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There are merits to the GNOME design philosophy. My Sway workflow and customizations are actually inspired quite a bit by GNOME. I don't use any taskbar or syst

There are merits to the GNOME design philosophy. My Sway workflow and customizations are actually inspired quite a bit by GNOME. I don't use any taskbar or system tray. I don't even have a clock; I open a terminal and check the date command if I want to know the time. I make heavy use of workspaces rather than "minimizing" (Sway calls this the scratchpad or something like that, which I only use if I want to "background" graphical applications). I have absolutely no flashy styling or animations; I simply use nord where I can. It's not for everyone. It would be next to impossible for someone to sit at my computer and be productive, because I have accumulated my configuration over years, with no real thought into making things that I configured discoverable (I know it's there because I put it there). But it works really well for me. I find the ability setup a workspace how I want for one task, and then switching workspaces to context switch to be very nice.

wkat4242 3y ago
I do something very similar in KDE with a whole bunch of virtual desktops. Though I do use a taskbar because I like the overview of it but I don't actually use it to switch tasks :) I always thought Gnome was not very useful for this because workspaces are created on the fly whereas I want to have them spatially oriented in a fixed grid that persists on every boot with the right application tiles in them. And I have hotkeys mapped to each one directly on the numpad (without key combos, I hate those). So my numpad is not a numpad at all but a workspace switcher :P The problem with the gnome design philosophy is that it only works for you if you agree with them on everything. If you're pretty opinionated yourself (as I am and it sounds like you are too), opinionated software only works well if you have the exact same opinions as its creators. With something as complex as a DE this will run into many mismatches quickly. This is why configurable software is so great if you're not willing to compromise on how you want things.
- the_why_of_y 3y ago
  Current versions of Gnome allow setting a fixed number of workspaces in Settings, Multitasking. To configure hotkeys, you have to set some dconf entries manually, with dconf-editor or gsettings from a terminal: > gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-1 "[\"<Super>F1\"]"
tsimionescu 3y ago
I absolutely agree that it's nice for this to exist as an option for users who are used to it. I'm a somewhat heavy emacs user, so I'm not at all opposed to esoteric workflows. But I think it's clearly proven to be a bad design as a default. Discoverability is very important, especially to people who work a lot with a mouse. And using multiple apps at the same time is a very common work flow, one that an always-on-screen task switcher makes much simpler than an alternate view you have to bring up, especially if that alternate view also obscures all of your windows. I will also say I find workspaces a hard to use UI, as I always lose context when I have to switch workspace, but maybe this is just how my mind works. And the idea of one-task-per-workspace has never worked well for me, as there are several apps that I use in every task, such as chat or email while I'm coding and while doing a presentation and while writing some design. It also seems to require a lot of setup and discipline. Finally, as a nitpick, moving apps to a different workspace instead of minimizing to taskbar/systray seems like much more work to me. Personally I'm a huge fan of Win7's grouped taskbar with window previews, along with its window snap support (extended in Win 10).
- shiroiushi 3y ago
  I'd say workspaces aren't for everyone, and you're right: they require setup and discipline or else the context switching is too disruptive. I think they're good if you can organize them effectively with separate tasks on the different workspaces, such that you don't need to switch between them frequently: this way, you can minimize distractions from other tasks that you're not working on currently, and might not work on for hours or days even. For the chat and email stuff, as long as you have screen space (or if you don't mind them going to the background sometimes), you can set those windows to be on every workspace. KDE has a thumbtack icon that you can click in the window bar to make that window show on every desktop.
- Zambyte 3y ago
  > Finally, as a nitpick, moving apps to a different workspace instead of minimizing to taskbar/systray seems like much more work to me. I specifically want to reply to this, because it is not at all how I use workspaces. I almost never find myself moving an application from one workspace to another. Instead, I switch to a new workspace before opening the application (causing the application to open on the new workspace), unless I know I want to use the new application at the same time as an application on an existing workspace. Switching workspaces essentially replaces alt+tab in my workflow.

wkat4242 3y ago

I do something very similar in KDE with a whole bunch of virtual desktops. Though I do use a taskbar because I like the overview of it but I don't actually use it to switch tasks :) I always thought Gnome was not very useful for this because workspaces are created on the fly whereas I want to have them spatially oriented in a fixed grid that persists on every boot with the right application tiles in them. And I have hotkeys mapped to each one directly on the numpad (without key combos, I hate those). So my numpad is not a numpad at all but a workspace switcher :P The problem with the gnome design philosophy is that it only works for you if you agree with them on everything. If you're pretty opinionated yourself (as I am and it sounds like you are too), opinionated software only works well if you have the exact same opinions as its creators. With something as complex as a DE this will run into many mismatches quickly. This is why configurable software is so great if you're not willing to compromise on how you want things.

the_why_of_y 3y ago
Current versions of Gnome allow setting a fixed number of workspaces in Settings, Multitasking. To configure hotkeys, you have to set some dconf entries manually, with dconf-editor or gsettings from a terminal: > gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-to-workspace-1 "[\"<Super>F1\"]"

tsimionescu 3y ago

I absolutely agree that it's nice for this to exist as an option for users who are used to it. I'm a somewhat heavy emacs user, so I'm not at all opposed to esoteric workflows. But I think it's clearly proven to be a bad design as a default. Discoverability is very important, especially to people who work a lot with a mouse. And using multiple apps at the same time is a very common work flow, one that an always-on-screen task switcher makes much simpler than an alternate view you have to bring up, especially if that alternate view also obscures all of your windows. I will also say I find workspaces a hard to use UI, as I always lose context when I have to switch workspace, but maybe this is just how my mind works. And the idea of one-task-per-workspace has never worked well for me, as there are several apps that I use in every task, such as chat or email while I'm coding and while doing a presentation and while writing some design. It also seems to require a lot of setup and discipline. Finally, as a nitpick, moving apps to a different workspace instead of minimizing to taskbar/systray seems like much more work to me. Personally I'm a huge fan of Win7's grouped taskbar with window previews, along with its window snap support (extended in Win 10).

shiroiushi 3y ago
I'd say workspaces aren't for everyone, and you're right: they require setup and discipline or else the context switching is too disruptive. I think they're good if you can organize them effectively with separate tasks on the different workspaces, such that you don't need to switch between them frequently: this way, you can minimize distractions from other tasks that you're not working on currently, and might not work on for hours or days even. For the chat and email stuff, as long as you have screen space (or if you don't mind them going to the background sometimes), you can set those windows to be on every workspace. KDE has a thumbtack icon that you can click in the window bar to make that window show on every desktop.
Zambyte 3y ago
> Finally, as a nitpick, moving apps to a different workspace instead of minimizing to taskbar/systray seems like much more work to me. I specifically want to reply to this, because it is not at all how I use workspaces. I almost never find myself moving an application from one workspace to another. Instead, I switch to a new workspace before opening the application (causing the application to open on the new workspace), unless I know I want to use the new application at the same time as an application on an existing workspace. Switching workspaces essentially replaces alt+tab in my workflow.