Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 6:44 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844)
In reply to: Day: Status Icons and GNOME by mathstuf
Parent article: Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Yeah, I keep wondering if/when tiling WMs are going to become more mainstream. Most of them solve _all_ the problems that _everyone_ in this thread is complaining about. But I suppose that folks in this thread already know/can find out how to fix these problems in GNOME, but are nevertheless complaining on behalf of less-competent users who would never change the defaults, so tiling window managers might not be so useful there either.

I have six monitors at work, and am using two of them for "per-project" workspaces that are chained together (i.e. when I press <Super-1>, one monitor jumps to workspace 1 and another jumps to workspace 11; <Super-2> changes to workspaces 2 and 12; etc). The other monitors either have a single workspace assigned to them, or (for my web browser monitor) I create and destroy workspaces dynamically. The workspaces on my browser monitor don't have a keyboard shortcut, since there are typically dozens of browser windows open that monitor (each on their own workspace), so I have a program that finds the titles of all of my browser windows, displays them in a dmenu, and whisks me to the workspace holding that browser window. Pure productivity bliss, not counting the millions of hours getting my setup to be this awesome. (Using the i3 window manager, but I'm sure any other tiling WM would work).

But the reason this works so well is that i3 has barely changed its default behaviour since the project started almost a decade ago. The project is mostly adding new features (like workspace saving and configuration options) and fixing bugs.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 7:05 UTC (Thu) by jem (subscriber, #24231) [Link] (3 responses)

> Yeah, I keep wondering if/when tiling WMs are going to become more mainstream. Most of them solve _all_ the problems that _everyone_ in this thread is complaining about.

Tiling window managers are not for everyone. If you value portability in a laptop, then you'll have to compromise on screen size. With a small screen you end up switching between full screen windows.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 9:48 UTC (Thu) by jubal (subscriber, #67202) [Link] (1 responses)

Why choose one or another when you can have both in gnome-shell? :-)

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 9:59 UTC (Thu) by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844) [Link]

Or in i3 :) I do also have a tiny laptop (which looks hilarious next to my 6-monitor workstation) and use it mostly the way jem describes: one window per workspace, each one taking up the whole screen. But I do have uses for multiple small windows on one workspace, even with a tiny screen.

It's convenient for me because I can use almost all the same keybindings as on my workstation, although I do see that this is a less compelling argument for folks who only use a laptop---which seems to be more and more people nowadays.

Day: Status Icons and GNOME

Posted Sep 7, 2017 12:48 UTC (Thu) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

I've used this setup since early 2010 from an eeePC to the triple monitor workstation. But, the keybindings are also very custom, so using anything else usually forces me to a mouse for more than basic things anyways.