I went through a similar struggle when switching to a Mac about a year ago for work. I still miss the ability to drag windows around from anywhere by holding the alt key, and dragging any part of the window.
You can do the same non-focused window dragging in OSX by holding down command. Actually, you can interact with the unfocused window when holding down command, click buttons, etc.
Dragging overlapping windows is a stupid idea to begin with. I use a keyboard based window manager as much as possible (Spectacle), and with splitscreen I can hopefully almost completely stop using windows.
Overlapping windows is what makes mouse based interaction fast. Not everybody wants to use keyboard all the time. Also, often times it is useful to have more than two windows on screen at a time.
> Overlapping windows is what makes mouse based interaction fast.
How does the overlappingness make anything faster? If anything it becomes slower, because you need to move windows out of the way, or select them before you can get to the covered part.
> Not everybody wants to use keyboard all the time
In no way necessary. I don't think the WWDC splitscreen demo used keyboard shortcuts at all?
> it is useful to have more than two windows on screen at a time.
Having more than one window on the screen is also not helped by the windows overlapping. I regularly have 2-4 windows side-by-side on the same screen at once without overlapping, and multiple such screens and fullscreen windows on virtual desktops.
It's mainly focused on modifications for the OS X dock which I don't use, but it also does alt drag window movement, and alt + num pad for tiling windows. It costs a a bit of money after a trial period, but it's the most reliable replacement for alt drag I've found so far.
haha. You guys must be right. That is the exact functionality that is the most annoying for me right now! I need to get used to this new OS. I miss 3 finger swipe right. ctrl+alt+shift+ [direction] is quite a macro just to move a screen.
I personally changed that to be Super+<Arrow> to change virtual desktop, and Super+Shift+<Arrow> to move the focused window to it. Much nicer shortcut, IMO. Elementary OS[0] uses that by default, actually.
Realize that what you mean with "to get used to this new OS" is possibly "I need to get used to this desktop environment / window manager". I don't know what desktop environment you use but it is possibly Ubuntu's Unity, Gnome or KDE.
On Unix you have a lot of choice on the (graphical) interface you chose to interact with. So while to one you're currently using might be OK, there's bound to be one that's even better suited to your needs.
yep thanks. I run ParrotOS which is basically debian with some slick UI and pentesting toolsets. It is a gnome desktop enviro. I will check those links out. The keybindings did not hold on the tut I followed, no biggie. My major point is that I am a mac superuser, but when I switch windows I have to manually deselect a window (because it follows me). It is just absorbing the nuances of linux and inculcating the macros into my head.
Never found a good replacement in OSX.