Hello Everyone,

as you can see on my screenshot, i am using an intel based mac for years now, which i customized to my needs. However i have reached the limits of this machine in terms of customization options and would like to move to linux to test it out as a daily driver. I’m actually quite happy with mac from the pov that everything just works, however there are certain things that annoy me, but apple does not allow me to change them.

As a newbie in terms of desktop linux (i’ve used ubuntu roughly 12 years ago as a daily driver and am familar with headless linux), i’d like your advice.

Specifically I am looking for:

  • a minimal, fast system
  • keyboard / shortcut based - all interactions can be done from keyboard (within common sense limits)
  • all keys can be custom mapped (i have muscle memory of my custom keys for certain actions, so i’d like to keep them)
  • all can be configured from dotfiles (worse case shell scripts and ansible)
  • very low ressource consumption, snappy system with no delays.

I’d like to try NixOs due to it’s unique configuration ability, however on a headless server it was a buggy pain just weeks ago (for example user passwords just vanished/changed without any external influence, not allowing access anymore), so i’m open to alternatives.

What i am looking for in advice is:

  • a minimal, configurable (file based for git) tiling window manager
  • a top status bar like you see in the screenshot that i can freely configure
  • as much terminal emulator based as possible (i honestly mostly only need a browser and the terminal, most other apps have a TUI that i can use with the keyboard, see the above requirement)
  • terminal based package management as easy as brew (maybe Nix?)
  • custom keyboard layout (I am not a native english speaker, so i mapped all non-english characters to my option keys with the english layout as the base)
  • Option to use 2 keyboards at once (come by default when using Karabiner Elements) as i combined 2 small keyboards to one to a fake split keyboard ;)

My current stack on macos is Hammerspoon for heavy customization, Karabiner Elements, yabai, kitty (and alacritty, for ssh, as kitty is bad with ssh in my personal experience), sketchybar. firefox (customized for privacy)

Any good recommendations or dotfiles? Anything i should look out for as a MacOs User?

Thanks in advance!

  • storm_koala@beehaw.orgEnglish
    141·
    1 year ago

    Hello,

    I advise you to select a WM based on Wayland because it now reached a sufficient maturity and Xorg can safely be remembered as historical. I personally use sway which is an implementation of i3wm for wayland. You will have an experience similar to what appears in your screenshot.

    There are a lot of status bars for sway. I am using swaybar with i3status for the status_command. Don’t hesitate to check the alternatives, they are amazing.

    All the configuration of sway happens in a config file and you can setup your keyboard preference inside. You can setup multiple layouts at the same time and specify which key binding to switch between them.

    If you decide to give NixOS another try (which it deserves), the nixos config already has options to enable sway.

    For the package manager, either stick with the one integrated in the distribution you choose (apt, pacman, dnf, …) or indeed use nix on top if you like the experience and its benefits.

    And as a general advise, don’t hesitate to first try your choices in a VM installation, and take your time to check if it really suits your need.

    Have fun