OS X: I love/hate Leopard

[SamIAm]

I installed Leopard last week, and some things are great, and some things are busted. I wanted to start a thread to share successes and failures with the new OS, so we can pool resources.

THINGS I FIXED

stacks

When I saw the press, I thought "The dock holds apps. The stacks are folders on the dock. Hence docks are folders of apps." That's great, since windows and gnome and kde have had folders in their dock for a long time now.

Turns out stacks are just folders of files, and everything on the right side of that little 'road' is for files and everything on the left is for apps. Bummer.

Well, I fixed it by just making an alias of ALL my apps, and then putting those in folders, and those folders in the dock. The problem is, the dock representation of stacks is pretty ugly imo. I wanted them to have a standardized look, so I made a folder called "<space>Net" in my net folder, and "<space>Pics" in my pics folder, so they'd stay at the front of the stack.



My folders are Games, Media, Net, Pics, Tech, Tools, & Downloads.

dock icons

Note that I changed the trash & finder icon in the dock. The best Panther tutorial I found was here. However, when I wanted to replace the existing .png with my new .icns, I had to convert the icns to png, as follows:
sips -s format png <new file>.icns --out <new file>.png

The icon cache is in a funky spot in Leopard. You'll need to delete it and let OSX make a new one, so use the following to find it:
sudo find /private/var -name *iconcache*

Then restart the dock with:
killall Dock

spaces

I wasn't that excited about spaces. I never really used virtual desktops much in Unix and Linux, so didn't miss them in mac. I played around, and switching manually is about as awkward as I'd remembered. HOWEVER, if you move to apps like you normally do, whether that's by clicking on the dock or apple-tab, you'll automatically move to that space.

That means I can setup my latex compiler and viewer on their own space, including setting it in the Spaces control panel so they start there by default. The same with firefox and chat on their own space, and paintshop on IT'S own space. Now I never really pay much attention to what space I'm on; I just let the OS go where it needs to go, while my desktop doesn't stay cluttered with photoshop under chat under everything else.

[SamIAm]

THINGS I CAN'T FIX

x11

I can't get X11 working. It's a pretty big bummer. I want to use Inkscape and Gimp, and neither work. When I load Inkscape, I get an error saying "Inkscape requires X11, which is freely available from Apple's website for Panther." and two links saying "Get X11 for Panther" and "OK". I don't WANT x11 for panther. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

When I load the Gimp, it says "caching fonts" for a long time, and then loads TWO x11 apps, and then eventually says "application gimp-2.2 quit unexpectendly". No good.

Both these apps worked before installing Leopard.

firefox download stack

I've got this fancy download stack, and Safari dumps to it just fine. But I want Firefox to, too. Unfortunately, when I try changing the pointer in the firefox prefs to the download folder, I click the "choose" button and then nothing happens. The form is BLANK in the prefs, and I continue saving to the desktop every time.

I tried installing the newest firefox just in case, and no change.

ejecting/unmounting

Every once in a while, nothing will eject from my machine. I'll have mounted drives or network folders or whatever, and nothing will eject them. Not ctrl-click 'eject', not dragging to the 'eject' button on the dock. Nothin. Rebooting of course ejects them automatically, and then I'm fixed for a while. (Though not forever. I've had the error 3 or 4 times now.)

No big deal, just pretty buggy.

[kerowo]

I thought I saw something about a new X11 for Leopard on TUAW but don't remember much more than seeing it because I don't use it. I have two monitors set up and wonder how spaces would work with it. Of course I should just do it but haven't yet.

My favorite thing about Leopard is the mosaic screen saver, too bad it only works on one monitor.

[SamIAm]

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My favorite thing about Leopard is the mosaic screen saver

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Wow. I just found it, and it's pretty sily. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]

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I thought I saw something about a new X11 for Leopard

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Yeah, there's a whole new x server. I've seen plenty of tips about NOT running x11 manually, but instead of just run your app it'll load x11 on its own. Thing is, I never DID run x11 manually. I always just clicked the gimp/inkscape, and it loaded both the gimp/inscape and x11.

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I have two monitors set up and wonder how spaces would work with it. Of course I should just do it but haven't yet.

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Honestly, I find spaces to be more useful with more monitors. That way I can have all my goof-offs visible (firefox, chat, etc.) and then switch to all my work stuff (texshop, preview, etc).

Keep in mind that you can hit f8 for a clear view of spaces, and THEN f9 for mosaic to see what's on each space. The effects stack.

[ispiked]

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THINGS I CAN'T FIX

x11

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You might want to try some of the thing listed in this post about getting The GIMP working.

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firefox download stack

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They're working on this... it should be in Firefox 3 and might make it into Firefox 2.0.0.x. See Mozilla bug 384068 (but please don't comment on it -- people ARE working on it and know what to do).