I understand where you’re coming from, but I think I prefer the ease of use of something like KDE. I tried sway for a while, only to figure out that I am not really a tiling window manager type of person :)
The one thing I really liked about sway/i3 was having numbered spaces. The tiling I could take or leave, sometimes it was annoying if you hadn’t put in rules for an app. E.g. gimp used to have multiple windows back in the day and it was a bit of a mess
So for the work spaces I setup, I did 1 for general, 2 for web browser, 3 for code editor, etc. I really liked that and it became muscle memory.
I’ve got a Mac for my job provided by work and I’ve done the same thing and setup workspaces in the same way. I use Ctrl+number to get to a space.
Might be worth an experiment setting up key binds to take you to a specific workspace. I think you’d like it! :)
I don’t have time right now to read all the post, i only read up to the desktop grid, but i have to ask: have you ever heard about i3wm? I think you might like it.
And if you do know it, do you know of any way to implement a desktop grid? I have the same problem you have with alt+tab and it would be the best thing ever
I don’t really remember how to do it, but think I remember there was a way to map ctrl+meta+down to workspace + 3, and ctrl+meta+up to workspace -3, which gave the same effect. I’ll see if I can find it
do you have a numpad? wouldn’t that make more sense? I usually use the numpad to assign the position of a window. meta+7 is in the upper left corner, meta+6 is on the right, etc. but it would work with workspaces as well
Strangely enough, although I could’ve sworn there was a simple command for that, I could only find scripts. You can use them if you want, should be easy to find, but a surprising workaround someone mentioned was using the numpad as the grid.
I really like that you found a way to utilize the virtual desktop grid. I really love the idea and I can’t wait for plasma 6 to improve upon it but right now I haven’t used it much.
you wrote that it’s hard to reach meta+9 (win+9) but if you have a numpad and use both hands it doesn’t really matter which number you want to reach. It’s always the same distance away. file browser is always at meta+1, browser is at meta+2, etc. I can’t move up and down like you can but I don’t have to. Even if I hadn’t have a numpad, I’d still have two hands and meta+9 wouldn’t be too far away.
In short, I guess I want to say that I have found my way and I really appreciate your write up about your way but to me it sounds too complicated. Moreover, the task manager (kde, not windows. different things) is just a mouse move away and I can reach any app I want to. Moreover, Plasma Drawer is reachable within a meta click and has all apps. It’s not yet as good as GNOME’s but it’s getting there.
Yes, my way is extremely confusing, even more than I thought before writing this. That picture with the firefox workspace in the middle really made it hit home. I don’t recommend anyone to follow it.
Using the numpad as a grid workspace is an amazing idea I’d never thought of!
Not really my kind of thing since I don’t really like to move my wrists much as I use my pc, but I’ve gotta admit, when I first saw it while I was researching for another commenter I just looked at my numpad and thought “genius”. I had a grid in my keyboard and hadn’t even noticed it. Maybe if I had known that a few years ago I would have used it, but nowadays, I prefer the workflow I have. Thanks for the amazing comment, nevertheless!
Yeah, but that old technology is what still lets me run a 13 year old version of Adobe creative suite. If that ever changes I will have to learn something new!
This is kinda how I feel about Windows these days. It’s interface, directory structure, shudder the registry, user specific apps (from MS Store or Winget), buttons being inserted into the menu bars on some apps, but not others, button sizes being different sizes, some parts still using the Metro interface. The whole thing either needs a re-write, or should be dropped and something new to replace it. Don’t even get me started on things like the eventvwr hanging for 20 seconds after it opens, event tracer API, their in-house abandonment of powershell modules once powershell was open sourced, Windows containers being a disaster, etc.
The problem is that so much critical infrastructure around the world relies on ancient Windows software. I’m pretty sure their backwards compatibility is one of the reasons there’s so much inconsistency in Windows, and every iteration seems to just add more bloat on top.
They hired the man behind systemd (controversial, I know, but he does have a vision). I hope they listen to him and/or he starts directing how they should do things from the ground-up.
There was a TCP/IP bug that shared it’s exploit on versions of windows from windows for workgroups 3.11 (which you ran from the DOS prompt by typing ‘win’) through to windows 7 (which was the new hotness at the time)
That’s a bug conserved from the very first Microsoft implementation of TCP/IP through to the state of the art at the time
People were surprised at the time that it wasn’t a windows NT bug
That’s surprising, as I think the first Windows TCP/IP stack was ported over from BSD by Spider Systems (pretty sure that’s why it still has things like “/etc/hosts” - albeit under System32). Wonder if the bug was in BSD and never backported (cross ported?).
This was about to be my response. Sometimes, when a 5.1 surround mix is forced into stereo output, it causes the ‘speech’ channel to sound quieter than it should.
Try sticking to non-surrounds sources OP if you don’t have surround setup
i have 2 screens, i use a grid of 20 desktops for each screen. the grids are synced between the screens, if i go left on one screen, it goes left on the other
i have tiling; i use bismuth to add the tiling to kwin. i have set up shortcuts like meta+f makes a window float etc
i have an mx master mouse with the thumb button and other configurable buttons. i have logiops to remap those. clicking the thumb button will bring up the desktop grid. thumb+up goes a desktop up, etc… this is extremely comfortable to use
i have configured the task manager in the panel to only show apps opened in the current virtual desktop. this way i can have a Firefox for each row for example.
That’s very interesting, especially the mouse part. I hadn’t thought about remapping its buttons to anything related to KDE, and unfortunately I don’t think that is possible in mine.
I am also surprised you can manage 20 desktops in two monitors. How much ram do you have, both in your brain and in your computer?! And the part where the grid is synced between the screens also feels a little weird to me, but even though I only use a single monitor, I can definitely see the appeal. Obviously, the biggest issue with doing that is that you have to have corresponding workspaces on both monitors at all times, but with 20 workspaces on each side, you can certainly get a lot of combinations. You could get two instances of firefox open in a different sets of workspaces, one for work and another for leisure, for instance. Firefox profiles are great for that!
Even then, I need to say it, 20 desktops on each side is a lot. For such a large number, you could consider activities, but since you seem to change desktop through the desktop grid, with no need for shortcuts, I can see how it becomes more manageable. Your setup seems very creative and unusual, at least for me.
the mouse part is the part i like most. usually people use this kind of workflow to not use the mouse… i did the opposite. in kde with meta+left click you can move windows between monitors or to reorder them in the tiling. and with meta+right click you can resize them. this means that opening 2 windows will open them with half screen for each (because of the tiling) but with meta + mouse i can reduce one window (and thus enlarging the other), it’s very fast and very convenient.
the 20 desktops are a lot but i don’t use them all, i generally organize my work in rows. but sometimes i use the desktops differently and i like to have that kind of flexibility.
i actually used 2 activities to separate work and personal, with 2 separated Firefox profiles. so i had 40 desktops for personal and 40 for work… :)
but activities have their own set of problems, like, there is no shortcut to send a window to another activity, you have to do it from the menu in the panel. and after a reboot, sometimes windows get thrown into the wrong activity, and that’s very annoying.
to add a bit of context, i’m a software engineer, and the combination i use most is vscode on one monitor and Firefox in the other. with maybe dolphin on a neighbor desktop. this repeated 4/5 times depending on how many projects i’m working on.
Wow, now that’s a very intricate setup. The fact that the windows don’t go to their corresponding activity seems weird, maybe it’s a bug? Seems like it’d be hard to find the cause, though.
Also, when you reboot, do the windows with different firefox instances stay with the same tabs open? Are the profiles kept? Since I prefer to start on a clean slate, I start a new session and simply autostart my usual apps which are bound to their respective desktops. But if even those two are kept, it does seem pretty damn great. Pretty similar to suspending, in a way. Too bad about the activities part though.
yes after a reboot stuff gets reopened in the same place it was (sometimes some windows do not, is not 100% stable). but only windows that support saving themselves into the session get reopened, stuff like vscode or Spotify do not. Firefox and kde stuff yes.
Firefox is very stable in this regard, it always reopens all the windows with all the tabs in the right desktops.
the activity part is definitely a bug, its a kde + X bug and it is in wontfix state. i hope they will rework this feature on plasma 6 with Wayland
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