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I picked up a 15“ MacBook Pro (Mid 2015; 2.2Ghz Quad-Core Intel Core i7; 16GB 1600Mhz DDR3; Intel Iris Pro 1536MB; 250GB HD) from work pretty cheap (at £170). OSX is based on BSD and so many features of the UNIX ecosystem are available out of the box, but not everything.
Brew
Not all standard or desired packages are available, the solution to this is to use Brew a package manager for OSX. Installation is simple.
- snippet.bash
/bin/bash -c "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/HEAD/install.sh)"
Package installation is straight-forward and most common packages have the same name.
- snippet.bash
brew install [package]
Packages
The following packages have been installed…
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brew install cmake colordiff darktable gcc htop gimp kitty libreoffice pass python3 virtualenvwrapper pygmentize R rstudio syncthing vlc
Upgrade
- snippet.bash
brew update && brew upgrade
Updates
After updating I found that git no longer worked…
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xcrun: error: invalid active developer path (/Library/Developer/CommandLineTools)
The solution was to reinstall the Command Line Developer Tools
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xcode-select --install
Services
brew can be used to start and manage services.
Syncthing
- snippet.bash
brew services start syncthing
Desktop
Keyboard
Despite selecting a UK Keyboard during re-installation of OSX the keyboard is not the same as every other UK keyboard in the world.
| Key Sequence | Function |
Cmd + [x|c|v] | Cut/Copy/Paste |
Cmd + Space | Search everything from anywhere |
Cmd + Delete | Delete line |
Ctrl + Delete | Delete preceding word |
fn + Delete | Delete next word |
fn + < | Home |
fn + > | End |
Workspaces
The desktop by default only has one workspace, I'm used to using four. To add them you do so via Mission Control (three-finger swipe-up) then select to add a workspace. Once created they persist between logins and you can assign a particular programme/application to a desktop by long-pressing on its icon in the task bar and selecting to Assign To.
To move windows between worktops enter Mission Control and then drag a window to a desktop. You can switch between worktops using Ctrl + Tab.
Emacs
I like running Emacs as a daemon and then connecting a client to it. This is described here, although because Emacs client is installed under /usr/local/bin/emacsclient I had to tweak my aliases to recognise the $HOSTNAME and set the alias appropriately if I was logged in under OSX.
