On Mon, 25 Sep 2017 at 06:52 Tomasz Rola <[email protected]> wrote: > Q1. I am becoming addicted to abusing Emacs (editor, but also host to > Elisp scripting language, which I am using to write more sophisticated > versions of some crude makeshift sh scripts from the past), but I have > read somewhere that MacOS port was not very good. Any comments on this > from Emacs users (if there are any)? >
I have been using Emacs since it was still a set of TECO macros. I use a Mac. I find the Mac to be entirely adequate for running Emacs. (I compile Emacs from source, but the homebrew version of Emacs is fine.) Oh - embrace emacsclient if you haven't already. Q2. On every screenshot showing MacOS desktop, there is menubar at the > top and icondock on the bottom. I do not like this. I have 20+'' of > display and I want all of this for myself. Is it possible to get rid > of menubar and dock, hopefully permamently, without loss of > functionality? No autohiding - I have tried this with Windows, KDE and > GNOME and it always ended with my mouse pointer coming too close to > the edge, triggering "autoshow", quaking windows and fussing with my > eyes. > I run most of my apps full screen and many of them with menubar hidden. Mac auto-hiding does not move the underlying windows. I also auto-hide the dock, same answer. > Q2b. Is it possible to run alternative windows manager on MacOS - say, > Ratpoison or FVWM (preferably the latter, as I am slowly leaning to > the idea of writing my own modules for it)? > Sort of. You can't completely replace the window manager, but you run an app that manages the size and position of your windows for you. I use Moom <https://manytricks.com/moom/>. > Q3. I am moderate user of virtual desktops, right now set up in 4x4 > pattern, but there are days when I seriously consider going to 5x5 - > and right now I think heavy use starts somewhere around 8x8, maybe > 9x9. Also, after I (lamps in my brain) warm up I have about 60 windows > opened (all right, I have more, but 60 is a nice number while 50 is > too "made up"). Works very good, not problem with refreshing, no > crashes, excellent responsibility even with heavy computation (say, 3 > out of 4 cores busy full time and fourth at 40%) going on in a > background - but no swapping, as this would have killed performace, I > have enough RAM for buffers and ramdisk (yes really). I wonder how > would that be under MacOS - I mean, virtual desktops, ram disk, lots > of windows? > I currently have 9 "virtual desktops" spread across two monitors. Maybe a couple dozen distinct windows but many of those have multiple tabs, so 50-60 "windows" is about right. You didn't include virtual machines. I usually run a handful of docker containers at any one time, including a Kubernetes cluster and Debian and Ubuntu containers. I also have a couple of mosh sessions to remote Linux desktops, and my iTerm usually has half a dozen shells open at any one time (tiled, and multiple tabs) There will be things you can do in Linux you can't do in MacOS, but I find MacOS as a comfortable dev environment. When I need an *actual* linux environment I either ssh to it, or run it in a container. -- Charles
