Why Linux?

Computer professionals love to discuss tools. And rightfully so, tools are neat and make our lives easier. But at the end of the day, functionality is the most important quality of a tool. Developers, security professionals, data scientists, hobbyists, and many more use Linux because they want a programmatic workflow that is transparent. They want the command line, the scripting options, and the development environment, and for the longest time the most popular operating system has made that inconvenient (read: impossible). Other than for video games, I haven’t used Windows as a person OS in forever. Coming from a primarily Linux background, let me tell you about some tools that have made using MacOS feel like home.

iTerm2

Non-negotiable. The MacOS terminal itself hasn’t been very usable since it switched off Bash (opinion). I like zsh, but it feels awful and clunky in the default terminal. iTerm2 + Powerline is a direct upgrade in every way.

Alfred 5

I could, and probably will, write an entire blog post on Alfred. If you only take one thing from this, use Alfred. I’m not a Powerpack (aka Alfred+ subscriber), and they haven’t paid me anything. They have, however, saved me a lot of time and provided me the base features of a better Spotlight search for free.

Vimium / Vimari

Vim hotkeys for web browsing. Very intuitive with more robust features than I expected, especially with tab behavior and search features.

Rectangle

Essential if you’re going to stick to the stock Monterey window system. Hotkeys can be kinda complex but you’re really going to want something for quick window management. Cannot understate how important this is.

Yabai

If you’re looking to go off the beaten path for a lot more customizability with a window manager, this is your only real direction on MacOS.

skhd

Hotkey daemon on MacOS, same developer as Yabai, and a great pairing to it. Simple but very usable.

Taskbook

Really handy command line interface task tracker. I also use Trello, but for simpler tasks and code tasks, taskbook suits my needs better.

CopyClip

Clipboard management made plain and simple.

There

Timezone tracker. A more powerful clock, and very helpful if you work with colleges on different timezones.

SpotMenu

Ever have a good rhythm going while you code and lose it all because you tabbed into Spotify to change the song? Maybe you don’t quite have my attention deficiet issue, but either way this little program is a massive help. Plus I like managing things quickly from the menu bar.

Dotfiles

Okay, I’ll update them at some point. The current problem is that I work on a lot of different devices and don’t really have a standard build yet.