nixos-configs VS Quicksilver

Recently switched to Hyprland (a Wayland tiling window manager) on NixOS. It's beautiful! As a former i3 user, I'm very happy with it. It looks really nice out of the box (especially compared to i3's default appearance) and has a lot of very interesting features.

I especially enjoy Hyprland's implementation of special workspaces, which allows me to hide specific application windows and summon them on-demand with a keybinding.

My Hyprland config is here for anyone interested: https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixos-configs/blob/master/roles...

This is what I use for my home lab running NixOS:

https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixos-configs/blob/d5b0ffbcc4cb...

This script is so nice because it's so simple: it follows the journalctl output of sshd.service and then sends a push notification to me through Gotify's CLI (I just need to remember to setup gotify when I setup my server). The best part is that it's so easy to modify this script for ANY systemd service that is using journalctl.

I alert on all successful and failed attempts, because in my home lab, I should be the only one logging in -- so I don't really get notifications unless I'm working on something. It's helped me a few times when I've accidentally left port 22 exposed to the world on some VPS' -- reminding me to add firewall rules to reduce access.

I use NixOS+GNOME+pop-shell for tiling windows on Linux, and I love it!

I am quite frequently on MacOS, and I use Yabai[0] and skhd[1], managed with Nix-Darwin for tiling windows and custom keyboard shortcuts. With how I make my Linux and MacOS builds look and feel identical it's pretty easy for me to forget when I'm on one vs the other.

For anyone curious, here's my repository for deploying my configs[3]. It's awesome to have one source of truth for managing NixOS servers and workstations, MacOS workstations, and other Linux workstations with Nix installed.

[0] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

[1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

[2] http://daiderd.com/nix-darwin/

[3] https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixos-configs

I really like NixOS (I just barely distro-hopped away from NixOS back to Arch). One reason I switched away is because similar to my i3 setup I would find myself tweaking my actual desktop/system more than getting work done. Mostly because I haven't sat down for a few hours to become more familiar with Nix's declarative language -- but I kind of don't Nix's language and think it is far from intuitive for me.

For reference, here's my nixpkgs repo (galaxy-chromebook is my most recent config): https://github.com/heywoodlh/nixpkgs

Pretty sure it was Nicholas Jitkoff[1] and his team. He had done Quicksilver[2] a few years back which popularized this single input interface for osx desktop.

[1] https://nicholas.jitkoff.com/

[2] https://qsapp.com/

There are these open source alternatives, I haven’t checked their privacy policies or their code Maybe try and report back? https://www.cerebroapp.com https://qsapp.com https://ueli.app https://github.com/ParthJadhav/Verve

I've used Quicksilver for clipboard history historically. There is a currently a bug that I've been meaning to delve into: https://github.com/quicksilver/Quicksilver/issues/2913 but still generally usable. Particularly handy combined with adding simple AppleScript or JXA actions to manipulate the content (I have several simple ones for example to run a regex, to clean extraneous content around a number, a phone number, strip whitespace, indent 4 spaces for pasting into a markdown codeblock on SO, etc etc).

The Shelf plug-in also very handy along similar lines.

Should add Quicksilver. It's the first app I install on my Macs

Spotlight-esque apps for enhanced keyboard driven productivity (pick one): Raycast Alfred Quicksilver

Quicksilver

For a browsable clipboard history on macOS, I recommend LaunchBar (https://www.obdev.at/products/launchbar/; docs at https://www.obdev.at/resources/launchbar/help/ClipboardHisto...). I used to use the Clipboard Plugin of the free and open source app Quicksilver (https://qsapp.com/), which worked fine but was slightly less streamlined. Some people prefer Alfred (https://www.alfredapp.com/help/features/clipboard/).

This is great. Reminds me of QuickSilver[1]. I'm evaluating HomeRow[2] for a VIM driving the Mac OS, will try this as well.

I love how:

a. accessibility features are making the OS more accessible for everyone through automation

b. good the accessibility implementation is on the Mac that most applications are inherently compatible with solutions like this.

[1]: https://qsapp.com/

[2]: https://www.homerow.app/

Good to see something like this, don't forget there is already an open source alternative (pre-existing) for Alfred and Raycast. It's called Quicksilver - https://qsapp.com

Kupfer (gnome) - https://kupferlauncher.github.io

Quicksilver (macos): https://qsapp.com/

I still find myself using these and enjoy the 'wei wu wei' flow of them: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=d4LkTstvUL4 (skip to 5 or 11 minutes in)