20 ms·

Rethinking Window Management

• flanked-evergl 3y ago
  Seeing how well Gnome has rethought window management in the past, I will take a hard pass. All the thought is not helping.
• markstos 3y ago
  I use Sway, a tiling window manager, so the direction towards tiling seems sensible to me. If Gnome implements this well enough, I might consider switching back it from Sway. We'll see. I'm pretty pleased with Sway, though.
• abwtr 3y ago
  If this can be driven entirely from the keyboard I might enjoy this a lot!
• goosedragons 3y ago
  Maximizing windows in their own workspace is annoying and one of the worst parts of macOS window management. I really hope they don't bother with that. Just because I want a maximized window doesn't mean I want it in it's own workspace. It just makes dealing with windows harder because you now have to move to some other workspace to grab a window you want to reference first.
  • MobiusHorizons 3y ago
    +1. This behavior is really confusing if you expect a particular window (typically a browser) to be on a particular workspace (I have keyboard shortcuts for the first 4 workspaces) and then it ends up off the end of the list because you happen to have been watching some content maximized.
  • stouset 3y ago
    If you option-click the green button or double-click the window handle, it expands a window to fill the screen without making it full-screen on its own space.
    • IshKebab 3y ago
      It's better than full screen, but it's not real maximised. In particular if you drag the right edge of the screen it will resize the window rather than moving the scrollbar. Honestly Windows has basically nailed window management (earning its name I guess). Mac is much worse and Gnome is a little worse.
  • Steltek 3y ago
    macOS manages _apps_ not _windows_. macOS (or iOS) is the last place to look for insights into window management because it's not even speaking the same language. GNOME made this mistake a long time ago, trying to cargo cult (orig. definition) design their window management tools.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • rollcat 3y ago
      macOS manages both apps and windows. A lot of the things it does do make sense if you follow the original paradigm from the ground up. Unfortunately, most platforms copying ideas from macOS only do so from the surface, and the effect usually ends up half-assed. Want a good idea to copy? Ctrl-C in the terminal should copy text when something is selected, and send interrupt otherwise. In the macOS Terminal, you can rebind Copy from Cmd-C to Ctrl-C; when you do so, this is what happens. I will pledge my unending loyalty to the first terminal emulator on X11/Wayland that can implement this - I've tried over a dozen and none of them do.
  • ecliptik 3y ago
    I ended up using Moom [1] to work around some of the oddities of macOS window management. It's relatively low-feature, mostly for window arrangements and sizing. I use it on a vertical monitor to split window placement horizontally, since macOS can only natively do vertical splits. It has other features too (like saving layouts and keyboard shortcuts), but I don't use them that much. 1. https://manytricks.com/moom/ https://manytricks.com/moom/
  • asoneth 3y ago
    Personally I find switching between workspaces annoying, but not particularly more or less annoying than switching between maximized windows on Windows. So I am curious what you specifically find annoying about treating maximized windows as workspaces. (Also, note that you can hold the Option key and click on the green plus in the upper-left corner you will get the standard Windows maximize behavior, which macOS calls "Zoom". Even better, you can go to System Settings > Desktop & Dock > Double click a window's title bar to... and select "Zoom" to make this action even easier.)
    • pxc 3y ago
      > you will get the standard Windows maximize behavior, which macOS calls "Zoom". No, no you won't. Because 'zoom' is not equivalent to maximization. It means something like 'make this window as big as the current contents it has open for viewing in each dimension, unless that's too big (and then just maximize it in that direction)'. Additionally it's just window resizing, not a window state. Which means that when you move the window again, it stays huge— so part of it must be offscreen— instead of snapping back to a reasonable unmaximized size. > So I am curious what you specifically find annoying about treating maximized windows as workspaces. I'm not GP, but - there's a big, stupid, slow animation that must play every time you switch between workspaces - you cannot float windows from other applications over a fullscreen window It adds unnecessary delays and distractions any time you want to use a different application on that screen, and it doesn't let you multitask on that screen.
      • asoneth 3y ago
        > 'zoom' is not equivalent to maximization Interesting, I tried a few windows that I don't normally "zoom" and you are right. I suppose prior to this I only ever attempted to perform this action on browser/document/messaging/media windows that are able to be fully maximized. > there's a big, stupid, slow animation that must play every time you switch between workspaces I wondered how I never noticed this, and it looks like I had Accessibility > Display > Reduce Motion enabled. > you cannot float windows from other applications over a fullscreen window Agreed, I found it handy the first time I discovered I could move a floating window over a maximized window in Windows, but I've also noticed that I let my windows become a lot more disorganized when I'm using Windows. I'm not saying they're related, it may be that I just don't have enough Windows experience, but I do find that I end up keeping my workspace a bit tidier on macOS or a tiling WM.
  • dbtc 3y ago
    I like vlc, mpv, and alacritty because they can fullscreen without making a new 'workspace'. Haven't figured it out for emacs yet.
    • philsnow 3y ago
      > Haven't figured it out for emacs yet. Up until today I'd been using (global-set-key (kbd "C-c RET") (lambda () (interactive) (set-frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen (when (not (frame-parameter nil 'fullscreen)) 'maximized)))) , which just makes the current frame maximized. A quick search turned up [0] which seems to give the desired effect of pre-lion "fullscreen" (hiding the menu bar and taking up 100% of the screen). I've tentatively switched to it for now, although I noticed some weirdness when I got a message saying that I could run M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen by pressing f11: when I hit globe-f11 the resulting frame/window configuration sometimes ends up being mostly black. When I use M-x toggle-frame-fullscreen, it doesn't have this behavior. [0] https://stackoverflow.com/a/20429390 https://stackoverflow.com/a/20429390
  • hiccuphippo 3y ago
    One of the things I like about Windows 11 is when you tile 2 windows, they form a group in the alt-tab menu. That way you can keep using your regular workflow with the group without the need for another workspace.
  • subjectsigma 3y ago
    Logged in just to say this is probably one of the only things I prefer about macOS window management, if you are reading this Apple UX team please don’t take it away!
  • dabber21 3y ago
    I'm probably in the minority here, but I like that behavior
    • plorkyeran 3y ago
      I like it on smaller laptops and despise it with large external monitors.
• and0 3y ago
  I like the idea of an initiative for applications to provide metadata for any window manager to handle them more intelligently. Letting the user quickly fill in the gaps in the meantime for local applications would also be nice. I've played with super detailed Unux WMs (bspwm?) and I've also started using Powertoys FancyZones on Windows and in both cases it's a lot of setup that only works ideally for rather specific situations.
• generalizations 3y ago
  With a bit more work to not surprise the user and not break the window organization (e.g. the user really wanted these two windows next to each other), this mosaic paradigm could actually be really cool. Looking forward to see how it develops. If the kinks are worked out I may very well switch over from i3. > As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. If the window layout comes close to filling the screen, the windows are automatically tiled. I can see this part being really cool, when the user doesn't care about the layout, and really, really, annoying when the user does care. Side note: the article should really have made a comparison between a tiling wm like i3 and this new mosaic concept, not between gnome tiling and mosaic...i3 is still way better and they'd do well to compare to the actual 'state of the art'.
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
  • ilyt 3y ago
    I could see it working if there was also just a pin button on window that made WM remember where it should be after being started again
• galkk 3y ago
  Not sure how to feel about more windows, but the idea that first window shouldn't take all space is certainly good. If someone will come up with better intelligent control over that placement, that will take into account actual windows length (who knows, maybe even ML for learning typical window sizes used by an operator) that will be a killer feature. Default sizing is one of my pet peeves with i3, even if it is the whole idea of tiling managers. You open first window and it takes entire screen space, meaning that with 32" screen (and even 27"), you need to look to the far left side for actual task (e.g. if it is a terminal, or code editor with column limit of 80 chars, dictated by code style). Then you open another window and you look straight into border between those 2 windows - your app isn't centered. etc etc I have small bind in i3 that helps a bit, but it works only with one window smart_gaps inverse_outer bindsym $mod+g exec "i3-msg gaps horizontal current toggle 900"
• low_tech_punk 3y ago
  On the other side of the problem is how modern applications waste screen real-estate with empty space, bloated menus, and poor typography. The application designers also need to adopt responsive layout to make sure the app provides the right amount of information using provided space. I hope a deeper rethink can consider the user's end goal being task management rather than window management. Maybe something in the spirit of "Ctrl + Z" and "fg" can be helpful.
  • 2OEH8eoCRo0 3y ago
    I think modern SW is less thoughtful because it's easier to change and monitors have grown. Back in the day it was tough to make changes after the fact and screens were tiny. Screen real estate was more precious so you better put some thought into the layout. It's like- modern large screens create more wasteful bloated applications which need larger screens... The new Outlook for example: I have the standard Windows but this also contains search? Below that I have Home, View, Help, and a hamburger menu? Below that I have the Outlook "ribbon" Then to sort my mail I have focused or other, we are now 4 "rows" deep in the shit now and each row wastes space. Since this is getting ridiculous they're starting to waste sidebar space as well by lining it with other apps. Stupid! Slack is even worse! Have some vision! There seems to be no regard for where to stuff new features which is ironic since that's one of the stated reasons for all the telemetry.
    • mulmen 3y ago
      The industry has also grown and the barriers to entry have dropped. The people making applications simply don't know or care about good design.
    • smorrow 3y ago
      > monitors have grown Most people use laptops. (Or it's at least 50/50.)
• teddyh 3y ago
  > You can also manually tile windows. If there’s enough space, other windows are left in a mosaic layout. However, if there’s not enough space for this mosaic layout, you’re prompted to pick another window to tile alongside. Oooh, that’s going to be a usability problem, because it introduces a special mode for answering the “prompt”. Most users will never know that this mode exists, just that the system behaves weirdly and half-maximizes a single window sometimes. I see people today unknowingly or uncaringly invoking the window overview mode (sometimes called “Activities”), and then trying to, say, click a link in a visible browser window. They then become confused when the windows all zoom around, and the click they wanted is ignored.
• adamrezich 3y ago
  seems neat, but: how often do you launch a program that defaults to having a teeny-tiny window, like shown here?
  • bpye 3y ago
    I probably don’t want a calculator to be full screen, even a terminal full height might make sense but full width almost never does.
    • jiehong 3y ago
      Well, people with bad eyesight use bigger fonts, making terminals full screen is necessary to see the whole 80 chars line without wrapping.
    • cesarb 3y ago
      > even a terminal full height might make sense but full width almost never does. I disagree; things like atop can make good use of a full width (and full height) terminal, and log lines (for instance from dmesg or journalctl) are often long enough that a full width terminal makes reading them more comfortable.
      • ilyt 3y ago
        I just resize terminal when(~5% of the time) that's needed; long lines are hard to read without wrap on even 24 inch full size terminal, let alone anything longer
• dugmartin 3y ago
  I've been using i3 (within the larger Regolith package) for a few years now and its hard for me to non-tiling WMs now. However I do think there would be a lot of improvements, especially with large desktop monitors. One idea I had would be to have a window manager only have a single main window in each desktop and then scaled down windows around the border on the desktop, like the TV in Idiocracy (https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/2172009173627.jpg https://www.soundandvision.com/files/_images/200902/21720091...). Selecting windows would swap out the main window with the scaled version on the border. This would give you the ability to focus on one window that is always centered while seeing scaled versions of all the other window's output. Maybe this has already been done?
  • wang_li 3y ago
    Many years ago, 1982, there was an applie ii video game named Dung Beetles. It was a pac man style dot chomper in a maze. Except the maze was quite large and the area around the player was viewed as if through a magnifying glass. I would find it interesting -- but probably unworkable -- if my virtual desktop were 5x and any window not focused were small and when focused it blows up to normal size. With some options of being able to make windows stay large when not focused and etc.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    That sounds like how dwm tiles windows
  • yoyohello13 3y ago
    Dynamic tiling window managers like dwm and xmonad can do this. They default to a 'master/stack' layout but you can change the layout algorithm. You esentially have a 'master' window and a stack of secondary windows. You can promote a window with super+enter and it gets swapped into the master area. There are some autotiling scripts for i3 that can emulate this behavior as well.
    • GrumpySloth 3y ago
      AwesomeWM as well. It allows you to write your own tiling algorithms in Lua.
• dpc_01234 3y ago
  Since there's going to be a lot of tiling WM users looking: what's the best way to get tiling WM and all the convenience of a "full blown WM like Gnome": things like Network Manager applet, bluetooth control, audio etc. all just few clicks away.
  • raccolta 3y ago
    pop-shell (can be used as an extension to gnome shell on most distros) has a toggle for tiling windows. Otherwise it's all the Gnome DE.
  • jklinger410 3y ago
    I use Forge, it works really well most of the time. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
  • greggyb 3y ago
    XFCE is super modular. You can turn off individual components. You can enable any program to start with the XFCE session. So, for example, disable xfdesktop and xfwm; enable other window manager of your choice. Then, when you run xfce4-session via any mechanism you get all of XFCE, but with another window manager. You can pull up xfce4-settings manager to handle all system settings as you would in any other XFCE session. I am pretty sure that LXDE/LXQT allows this sort of modularity as well. I have no clue about KDE and Gnome. Of particular note, you can combine XFCE's panel applet with a tiling window manager. So then you can keep an application menu and notification area (with associated notification settings) from XFCE with an arbitrary window manager.
    • wesapien 3y ago
      I did this. Xfce and Bspwm along with Sxhkd works well.
  • Nullabillity 3y ago
    At least KDE (not sure about other DEs but I'd assume most except GNOME) supports EWMH, which lets its widgets control with any compliant window manager. Xmonad has a wiki page on this.[0] One gotcha is that many full DEs use compositing window managers, which tilers usually don't. You can get around this by running a standalone compositor (such as picom). [0]: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE
• jauntywundrkind 3y ago
  I get that treating overlapping windows as bad might sometimes be a thing. Trying to juggle getting sufficient data to do the job in screen can be a bit of a chore. But personally I quite enjoy overlapped windows. Even when using a tiling window manager, I rely on stacked view a lot, where only one window of the stack is visible at a time. I need effective fast navigation across apps, not the simultaneous use/view of all. I feel like Gnome often decides to pick goals that it says are user friendly, but which refuse to see the utility of the established alternatives. Making a big choice here feels like it's based entirely around a single argument that I fundamentally don't think is valid, in many cases. I also worry that they are building a three mode system, and that it's unclear how if at all the various modes will blend. If there is a unified approach where standard/tiling/mosaic can coexist my concern is significantly lessened, but I'm not sure what that would look like, how mosaic would interact with standard.
• jmclnx 3y ago
  >Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new windows in seemingly arbitrary positions Well we have Xresources to to solve this, but the Gnome and KDE people ignore a standard that has been there for years. And Fluxbox solves this issue by having point/click option to allow you to say "Make this window show up here with this size". But as usual, many GNOME/GTK and some KDE applications ignore that to. So off we go, invent a new standard that will make my (our?) lives harder.
  • ecliptik 3y ago
    After spending some time customizing my .Xresources I was amazed on how much functionality it has [1]. The learning curve is a bit steep, but after taking a few minutes to understand it, there's a lot it can do in a simpler manner than more modern configuration and tooling. 1. https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/ixresources/xres.html https://stuff.mit.edu/afs/sipb/project/doc/ixresources/xres....
  • bpye 3y ago
    Do Xresources and friends make sense now Wayland is finally usable for many folks? Maybe having some sort of environment agnostic config would be good - even with Wayland - but I don’t know that a suitable one exists today.
    • jmclnx 3y ago
      Wayland is not usable for me, I am on a BSD. So my answer is yes, Xresources makes sense for me :) Does Wayland even have a method to specifying canned Window Position ?
      • mariusor 3y ago
        It does, kind of, statically you configure positions manually in the configuration file, or dynamically, you can use its API through a pipe to save positions and then restore positions.
      • johnny22 3y ago
• generalizations 3y ago
  An idea everyone will hate: feed window descriptions to a tiny local language model, which decides how to organize the current windows based on the current context and the content of the windows already open. Oh, you're coding? Put firefox to the left and keep VS Code focused. Oh, you're messing around with file managers? Bring the new file manager instance front and center. Oh, you've a ton of firefox windows open? Tile the new one side by side with the last one. Worst of all worlds.
• snide 3y ago
  For Gnome users, I really enjoy using Pop Shell (the window manager from Pop OS) as a tiling window manager. It doesn't exactly solve the problems with TWMs that this post discusses, but I often run into folks who don't know that you can use a lot of the bits from Pop OS in generic Gnome. I made a video about how to set it up if anyone is curious. The series was aimed at beginners, so feel to hop around if you just want to see what it looks like. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoG0AsS6oPo https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoG0AsS6oPo
  • jklinger410 3y ago
    I found the Forge plugin on GNOME Extensions to be a much better solution. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
    • em-bee 3y ago
      there is also paperWM. what i can't see with any of them is how to combine tiling of smaller windows with fullscreen windows. basically i want the tiling to only apply to windows that are not fullscreen, and i want to be able to switch between the tiled layer and the fullscreen layer. even better, if there are multiple tile layers. one could implement that with workspaces of course but gnome puts all workspaces in a row , which makes this difficult. i really want all apps related to a task on one workspace and switch between multiple tile sets. paperWM can scroll, that may help. or i could try to combine it with something like wsmatrix that puts workspaces in a grid.
  • pushfoo 3y ago
    For any readers who can't watch a video at the moment: 1. To be precise, Pop Shell is an extension for Gnome, not a separate window manager 2. It's available pre-packaged on Fedora, Arch, and Manjaro 3. It's easy to install from source on other distros Install instructions & source available here: 1. https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/ https://support.system76.com/articles/pop-shell/ 2. https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell I use it as a daily driver on Debian 11. It's the best balance of tiling and "normal" desktop UI I've found so far.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• rodelrod 3y ago
  Pop Shell has solved the problem, please don't rethink too much.
• dmckeon 3y ago
  The windowing UI/UX I wish for is to arrange a bunch of app's windows on my screen, then run some tool that notices what is running, where they all are, and what has input focus, and can save that state to be reinstantiated later. Think of how live stage theatre does set changes: there are tape marks on the stage floor showing where every object should go, and the crew just puts objects where the crew knows the objects belong, according to the marks. Yes, one could edit multiple fiddly ~/.{X,x}* files with X/Y sizes and positioning in arcane syntaxes. Is there no tool in the Gnome-everse that can handle this?
  • fleg 3y ago
    I'm pretty sure that this (and a little bit more) is already present in KDE and it's called Activities. It's not very popular, possibly because it's not "marketed" enough IMO.
  • zgluck 3y ago
    Not Gnome, but you're kind of describing the mac Stage Manager feature. It's quite nice with most apps.
  • dave7 3y ago
    Back in the day I had an Autohotkey script to do exactly this on Windows. Was very simple with the WinGet, list, WinGetPos and WinSetPos in loops with window title, x,y,w,h, persisted to a .ini file I wonder how you might do this on Gnome or KDE these days.
    • phil294 3y ago
      Just FYI the exact same thing is now also possible with AHK_X11 on Linux https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11 https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11
• soulofmischief 3y ago
  I wish Gnome would stop rethinking things and just reimplement the basic desktop features every major competitor has, and that Gnome 2 had.
  • silon42 3y ago
    including replaceable WMs
  • hactually 3y ago
    what's missing that was removed in 2->3?
    • soulofmischief 3y ago
      If you have used GNOME 2 for an extended period of time and then moved to GNOME 3, I think you'd find the shorter list of what wasn't removed. The idea was a vast plugin ecosystem which would allow development of desktop features to be more distributed. The problem was, some of the most basic features (like a taskbar for displaying open windows, or panels, or applets, or sane window management tools) were left out. At some point it becomes a security and performance nightmare when the idea is that to achieve a normal desktop experience, you need dozens of user-supplied scripts. Of course that's not a problem in practice, because even with user plugins, several basic features continue to be missing. And the fact that most of these plugins are just recreating functionality that already previously existed should really tell you something about GNOME team's design philosophy. To quote Linus Torvalds, GNOME 3 is a "total user experience design failure". https://www.datamation.com/open-source/gnome-2-vs-gnome-3/ https://www.datamation.com/open-source/gnome-2-vs-gnome-3/
      • moojacob 3y ago
        For more context Linux Torvalds moved back to GNOME in 2013, a year after that article was posted. From https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTMxNj https://www.phoronix.com/news/MTMxNj: > He says that GNOME 3.x has been improving and that when pairing the desktop with the right extensions, it's a rather pleasant desktop. He specifically points out Frippery and GNOME Tweak Tool as making a huge difference to his experience.
• esjeon 3y ago
  I really love the mosaic concept. I think it's indeed the missing piece for tiling on large displays. It's a kind of stack in usual tiling layouts, where all leftover windows are placed, but stacks tend to squeeze and deform windows, crippling many apps in the process. The mosaic approach can certainly avoid this issue, but it wastes some space (not ideal for small screens) and may not play well with big complex UIs(IDE, CAD, DAW, etc).
  • bpye 3y ago
    It seems that the wasted space issue is somewhat addressed by the switch to a tiling mode when the screen becomes “full”?
• Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
  Every time when I look at what has become of Gnome, I wish Unity didn't die. Almost everything I loved in Gnome2 was broken or took a turn for the worse.
  • yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
    MATE still exists
    • Andrew_nenakhov 3y ago
      It does, true, but it feels like a dead end.
      • thanatos519 3y ago
        Maybe that's because it's finished. It doesn't need any more revolution, just maintenance and polishing.
        • pessimizer 3y ago
          And for caja to stop being so buggy.
  • lproven 3y ago
    > I wish Unity didn't die Hi from Unity on Ubuntu 23.04. I am running the Unity flavour: https://ubuntuunity.org/ https://ubuntuunity.org/ It uses the latest Unity 7.7, released earlier this year: https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx I run it on 3 or 4 machines, one of which has 2 screens and one of which has 3. Works great, scales well, handles modern Ubuntu just fine. I use it with the Waterfox browser, which integrates natively with the Unity global menu bar, without any addons or config. I am currently on -- (hits alt-H, A) -- version 5.1.9. https://www.waterfox.net/ https://www.waterfox.net/
• okasaki 3y ago
  [flagged]
  • michaelmrose 3y ago
    The problem with this fairly complex solution is that the easier path by far is simpler window arrangements, multiple monitors, and many workspaces. Once you have more windows than fit on a workspace its easier just to have more workspaces and 1-3 windows is what basically universally fits on most monitors. If you organize more things in the same space you probably need indivdual apps that themselves have tabs like browsers, editors, IDEs rather than more windows. Personally I use https://github.com/chmln/i3-auto-layout https://github.com/chmln/i3-auto-layout to make slightly better layouts automatically be automatically alternating between v and h splits and find this fits my needs 95% of the time. Shit work under i3 is already very small but if you wanted to reduce it further I think you could probably go a long way with a very simple feature. Add a save button that saves current layout to a list like so Browser, calculator Browser, pdf reader terminal terminal terminal ide terminal terminal Then have a restore function that simply walks the list finds the entry that matches the kind and number of window and shoves existing windows into that layout. You can at creation time use something like i3-save-tree, edit the json, yada yada but its all fairly manual and I think for the use case it would be relatively simpler. The few non standard all match for me a simple pattern eg there really isn't 2 different ways I want IDE terminal terminal
  • jwells89 3y ago
    In my experience it depends on the user's workflow and preferences. Whenever I'm using a tiling-first desktop I find myself micromanaging my windows a lot more because inevitably, some windows tile in a way that's not usable or limits usability. It feels like I'm fighting it constantly, and the only way to fix it is to opt out of tiling, at which point I have to wonder why I'm using a tiling WM.
    • gtirloni 3y ago
      Exactly. I have dozens of different ways I like to organize my windows, depending on which task I'm doing or what I need to focus on. The best I could manage so far with GNOME was the gSnap extension but it's still work and I've just noticed I've switched back to no tiling for a few days now.
• fpina 3y ago
  I like PaperWM[1] a lot. 1. https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
  • akvadrako 3y ago
    It isn't perfect, but it does bring tiling window management to Gnome. The killer feature for me is that it remembers which workspace windows are on when external monitors are connected and disconnected.
• michaelmrose 3y ago
  * Putting maximized windows automagically in their own workspace is a horrible idea > As you open more windows, the existing windows move aside to make room for the new ones. If a new window doesn’t fit (e.g. because it wants to be maximized) it moves to its own workspace. I emphatically disagree fundamentally people want to put the windows they want in a particular workspace because they are often part of a related task. It also violates user expectations from virtually every interface on the planet including prior versions of gnome leading to confusion and frustration as the users mental model of usage will not naturally conflate making it bigger with changing workspaces. * Even more broken under the broke way gnome handles multiple monitors This presents additional challenges for multiple monitors if the user has enabled workspaces across multiple monitors. A feature that isn't on by default but which as far as I know still exists. EG your window gets to big and suddenly everything disappears on monitor 2 and 3 because your universe now switched to workspace 2. The traditional arrangement for gnome where changing workspace only effects the primary monitor is possibly the worst thing about gnome. It turns a secondary monitor into a singular big bucket of windows you must manage manually as if virtual desktops had never been invented. It is a complete failure of design. * There is a simple way to allow both usages without a configuration switch that provides users with an obvious mental model and a simple metaphor An actually competent design that transparently allows both independent workspaces and workspaces across all monitors looks like this. my first ascii pager M1 [1][2][3][4][] M2 [1][2][3][4][] M1 [1][2][3][4][] Locked pagers stay where you put them unlocked change together. Size issues. Expecting windows not to expand content arbitrarily may be better handled by just not tiling windows with a small maximum size. Note hints on minimum size and maximum size have existed forever. Windows with medium maximum sizes can be expanded to $SIZE in a tiled layout but if the space is too plentiful some of that "tile" can be left empty with the app sized appropriately within it. For instance a pdf document on a large monitor may want to be as tall as it can be but only so wide. If no hints are set one can also expect window to intelligently display content within a reasonable size like how competent web pages don't draw their content arbitrarily wide. * Concerns about gnome specific designs and usability within other environments. If gnome app developers rely on gnome specific affordances in other environments they may inherently look or feel like shit. At minimum work should be shared between other environments and existing affordances like WM_NORMAL_HINTS ought to be used where they can be for compatibility. * Reasonable expectations If this is adopted multiple monitors across desktops will be unusable thus gnome will simply disable and deprecate that feature. Gnome apps will be designed in such a way as to work poorly in other environments. Gnome developers response to any issues will be that you should be using Gnome. KDE developers will 6 months later support whatever gnome did.
• WesolyKubeczek 3y ago
  I don’t know. Overlapping windows may look messy, but I know where they are and their size is right for me. Not for you, for me. If windows are moving all the time on their own as I open new ones, maybe it looks gorgeous on demos and screenshots, but I don’t think it’s going to be ergonomic to actually work with. And my work is not about posting screenshots to r/unixporn.
• kaetemi 3y ago
  That mosaic concept sounds terrible. All the windows moving whenever a new window opens? That just sounds very annoying and very bad for my spatial memory. Things should just stay where I left them.
  • mulmen 3y ago
    Imagine a desk in a windy park. Maybe the next innovation from the Gnome devs can be a "paperweight" you can drag onto your windows to keep them from blowing away.
  • smorrow 3y ago
    It's called dynamic window management, it's very popular, and that's without the animations showing you that something got moved.
• thecrumb 3y ago
  Long time i3 user (which I still use on my work laptop) but use Pop!_OS on my workstation at home and have to say it works really well. I like how we have open source but wish we had more open collaboration instead of people wasting time re-inventing the wheel. Gnome people - call the Pop!_OS people.
• jwells89 3y ago
  As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often, but when I do I don't usually want the window to be spirited away to its own separate universe, and the apps that actually need fullscreen implement that functionality independent of the window manager. It's interesting they're considering implementing a way for apps to signal to the window manager the size it prefers for its windows. This has been a concept on OS X since 10.0, though it's only ever been used by the OS figuring out what size to zoom to/from when the user clicks the green zoom button. If this feature makes the cut it I'll be curious to see what other uses they find for it. One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid virtual desktops. OS X 10.5/10.6 had what I'd consider the best implementation of the idea and I loved it. It leveraged spatial memory much better than the linear layouts popular these days, especially with short smooth animations to make movements between desktops more concrete mentally. 2D grid virtual desktops can still be found in more "old school" type DEs like XFCE but the level of polish isn't comparable.
  • csdvrx 3y ago
    > As a longtime macOS user, while I don't mind the rest of how it handles windows/apps I've never liked the fullscreen mode that was added in 10.7, and the GNOME fullscreen mode mentioned in the blog post is identical. I don't maximize windows often As a longtime Windows user who recently moved to Linux, I can't live without fullscreen mode: all my apps are run in fullscreen, not with F12 """fullscreen""", just normally and without useless decorations like a titlebar. I love the new UI that started on Windows, where Edge doesn't lose a full line to a useless titlebar and close button: instead, there's a X at the top right. You'll wonder, but what if I need to resize the window or move it? But as I run my windows in fullscreen mode, I don't need to do that: if I want to start a terminal, it's started on another "virtual desktop" where it'll also be run in fullscreen mode Someone else said they thought "tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution" - I don't want a decent solution! I'd rather have edge offer me vertical tabs with icons, wezterm offer horizontal tabs with ascii text and so on - more room for content! And no tabs when there's only 1 opened tab, and ideally, no space lost for the scrollbar either: unless I'm actively scrolling, I don't need to see it. > One concept I'd like to see return in modern desktop environments are 2D grid It's too complicated: just give me a line, with numbers from say 1 to 9 like the numbers on my keyboard: if I press Win + 1, take me to that desktop. If I'm already there and the app I pinned to that desktop isn't there, start it. > the level of polish isn't comparable Try hyprland with Arch: before I did, I thought I hated Linux, turns out I just hated Gnome and Ubuntu.
• MattPalmer1086 3y ago
  Clearly I am a very simple person, and I don't get all these window management wars. Almost all my workflows either involve one maximised windows, two windows side by side, or occasionally one smaller windowed floating on top of another. Linux does that for me by default. You can get the float on top in Windows with some 3re party tools, although it isn't as nicely integrated. What is everyone doing that needs something else?
  • nickstinemates 3y ago
    Some people like beer, some people like wine, some people like sugary drinks. Why don't people just drink water?
    • MattPalmer1086 3y ago
      I'm not saying that everyone should be like me. I am genuinely asking what the use cases are for something else.
      • nickstinemates 3y ago
        My screen is 4 and a half feet wide. I use Windows Power Toys on Win and a Tiling windows manager on Linux. Each app goes to their specific location. The center 1920x1080 is for the main focus and the rest is for peripheral/supporting apps. Here's what my development desktop looks like[1] 1: https://keeb.dev/2022/06/12/I-made-a-keylogger/desktop-full.png https://keeb.dev/2022/06/12/I-made-a-keylogger/desktop-full....
        • crimsontech 3y ago
          You have an area on your desktop dedicated to neofetch?
          • nickstinemates 3y ago
            An area dedicated to ssh, yep!
• ikekkdcjkfke 3y ago
  Can someone please make a window manager that fits linux? Flat, no animations, super performant, no rounded corners, no shading, pixelated icons. Never understood how all the linux desktops are so ugly and laggy
  • eddd-ddde 3y ago
    https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/
    • akira2501 3y ago
      dwm is great. I took it and ripped all the tiling manager code out of it and turned it into a generic window manager. What has kept me using it all these years is the "window move" and "window resize" system that fell out of this change. Hold down ALT and CLICK1 on a window, _anywhere_ on that window, and you go into "window move" mode. No need to seek out the "titlebar", just click and move. Hold down ALT and CLICK3 on a window, _anywhere_ on that window, and you go into "window resize" mode. No need to seek out the "corner edge", just click and it resizes the window. With just that I can entirely rearrange my desktop with almost no effort and in very little time. It becomes second nature very quickly, and the need for "forced tiling" basically disappears. The problem with WMs isn't the layout strategy, it's the lack of user optimized layout controls. I've been using this hacked up WM for 15 years. I will use this until I'm dead. I have yet to find anything which I find superior.
      • SxC97 3y ago
        For any Mac or Windows users reading this, these features are also available on those OS’s. https://superuser.com/questions/53051/altclick-drag-window-resizing-on-a-mac-similar-to-x-windows https://superuser.com/questions/53051/altclick-drag-window-r...
      • lproven 3y ago
        > Hold down ALT and CLICK1 on a window, _anywhere_ on that window, and you go into "window move" mode. No need to seek out the "titlebar", just click and move. This is a standard X.org feature. It works on more or less all Linux window managers; I checked and it works perfectly on Unity, as expected, and it did back in 2011 or so when it was launched. I don't want the 2nd feature you describe, but I have seen the option for it in some other WMs. Taekwindow adds it to MS Windows: http://taekwindow.net/ http://taekwindow.net/ Note that the site also documents how it works. This is not a dwm feature and nothing to do with dwm.
• pmontra 3y ago
  Gnome developers really like automoving stuff on the screen, like activities animations. Instead I could kill a window that does not stay put were I placed it. Who does it thinks it is to know better than me how my desktop must look like? Anyway, until there is a way to work as I want to, no problem with them enjoying their time. Reconfiguring the desktop to look like Gnome 2 is a tax I pay to have them keeping it compatible with the other components of the system.
  • dsr_ 3y ago
    I rejected paying that tax, and moved to XFCE. As far as I can tell, the GNOME people have not had a good idea about window management since GNOME 2. If you like it, great, use it. The point of freedom is to be able to do things they way you like.
  • Phrodo_00 3y ago
    You're the second person that calls the activity window overview moving windows. In what way are the windows being moved? They're just being unstacked so that you can find that window 3rd from the bottom on the stack.
    • pmontra 3y ago
      I should log out and log in with guest user with an unmodified desktop, let me see if I can find a video on YouTube. Found one. Check this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A3ewGh7u3g https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3A3ewGh7u3g at 1:20. That guy is about to open the activities overview or whatever it is and that will move windows around. Then go to 2:25, more windows movements in a few seconds using a different feature of Gnome. I can't stand that and I happily undid all of it using various extensions.
      • Phrodo_00 3y ago
        ... yeah, nothing is moving your windows, it's literally just a preview. This is like saying that the Windows menu bar preview is duplicating your windows.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• uneekname 3y ago
  I'm really excited about this. Gnome already fits my needs nicely, but the changes this article suggests would make the experience even smoother. A lot of the comments here seem to be from people who don't prefer Gnome in the first place.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• mulmen 3y ago
  I understand the desire to make changes, especially from people so close to a project. But as a user it is painful. If I could think of any positive changes in the last 20 years maybe I would have a different reaction. But I can't so I don't. Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating. I have an uncomfortable visceral reaction to even seeing a Gnome desktop. But bad design isn't unique to Gnome. In the modern world we love data, but I think we are bad at collecting what matters. The number of times I say "fuck you" out loud to my iPhone in a day is non-zero. A good designer should care when that happens. So, sure, move my windows around without asking. Continue with your misguided belief that you know better than me what I want. But give me a big red "fuck you" button to click when you get it wrong.
  • deafpolygon 3y ago
    > Every time I have attempted to interact with Gnome has been incredibly frustrating. The changes they made to GNOME 10-15 years ago was enough to get me to abandon Linux and switch to macOS all those years ago. Every time I look at GNOME, I just keep seeing features they removed rather than the ones they added.
• iamcalledrob 3y ago
  People generally have pretty good spatial sensibilities, and I feel like modern OS designers seem to forget this. You feel this especially on iPadOS. Physically arranging windows allows for a much more solid multi-tasking experience, and encouraged direct manipulation of content e.g. drag and drop. Transient "palette" or "panel" windows allow for a short term buffer (think a find/replace panel). To me, this is what made macOS so great for creative tasks. It activated my spatial memory. I'm grumpy about the recent trend towards apps living in one monolithic window. Apple's going down this route with their recent app redesigns from multi-window to single window, likely due to a (selfish) desire to unify with iPadOS. Electron adds a dev tax for multiple windows, such that folks don't really think to do it. I think this trend is probably due to the convergence of desktop app design with the web, which is inherently single window -- and traces its roots back to window.open() being abused by pop-up ads. It's unfortunate because a single window user experience is limiting -- and people are forgetting that anything else is even possible. I miss the days when chat apps had separate windows for each chat, and a buddy list you could pin to the side of the screen. (If you've only ever got comfortable with a windows-style "maximised window" approach, you'll probably disagree with me, however).
  • seltzered_ 3y ago
    This is usually where I reference the idea of toolkits taking to each other as pioneered during the Smalltalk era: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnrlSqtpOkw&t=4m19s See also 'toolkits, not apps' tweet by Bret Victor : https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057280 https://mobile.twitter.com/worrydream/status/881021457593057...
    • KerrAvon 3y ago
      I assume there's a thread there that elaborates? Can't see threads anymore if you're logged out of Twitter/echs.
  • KerrAvon 3y ago
    Single window apps came in with NeXT. I heard a theory early on in the NeXT/Apple merger that it was because the window server buffering was so heavyweight on early hardware that multiple windows just made things too slow. While I personally agree with you, I think you're overestimating the desire of most users to manage multiple window clutter themselves except in very limited contexts.
• tsuujin 3y ago
  I can’t seem to view the videos embedded in the article on iOS, which is disappointing because I really want to see that mosaic mode.
  • tpush 3y ago
    That's on Apple for not supporting WebM in Safari.
• graypegg 3y ago
  I actually like the ideas they have here! It feels inspired by the best parts of macOS, Windows, and tiling window managers, while actually being pretty novel IMO. However, I actually like the "overlapping sheets on a desktop" metaphor because it's still pretty "task" based. Their example is a little contrived, having a lot of small unrelated windows smushed into the middle of the screen is rare I think. At least for me. A more common example I think might be: You're in a web browser full screen, and then you need to drag and drop a file into a site, so you open finder/explorer. That appears overtop of the browser. Then maybe you realize you want to remove some metadata from the file you need to upload, so you go into that file's preferences pane, which is a whole new "sheet" on your desktop. At any point, you can dig up the browser, since it still occupies a lot of the screen. Effectively it's a branching undo tree. Since you connect all of these apps together manually (opening, clicking, dragging, sharing in MacOS), you're free to go and fiddle with things that are going to be accepting something else from another window. The thing I think is missing from that metaphor is that it's really hard to get back to what you were doing if you break that undo tree. You click the browser, but now all of your other windows are behind, and the whole stack won't come back at once. If windows recovered in the stack they were opened in when you focus them, (in my contrived example, you refocus the file preferences window, OR maybe there's some gesture/keycombo to return to the last focus state) I think that'd make a pretty measurable effect on my window organization annoyances.
• phkahler 3y ago
  I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm not sure why. 1) The WM must remember where my windows were and put them back when reopened. Never mind how X apps took on this responsibility, under Wayland the app should not know its context. It's also not right to put the burden on every app when it could be in the WM to provide consistency and unburden all the other devs. 2) I use a 55" screen where the "desktop" metaphor is apt. Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway. 3) I have space for the launcher to be ever present. I also don't want my windows to shrink and move around when I do invoke that panel. That's so jarring and completely unneeded. I do like the idea they mention of a maximum sensible size for an app. That could be useful regardless of all the other stuff. I feel like tabs on browsers were invented because no desktop environment or GUI toolkit ever came up with a decent solution for multiple instances/documents. This has improved but I suspect there is more that could be done.
  • mulmen 3y ago
    > Workspaces are for small screens with maximized windows, which don't really need other layout methods anyway. Strong disagree here. I use a 38" Ultrawide and I have 10 workspaces open at the moment. All of them dedicated to a single in-flight task. If a workspace is a desktop multiple workspaces is a workshop.
    • demizer 3y ago
      I have keybindings that go directly to the workspace that I am interested in. Fifteen years ago I dedicated 10 workspaces to fullscreen tasks I do daily and now I can go to my browser with a keybinding or to my code editor with another. I have been on workmates computers with tens to a hundred windows open and I am dumbfounded on how they get anything done. A task should operate on one workspace and there should be keybindings to go directly to that task. Of course I am a pro power user and normies would be horrified at my workflow. Gnome devs try to consider everyone and sometimes miss the mark and make everyone unhappy. So I am going to volunteer to use their concept and provide feedback.
      • 3y ago
• moogly 3y ago
  I appreciate someone looking at improving the status quo. However, I feel that there is no way something as opinionated like this will do what you actually want it to do in most cases.
• rosmax_1337 3y ago
  They're overthinking this issue far too much. People actually like that windows disappear into the background, it emulates the idea of stacks of paper (very intuitive) and it allows you to both focus on the stuff that's currently important and with relative ease bring out windows from the background into view again, through the use of alt-tab or the super key. (or by clicking the little part of the background window still visible, as done by all beginner users of a window system, a very intuitive move) Call me a luddite but we don't need more innovation, just implementation. - Windows should be able to tile in corners for a 4 window equal size layout by default in gnome, you currently need a plugin for it. - A way to set up standard locations for windows, best managed in some kind of "work-profile"/"entertainment-profile" way, in a tileable-esque system. This is not something most people will use, but is very helpful for people who want to get back into the workflow of a relatively complex window layout. Say you use three screens, and have a editor, devtools, browser-production, browser-docs, and chat window or music player open. Getting these windows back into a standard location can be done with various secondary tools already, but it's never been implemented by an OS standard. Some applications with floating dockable windows already implement it for their floating windows, like Inkscape. And that's it. Bear in mind I really think that this is taking the window managment the last 10% of the way, it's fine as is. Not just fine, good and borderline great. >For a web browser that might be maximized, for a weather app maybe only 700×500 pixels Those examples of "mosaic" tiling reeks of theoretical idealism. Almost no applications work in an area as small as what, 17% of total screen estate. Taking a weather app as an example is close to disingenous, that's the definition of an outlier regarding small windows. A common "small" window is something like a file manager or a OS settings page, and those arguably take up __at least__ 35% of screen real estate to work well, and are more commonly given a whole 50%. (half-side view) Their demonstration goes on to demonstrate them opening 3 different weather apps and having them move around in the mosaic, like the demonstration shows a groundbreaking new way to manage what, weather apps? Completely disregarding the fact that a weather app is opened, read, and then closed. You dont' monitor the situation of the weather in your anyones workflow. Now there are users who use very complex window layouts of very small windows, like some people working in sound production, but they don't want their windows to magically just shuffle around the center of the screen, they want the "open this window in this standard location/size every time im in work-profile mode".
• spicyusername 3y ago
  Love to see this amount of thought being put into something that nearly everyone encounters on a day to day basis. I greatly miss using tiling window managers, like i3, but I don't miss having to fiddle with all the little temperamental settings to do things as common as set up my wifi. Having something like this as a default would be a great middle ground.
  • polyamid23 3y ago
    If you use gnome, I can recommend Pop-Shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell
    • spicyusername 3y ago
      That's what I'm using right now and it's great!
  • zwayhowder 3y ago
    On my desktop I just run i3 because I have no need for the regular fiddling around. On my laptop(s) I run KDE with i3. That to me is the best of both worlds. Easy wifi config and automatic setup of HDMI devices, but tiles, tiles as far as I want :)
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• formulathree 3y ago
  Buy ultrawide. Then tiling works without screwing over aspect ratio. It's a real estate issue. (5120 x 1440))
  • tbyehl 3y ago
    32:9 is amazing, the Snap Windows feature on Windows gives me exactly what I want for tiling options. But, whew, physical real estate is killer. I've got a huge desk (Biomorph Pro) and the 49" double-wide display makes it feel cramped.
  • smorrow 3y ago
    1. You can't pick and choose your monitor like this on laptops. 2. I like my "window/s of interest" (the current "task") to be front and centre; I would like my window management when task switching both to do this for me and to set the previous current task aside for me. It seems to me this would require some kind of undiscovered paradigm that isn't tiling or stacking. Ultrawide is just forcing me to direct my attention to a specific off-centre region for extended periods. This feels like holding breath, except psychological - I can only take it so long, then my eyes, by themselves, are going to look at other areas, whether I like it or not. Which is also one reason why tiling is an absolute non-starter for me.
• alpaca128 3y ago
  > Another issue with tiling window manager is that they place new windows in seemingly arbitrary positions Not all tiling WMs are dynamic. Static tiling WMs exist and they give you both more control and more predictable behaviour. Don't want automatic placement and windows jumping around randomly each time you open/close something? Don't use a window manager which was designed to do exactly that.
• nirui 3y ago
  > Overlapping windows can get messy quickly Yeah dude... that's one reason why the Minimize button exists on Windows, MacOS and KDE etc for so long. When you see some feature exists for this long on this many good desktop environments, you know it's too important to...say...been removed (from default setting)? Also on the same note, Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important... It's so important that on SOME desktop environment that don't support such feature, one of it's most popular plugin is designed to restore the functionality so the users can actually enjoy the DE instead of fighting it.
  • johnny22 3y ago
    I"m glad it doesn't exist, since i'd have to turn it off :) But seriously, I use GNOME because of what it is, not because of what it's not.
    • nirui 3y ago
      You mean the Dock/Dash or the Minimize button? The Minimize button is still accessible on some windows if you right click the title bar and select "Hide". So the function is still there, just more annoying to access. And the Dock/Dash problem is actually linked to the minimize feature. Because when user click Minimize, the window then needs a place to be "minimized to" (and an animation is also need to show how it happened). Maybe the lack of Taskbar could be one of the reasons why Minimize button was removed? Just me guessing. I do respect your use case, but as a desktop environment, I don't think GNOME should implement it as default. But on the other hand, if GNOME is really committed to be a tiling-first desktop environment, then removing the Minimize button could be a reasonable plot on the roadmap.
  • diffeomorphism 3y ago
    > Taskbar (or Dock on MacOS) is also important Yet many people set it to autohide. At that point the difference between pressing super, a hot corner or autohide is quite minor. > one reason why the Minimize button One feature I like in gnome is the title bar clicks. Double-click or middle-click anywhere on the title bar feels much nicer than hitting the specific tiny maximize/minimize buttons. Unfortunately, as far as I remember that is also off by default (though easily turned on in tweaks). However, I would be perfectly on board, if gnome had that as the default instead of minimize buttons.
• gorgoiler 3y ago
  I have been using a tiling WM since ion2, but I’ve used other OS WMs too. It’s hard to take this article seriously when it talks about tiling window manager limitations but fails to mention one big negative for tiling WMs: they assume I want to see the whole window all of the time. Overlapping windows let me put my terminal over the top of my browser. I can overlap and conceal, say, the left nav bar of a documentation website while still letting me see the body of the docs. + - - - - + |terminal |- - - + | | docs | | | | + - - - - + | + - - - - + Focus follows mouse (which you get in macOS, albeit only for scroll) means I can interact with the lower window without bringing it to the foreground. I’ve done this when my employment has forced me to use macOS, and it works well and much better than a tiling WM.
  • eviks 3y ago
    > I can overlap and conceal, say, the left nav bar of a documentation website while still letting me see the body of the docs. Indeed, web pages waste a lot of horizontal space, overlapping is a great option of solving that This also works when you have e.g. a browser and a note app and copy&paste and review etc. Though it would be nice if WM had a "symbiotic" mode where even bringing your Docs window to the foreground would retain the Terminal window (so it's kind of "always on top" but only within the context of these two applications), it'd be great for easily switching back and forth and not losing info from either window
• geon 3y ago
  So happy to see this being worked on. I really hate overlapping windows. It was never a good idea. I think it was mainly done the fist few times because it looked impressive. Then it became so ingrained that people couldn't imagine not having them.
• maherbeg 3y ago
  I've converted to a tiling window manager person after using Amethyst on MacOS. It's buggy and crashes but I absolutely love using a tiling manager to handle the common scenarios of two windows side by side, or a primary window + multiple windows tiled on the second half. Once you find a setup that works for you, this ends up being super easy to work with.
• pluto_modadic 3y ago
  now I'm just worried if pop-OS's gnome extension ever goes away. arc-menu, pop-shell, & dash-to-panel are my jam.
• pentagrama 3y ago
  The native Windows 11 windows management feature (called "snap layouts") was great for me. I get it instantly and use it easily with the pointer or the keyboard. One of the best features of the 11 version to me. I think that for regular users is a great entry point to have a more power user experience, of course it will not be enough for everyone and a lot of power users will demand more specific behaviors. Demo: https://youtu.be/t-hgwhYu0nU https://youtu.be/t-hgwhYu0nU
  • tbyehl 3y ago
    It has been around since Windows 7! The hover on the maximize button they added in Windows 11 definitely improves the discoverability and usability vs the original display edge snap behavior. I do wish it provided more layouts for vertical tiling on wider displays.
    • lproven 3y ago
      No, not quite. Edge snapping has been around since Vista or 7, but this is new and additional, and as a long-term avoider of Windows for >20 years now, I have to admit, it's good and it's the single thing in Win11 I actually like and admire. Watch the vid.
• _8j50 3y ago
  Back when I first started learning C, I had an idea to have a GUI environment where instead of windows you have cubes. Not random 3d objects bit 2D compatible abstractions similar to windows that render what would be a window on one face for regular apps but for 3d apps, different faces and relationship between cubes can be configured. I coded something very basic in opengl but gave up after getting camera movements right be ause I realized then how hard it would be basically doing wayland except more (and this was before wayland). I still have the idea but I have a lot more improvements to it and now I understand that the focused content on a 2d screen has to always be 2d but navigation,effects, organization and control can be 3d. Compiz died too early! People lament not having our promised flying cars in 2023, I lament our super cool UIs.
  • em-bee 3y ago
    i loved compiz. unity kept it alive for a while longer, but at least some of the features are coming back there is a wobbly windows extension for gnome for example. so it's still (or again) possible to do these things. it just takes some people to run wild with the possibilities like it happened with compiz
  • lproven 3y ago
    « Not random 3d objects bit 2D compatible abstractions similar to windows that render what would be a window on one face for regular apps but for 3d apps, different faces and relationship between cubes can be configured » Sun's "Project Looking Glass" did some of this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Looking_Glass It's the only windowing environment I have seen that uses the fact that windows have 2 faces: the front holds content, the back holds config. It was a clever design but it didn't get far.
    • smorrow 3y ago
      Compiz had it: https://youtu.be/KGkodX89ouA?t=244 https://youtu.be/KGkodX89ouA?t=244
    • _8j50 3y ago
      Thanks, that's pretty cool for it's time!
• pipeline_peak 3y ago
  Regular people don’t really use window managers much these days, partly because they don’t use desktops as user environments unless needed. I know a lot of you’ve heard about gen-z not knowing about file systems and it’s definitely relative. Most tasks are done in browsers with tabs, and if they need to use desktop apps it’s in full screen. Have any of you tried using Spotify or VScode not in full screen? It’s obviously not how they’re designed. What the gnome people in this article refuse or fail to acknowledge is that no matter if they go with stacked, tiled, floating, mosaic, it’s gonna be a struggle for form factor because that’s just not how the way modern apps are designed. The first picture in that post looks like the layout of a CDE screenshot from the 90s. Two text editors and a file manager open at the same time? Get real, might as well open xclock and xcalc lol. Humans can’t multitask.
• jorf 3y ago
  Bring back Alt+Space+N to minimize! Grumble..
  • orange-mentor 3y ago
    Hear, hear! I can't run GNOME because of this. I use MATE and/or IceWM. Windows + Desktops, it's all just rectangles. There's a drawing surface, XY dimensions, focus, and input. I don't want paradigm shifts, I want _utility_. I want keyboard shortcuts, and scripts.
• semireg 3y ago
  For macOS users I recommend moom to manage window tiling. Although the defaults work fine, I always setup the following: 1) Bind cmd-m for activating moom. You’ll get a warning but seriously, who uses native macOS minimize? Not me, ever. 2) Setup single key “sizes” for keys Q, P, M, Z for the four quadrants: upper left, upper right, lower right, lower left, respectively. 3) Setup L and R for 50% left and right. F for full screen. These 7 keys will allow you 3-finger shortcuts to any windowing. You’re free to setup the grid as fine or as coarse as you need. Thank you to whoever developed moom. It’s made macOS feel mature.
• cwillu 3y ago
  “The key point we keep coming back to with this work is that, if we do add a new kind of window management to GNOME, it needs to be good enough to be the default. We don’t want to add yet another manual opt-in tool that doesn’t solve the problems the majority of people face.” This is the essence of what makes gnome user-hostile: everyone has to fit their mold.
• eviks 3y ago
  > Manually placing and sizing windows can be fiddly work, and requires close attention and precise motor control Indeed, the OS support continues to be awful, and unfortunately there isn't much "rethinking" here since even the new design videos show the same bad precision-based approach - to close a window you have to hunt down a tiny close button in the corner - to move a window you have to hunt down a tiny bar at the top (and all that even after we've gained a dedicated Window button on many keyboards)
• Name_Chawps 3y ago
  Any system that tries to guess what I want isn't going to work. For example, when my browsers or mobile devices try to guess automatically when I want audio to start playing, they're almost always wrong. Open a browser? Why is a video playing in one of my 30 tabs? Unplug earbuds from my tablet? Why is an audiobook now playing? I didn't even have the audiobook app open, and haven't listened to any audiobook in months. If your design relies on intelligently guessing what the user wants, but doesn't actually use any intelligence to do so, then your design is shit. Give users the tools to do what they want quickly and easily. Don't guess.
• sfy 3y ago
  I have no problem with the way windows work in Gnome right now. Using the window switcher is really convenient. The only things I would like to be better are 1) It's too hard to find my way back to the right window in a window group, for example if I have 4 IntelliJ-windows active and want a specific one, takes too much time to find it and they also look alike. Perhaps naming them and using some ex command (dmenu-ish) thing? 2) The window switcher is only shown on the main display. I know the Gnome devs are quite fixed in their opinions about this, but imho it would be better to show it on the active display, which I would define as where the pointer is or where I interacted last. Solve these two things and I see no need for either mosaic or tiling.