When I got my iBook, I used Mac OSX for a while. There were some things that annoyed me, and I managed to fix most of them. I wrote my tips and tricks up here, however to keep with the theme, here they all are.
Setting the default Aspell dictionary to British English
Put this: “lang en_GB” in ~/.aspell.conf
Getting MPlayer to play rmvb files
Install the closed source RealPlayer codecs from http://www.mplayerhq.hu/MPlayer/releases/codecs/rp9codecs-macosx-20041107.pkg.zip. Open a terminal and execute: “sudo ln -s /usr/local/lib/codecs /usr/local/lib/mplayer”. You will have to put in your password. This is necessary because the RealPlayer codec installer, installs it in the incorrect place. A bug has been filed. You can open this in MPlayer. The default application to open .rmvb files is with Microsoft Excel, scroll down to the end of this page to find out how to change this. I don’t think these codec are very efficent. If the video is choppy and sluggish, try running mplayer from the command line with the “-framedrop” argument, ie “mplayer -framedrop film.rmvb”
Case insensitive completion in bash
The OSX filesystem is case insensitive (unlike most unices). However the bash shell’s filename completion is case sensitive. Put this in your ~/.inputrc and restart terminal: “set completion-ignore-case on”.
Source
Close Terminal Window on logout
When you logout of a terminal with Control-D, by default the window will not close, one must manually close it with Command-W. To make the window close automatically on logout, open Window Settings under the Terminal menu bar. Select ‘Close only if the shell exited cleanly’ under ‘When the shell exists:’. Press the ‘Use Settings as default’. Source
A (semi-)proper UK keyboard layout
Apple’s idea of a UK (and hence Irish) keyboard layout is wrong. @ and ” are swapped place ~ and ` are swapped. Download this uk keyboard mapping, unstuff it (Tiger users need to download StuffIt). and put it in /Library/Keyboard Layouts/ (you might need to do this in a terminal and sudo it). Then restart your mac (I know, I know). Change the keyboard layout to British - Windows in System Preferences -> International -> Input Menu. I found that this broke the forward delete hack for terminal. You may need to do that hack again. This is not a proper UK keyboard layout, though. \ is still in the wrong place. I’m still not sure about that. Source
Disabling back/forward two finger scrolling in Firefox
On recent iBooks, by moving two fingers on the trackpad, one can scroll up, down left and right in a window. In firefox ’scrolling right’ moves forward, left moves back in the history. To disable the forward/back (but keep the up/down), go to about:config, set mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.action to 1, set mousewheel.withnokey.sysnumlines to false, play around with the mousewheel.horizscroll.withnokey.numlines and mousewheel.withnokey.numlines values until you’re satisfied with the scrolling speed, I have mine set to 3. Source
Installing and using Java 1.5
OSX 10.4.2 comes with Java 1.4.2 by default. Download and install Java 1.5 from Apple here. This includes java prferences under /Applications/Utilities/Java/J2SE 5.0, which can be used to change the default java cirtual machine, not the default compiler. To change the default compiler, open a terminal and become root with ’sudo su root’. Enter your password. Then ‘cd /System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/’, ‘rm CurrentJDK’, ‘ln -s 1.5.0 CurrentJDK’, ‘exit’. Your java compiler will now be version 1.5.0. To allow eclipse to use the 1.5 java compiler, enter preferences with Cmd-, then select java -> compiler, select 5.0 as the compiler compliance level. At the bottom of the window text warning you that you need java 5 install. Click on Configure there, you’ll get a window about install jres. Click Add. Type is Mac OSX VM. JRE name can be anything, I recommend ‘Java 1.5′, JRE home directory must be ‘/System/Library/Frameworks/JavaVM.framework/Versions/1.5.0/Home’ Then click ok. Click the checkbox beside the new java 1.5 and deselect the JVM 1.4.2 (MacOSX X Defaut). Source
Changing the hostname
Edit the file /etc/hostconfig. Change the line HOSTNAME=$HOSTNAME. Note: You must put the new hostname in /etc/hosts eg “127.0.0.1 $HOSTNAME” or jdb (the java debugger) will not work. Source
Favicons in bookmark toolbar in defualt Firefox Theme
Add the following to chrome/userChrome.css:
.bookmark-item > .toolbarbutton-icon {
display: block !important;
} Source
Making the forward delete key (’delete’) work in Terminal
Open Terminal’s Terminal menu, pick Window Settings, and then choose “Keyboard” in the pop-up menu. Double-click on the ‘del (forward delete)’ key, and in the sheet that pops open, activate the input box just below “Action.” Type Control-Option-D, and you should see ‘\004′ in the box. Click OK, close the Terminal Inpsector window. Source