretty girl with rocks in her head  
> - nice to
> look at at first, but no fun to live with!
>
> 4) No task bar. (Hey, it's easy to jump straight to whatever you  
> want by
> hitting the button, without having to "hunt" for it based on  
> whether or not
> you minimized it)
>
> OTOH, I have to support Mac OSX with our client-side software - so  
> being able
> to run Linux, Windows, and OSX on a single machine without alot of  
> pain would
> be very, very nice. (but I'm starting to get my reservations)
>
> -Ben
>
> -- 
> "The best way to predict the future is to invent it."
> - XEROX PARC slogan, circa 1978
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