Customizing the Mac to behave like Xmonad

I see you found SizeUp. That's also my application of choice. But it doesn't look like you did a lot of research into the available choices, or at least didn't bother listing them. Here's but a handful, for others who are interested:<p>ShiftIt: <a href="https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt</a><p>TileWindows: <a href="http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.carsten-mielke.com/tilewindows.html</a><p>Mercury Mover: <a href="http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/" rel="nofollow">http://www.heliumfoot.com/mercurymover/</a><p>... Or if you like mouse control of window placement:<p>MondoMouse: <a href="http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse" rel="nofollow">http://www.atomicbird.com/mondomouse</a><p>Zooom/2: <a href="http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html" rel="nofollow">http://coderage-software.com/zooom/index_green/index.html</a><p>Cinch: <a href="http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/" rel="nofollow">http://www.irradiatedsoftware.com/cinch/</a><p>... Or if you like a bit of both keyboard and mouse:<p>Optimal Layout: <a href="http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/" rel="nofollow">http://most-advantageous.com/optimal-layout/</a><p>Arrange: <a href="http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.trifle.pl/arrange.html</a><p>Divvy: <a href="http://mizage.com/divvy/" rel="nofollow">http://mizage.com/divvy/</a><p>BetterTouchTool and BetterSnapTool: <a href="http://blog.boastr.net/" rel="nofollow">http://blog.boastr.net/</a><p>Flexiglass: <a href="http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass" rel="nofollow">http://www.nulana.com/flexiglass</a><p>Moom: <a href="http://manytricks.com/moom/" rel="nofollow">http://manytricks.com/moom/</a><p>And throwing this one in to just show that it can get exotic:<p><a href="http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/" rel="nofollow">http://infinite-labs.net/afloat/</a><p>.... I could go on. OS X does not lack for people who disagree with Apple's idea of window management. There's lots of tools out there, if you just look for them :)

I use Arch + Xmonad at work and I simply love it as the OP does. Sometimes I need to work from home and I don't want to keep two laptops here, so I need to use my old 2008 unibody Macbook.<p>Working in OSX with Vim and console is painful after the Linux experience. Installing lots of utilities might help, but I chose to install Ubuntu with Xmonad and after couple of hours I had my favorite environment ready for productive work.<p>I know that the support for newer Apple technologies is not so good in Linux, so when this old laptop finally dies I need to buy a new one from some other manufacturer.

I haven't used XMonad but I've been a heavy ion3 user for many years.<p>Last I checked none of the available bolt-ons (including Sizeup which the author proposes) would come anywhere near a true tiling WM.<p>The only candidate that would even try to <i>automatically</i> tile windows was TylerWM - but that was buggy as hell. All the others only act on keyboard-shortcuts, which largely defeats the purpose.<p>I'd happily pay $200+ for ion3 as a native OSX WM. The OSX window manager is just absurdly terrible.

A slight tangent, but dmenu-4.5 uses token matching, which allows you to search somewhat fuzzily: "foo rb" will match "foobarbaz". How it looks compared to Alfred and co. is a matter of one's aesthetic...<p>Disclosure: I'm a dmenu developer.

Tyler WM (<a href="http://www.tylerwm.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.tylerwm.com/</a>) shows a lot of promise. It's a pretty good 1.0 but there are some edge cases that still prevent me from using it full time.

What I use (both are free/open source):<p>Slate for window management: <a href="https://github.com/jigish/slate" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/jigish/slate</a><p>Quicksilver for launching: <a href="http://qsapp.com/" rel="nofollow">http://qsapp.com/</a>

It depends on what mouse or touchpad you have, but I find that I don't even use Command-Tab anymore. It lacks the precision of getting to exactly the right window. Launching Mission Control via touch allows me to switch to the window I need much faster.<p>I hear you on the maximizing thing; I ended up finding a program called Shift (<a href="http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac" rel="nofollow">http://shift-it.en.softonic.com/mac</a>) works very well to maximize, snap a window to just the left or right half of the screen, etc. Hope that helps!

why not just run arch on your mac laptop?

Comment to the author: use cmd-` while you are command tabbing if you go too far! Similarly useful, hold cmd-tab and it will stop at the end. Also, cmd-esc if you decide not to switch.<p>I used a 15" MBP for a long time without missing a tiling window manager that much... but the problem was exaggerated when I started using a 27" imac. So I looked around and started using spectacle. Great utility. I use Quicksilver's "open application" custom triggers to get the app switching behavior, so I finally have a use for F15-F19 (on the very left side of my keyboard)! It has made a big difference for me.<p>One problem I would like to solve is switching between multiple emacsen. I have an 8:00-5:00 job and work on my own stuff after that, and I like to keep my buffer lists separate (so I can't just use multiple frames). Therefore, I open emacs again from the terminal and I wish I could switch between them with quicksilver's shortcut. Alas, quicksilver always brings up the first one. Has anyone dealt with this?

You bought a new computer because of a fan error?! You could have got a new fan with next day delivery (so Tuesday in your case) for a hell of a lot less than a new computer and all the time it took you to get OS X setup how you want.<p>Or do you earn such crazy amounts of money that you made enough money on that Monday to cover the cost of the new Mac and your time configuring it?

Is there anything like xmonad for Windows?<p>Edit: found [some options on wikipedia][1], but maybe you have any other sugestions.<p>[1]: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#3rd_party_addons" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#3rd_party...</a>

I'm in a similar situation (hooked on Xmonad, but cannot run Linux). I've tried various solutions over the years, but the only one I've found acceptable so far is a full-screen iTerm2 running tmux.<p>I use `bind t split-window \; select-layout main-vertical` to emulate Xmonads default layout behaviour.<p>It works because I spend most of my time in the terminal anyway. I miss having the browser - and the video player when doing repetitive or otherwise boring tasks! - in a pane, but keeping other apps out of the tile-management is fine as I'm, more often than not, switching context anyway.

Spark: <a href="http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php" rel="nofollow">http://www.shadowlab.org/Software/spark.php</a><p>You can create shortcuts for anything.<p>I have Alt+S for Safari, Cmd+~ for Terminal, Alt+M for TextMate, etc.

Having made a similar transition a few years ago from a mouseless linux desktop using ruby-wmii on a thinkpad to osx on a macbook, I find ShiftIt works for tiling windows using the keyboard.

Or you could install Fedora 17 on your Mac and just run xmonad

I haven't used Xmonad myself but with all the talking why hasn't someone ported it to OS X (Cocoa) yet?

"Or you could, you know, just use Xmonad" comments considered harmful.<p>(plus ignorant/simplistic: it's not like everything else related to one's OS use and needs will be the same).

TL;DR use SizeUp.