Adapting to MacBook

By Mike Lin

I’m a long time Windows and Linux user. I’ve been on XP for the last 3 years, with linux virtual machines (VMs), and before that it was Ubuntu Linux for 2 years with an XP VM, and before that XP again. Anyway, just got a MacBook, and thought for myself and others I’d list the customizations to make me comfortable, based on my background:

Turn off startup sound. Unlikely to reboot often, but when I do I know it’ll be in a library or other public place. I don’t want people to shush me.

No disk activity light, and the SSD I got is silent, so I can’t tell if it’s active. It’s useful to know when your disk is active so you can tell when you’re out of memory. MenuMeters puts disk and cpu etc indicators in the menu bar (systray).

No forward delete?! remap right option key to forward delete with keyremap4macbook.

Eject key is kind of useless. Remap that also to forward delete with same (I really like forward delete).

Caps Lock -> Command in keyboard prefs. The 2 most accessible modifier keys are now both command. This isn’t ideal. I’d rather have one be command and one be alt, but I tried that and it messes up other things.

OpenTerminalHere. It’s like Open Command Prompt here on Windows.

Change fonts in terminal and dev to Dejavu sans mono. I just like it better ok?

Tried and failed to find a way to make firefox fullscreen.

QuickSilver. It’s like command line on the desktop. Like Launchy on Windows.

I still miss pageup/pagedown and an accessible alt key. Also, I’ve lost a few of my favourite Eclipse hotkeys, and of course I need more VMs than ever, but I think with a little tenacity I’ll make it.