macOS Gen

Symlinks

e.g. to make the following symlink in /usr/bin

subl3 -> /Applications/Sublime Text 3.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl

The command to make the symlinks:

sudo ln -s '/Applications/Sublime Text 3.app/Contents/SharedSupport/bin/subl' /usr/local/bin/subl3

USB drives & dotfiles

Speed of copying to USB drives

Seems like the problem is related to Spotlight indexing all drives.
So to turn that off, in System Preferences > Spotlight > Privacy add the /Volumes/ folder so that any external drive is not indexed.
Also added a dotfile in USB drive called .metadata_never_index

Ref: SuperUser post

Trash Can on USB drives

"Actually touching the .Trashes file will be the best way to solve your main problem since .Trashes is now a file instead of a folder. This means that Apple can't relocate the files to the .Trashes folder when you delete them and your drive is no longer full."

Ref: Apple.StackExchange post

dotfiles on USB drives

App	Link
TinkerTool	http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html
CleanEject	http://www.javawa.nl/cleaneject_en.html
Hidden Cleaner	https://www.macupdate.com/app/mac/27416/hidden-cleaner

General Settings (Finder, etc)

Screenshots

Default location == desktop

To change the default location, fire up the terminal and write:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location /path/

For example, if I want to have the screenshots appear in my Pictures folder, I would use:

defaults write com.apple.screencapture location ~/Pictures/

To have the changes take effect, you then must type:

killall SystemUIServer

Set Default Locale

SET LOCALE:

add the following to .bash_profile

export LC_ALL=en_US.UTF-8  
export LANG=en_US.UTF-8