I'm a Linux person, by nature, heart and soul. However, I do have to use a mac every once in a while. So let's make it as painless as possible shall we?
Custom Keyboard Shortcuts
I have numerous keyboard shortcuts in muscle memory. I don't want to lose those. So I want to make every shortcut I use the same on the Mac.
For general apps I can set any keystroke to perform any menu option in any application. Pretty neat.
System Preferences -> Keyboard and Mouse -> Keyboard Shortcuts
The only drawback to this is that, unlike compiz, once you set them up, there is no easy way to back them up. They don't go into one file, they go into a per application binary file. For instance, my firefox shortcuts are now in: ~/Library/Preferences/org.mozilla.firefox.plist.
For Spaces, I want the linux default way: Ctrl-Alt arrow key. Spaces doesn't have a menu bar (that I know of) so you can't use the above method. However, in the Spaces configuration dialog you can set it by holding down the Alt-Control combo while you change the option. Weird and non intuitive way to do that, but it works!
Alt-Click to move windows
Most mac applications only give you this tiny little title bar at the top to "get a handle" on a window so that you can move it. I guess Linux has made me lazy, because I think this is a real pain. In Linux I hold down Alt and click anywhere on the window and drag to move it. I am much more productive this way. I can even move a window I don't care about out of the way from the corner of my eye this way.
Here are the third party 'hacks' that should have been part of the design of a 'well designed' OS:
Free:
WindowDragon - This looks to be the best of the free versions. However, it depends on APE which doesn't work on Leopard (yet), so I haven't actually tried it.
GeekBind - This looks like it might do the job, but it's old and is PPC based. (which means it runs on Intel as well, but emulated, and not very well). Didn't work for me.
$15 or so:
Zooom - This one actually worked for me. I'm currently using the 30 day trial.
MondoMouse - Haven't tried it yet. I probably will before my Zooom trial expires though and I'm forced to buy something.
Alt-F2 to run apps
I press Alt-F2 a lot. In Linux, this brings up a window to run a shell command. I'm doing this constantly because it's actually faster than finding the app I want in the menu bar.
On Mac, I can do two things:
- Bind Alt-F2 to spotlight. This is a pretty good solution actually, as typing an application name there will find it and you can arrow down and press enter to run it.
Use Visor which is one of those Quake style terminals that is always around but hides at the top of the screen when not in use. On Leopard there is a known bug that makes terminal crash when you exit the shell. Ctrl-D is really stuck in my muscle memory.