Getting started
Out of the box nothing was too painful. Sure, the keys are in the wrong place but that is something I'll get used to eventually. I was shown how to put the mouse scroll the correct way up so that helped with moving around (it's in System Preferences -> Trackpad) and since to start with life was all about Chrome and simple text editing it didn't hurt too much. Except for the loss of function keys and the missing delete key (fn+backspace). Sigh. Still, the hardware is genuinely lovely and I'm very impressed with the battery life. As I type this I've been working all day from the battery and I'm still seeing 41% charge. Now; my Linux laptop has seen some serious miles but I don't remember it ever doing this well. Plus it's really nice having the operating system work 100% including hibernating, sleeping and all the other bits and pieces. That has been getting much better on Linux over the years but if I'm honest it's just nowhere near as good as I'm seeing here.
First shot at some real work
So then I had to start installing tools and getting things set up for actual web development. First up, Chrome. Gone are the days of hitting F12 to bring in the developer tools or a two button shortcut to view page source. Now I have to some weird contortion exercise for the tools and I have to include the command key to view source. Maybe it gets lonely and sad if it isn't pressed often enough? Anyway, my brain will remap this eventually so it's not the end of the world.
Bring forth the command line
At the suggestion of literally everyone I immediately abandoned the default terminal in favour of installing iTerm2. That involved installing a package manager and a plugin for the package manager. This is weird territory for someone who is used to apt being an integral part of the operating system, but I was still impressed by the screen and battery life so I rode that happy wave a bit longer. First I needed some other odds and ends and eventually a friendly Mac user at work gave me some commands and I typed them in and Things Started Working (because when did just typing in commands blindly ever hurt?). I'm impressed with his wizardly powers, but I'm well aware that one day I'll need to do this again and I may be in serious trouble.
Command history suggests "we" did something like:
Well, if my memory has failed me it's a problem for future me. In the meantime I have a package manager and now an exciting terminal which is all the wrong colours, but that's hardly the Mac's fault. A few tweaks and I'll be up and ... wait, why is the window split in half?
What do the buttons do?
The terminal is where the keyboard shortcuts really started to hurt. A combination of some of the shortcuts being different, an entirely new modifier key to contend with and my brain attempting to use CMD instead of CTRL except now apparently not all the time produced many, many frustrating mistypes and resulted in a couple of hours rebinding keys. It's now better - not as good as the default terminal in Ubuntu, but very usable and at least iTerm2 lets me save my profile for future use so I don't have to go through that again.
I also discovered that OSX uses slightly different environment files to Ubuntu so I had to source my bashrc file from bash_profile to get that read properly. Apparently age-old Mac users keep build scripts so a new machine is just configured for them while they make tea.
At least git works, right?
Yup - no problems here. Well, until I attempted tab completion at which point I was told that I actually needed to install something to make it work, which in turn needed me to reinstall git via homebrew.
Sigh.
- brew install git
- brew install bash-completion
- git config --global push.default simple
That last is, of course, not a Mac specific requirement and shouldn't be needed since git 2.0 but I don't trust default behaviour since Code Vanished back in my last place of work and mild panic ensued. If you don't know what it does you should probably be doing it.
Installing SublimeText 3
I had already realised I wasn't going to be able to directly copy my old Sublime config to this machine as I had a whole new button to work around. Still, I assumed installation would be straightforward then I could spend some time remapping keys until I was more or less happy. I also wanted to be able to use the subl command on the command line to open files like in the old days, but this was proving difficult so I had to call in help (from a different helpful Mac user as I was already feeling like a moron at this stage). The look of horror he gave me when he saw how I was running Sublime told me I had done something wrong. Again.
It turns out that running a downloaded dmg file runs from a mounted volume. I needed to drag my running application to the Applications option in the file browser and then the Mac did some more exciting magic things and everything was fine. Right, not going to forget that one in a hurry.
Where are my windows?
One of the other things I really miss from Ubuntu-land is the way it handles multiple desktops. Maximising a window in OSX puts it into a full screen mode which moves it to its own desktop and makes it difficult to move around if you're used to ALT CMD+Tabbing around. There is a way around this - it turns out that if you hold ALT and click the maximise button you get the old "make big" behaviour and ALT+Green toggles back again.
If you want a keyboard shortcut (and you do) you need to install Spectacle (brew cask install spectacle) then you can maximise (not fullscreen) with CMD+ALT+f. To go back to normal size you can use CMD+ALT+z (thanks to yet another friendly Mac user for that one).
Fortunately, the CMD+` shortcut to move between windows of the same type still works, although harder to use with the § ` key moving to pastures new.
Is it working now?
I think so - or at least it nearly. RVM installation didn't bring up any nasty surprises and seems to be working perfectly. On the other hand, Finder is extremely odd. If, like me, you're used to moving around files with the arrow keys then hitting enter to open them, you might be surprised to discover that enter in fact lets you rename the selected file. If, like me, you then go hunting for the alternate shortcut you may struggle to find it unless (unlike me) you think to try CMD+Down which for some reason will do what you want. I had to ask. Now you don't have to.
These are the reports of my adventures so far. I may do a follow-up when I have to do battle with virtualisation if it proves tricksy (which is likely because, to be fair, it's hardly trivial on any platform) or if anything else thrilling comes up. After quite a few hours playing with this system I'm in a position where it is doing a fair impression of vanilla Linux. Albeit with the keys in the wrong places.
1 comment:
One of the things that's kept me on a Mac this long is how comfortable the placement of the ⌘ key is--⌘-Tab feels the sme as most Opt/Alt placements, but I don't have to contort to hit the Ctrl key or use the other hand. Leaves my right hand free for the mouse.
And if you want an install script: https://github.com/flyinggrizzly/ToolShed
Post a Comment