Comment by gnaffle | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gnaffle | Hacker News Reader

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I used Linux exclusively for many years but switched to OSX for work some years ago. I still feel more productive in Linux, but it's because of a few tricks that I so far haven't found a good replacement for in OSX:

- Focus follows mouse without auto-raise - Instant switching between virtual desktops (not possible to disable the animation in OSX last time I checked) - Instantly open a new terminal window with intelligent window placement in the currently active virtual desktop.

Since these turned out to be a hassle in OSX, I've just gradually stopped using them, and resorder to a single desktop paradigm with more mouse clicking for navigation. All in all I feel like I'm working slower in OSX than in Linux.

However, the major problem with Linux is the looks and a host of small nice details that OSX just gets right. Instant search in Spotlight including Mail, I've grown accustomed to the Mail app (Thunderbird search is ridiculous compared to Mail.app, for instance), Time Machine, and a few other apps like 1Password.

If I could get a virtualization scheme where I could have one desktop with OSX and 3-4 desktops of Linux, that would be ideal. But I don't think that's possible with Parallels or VMware, and I'm not sure how well OSX would run virtualized under Linux.

The lack of good email clients on Linux is a real shame. I'd love to have something like Sparrow or Mailbox. 1password is also a sad thing to be missing.

As for the others, we have locate(1) for searching and rdiff-backup instead of Time Machine.

As for having desktops like that, if you mean monitors, then there's a great solution: Synergy. Hook up monitors to both computers and use Synergy to connect them.

I meant virtual desktops, mostly because I like to be able to take my laptop anywhere. I actually used Synergy at one point for my desktop setup (and also because the OSX mouse acceleration profile was broken for me for quite some time).

A cool hardware project might be to take a micro Linux ARM board with LVDS display output, mount it inside the CD bay in my laptop and make an internal LVDS switch to quickly switch between OSX and the Linux board. That would be pretty much ideal. :)

I wonder if it'd be possible to provide a virtual display to a small ARM board and embed it into a window, so that you'd have the virtualization effects (two OSes on one machine) without the speed loss

I think it's possible do to so, I remember seeing this ARM USB/HDMI board, which apparently can mirror the screen over USB: http://www.fxitech.com/technology/any-screen-ip/

Not sure how well it works, though.

I never used 1password (I don't own any Apple hardware), but if you need a password manager that works on Linux as well as Windows, KeePass (using Mono) is pretty good.

I'm using it on my laptop and desktop and use Dropbox to synchronize.

> If I could get a virtualization scheme where I could have one desktop with OSX and 3-4 desktops of Linux, that would be ideal. But I don't think that's possible with Parallels or VMware

Isn't that the main feature of VMWare Fusion? (Although it seems more targeted at integrating Windows into OS X, it looks like it supports Linux as well)

Yes, but I don't know of a way to give one Linux instance several desktops, and enable super fast and seamless switching between them.

GNOME 3 has a good search. Unity has a decent search too.

Can it also show inline previews of PDF files and search emails?

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