I gave it a fair shot for about a year, using vanilla GNOME with no extensions. While I eventually became somewhat proficient, it’s just not good.

Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.

How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.

Did I do something wrong? Is it meant for you to only ever have a couple applications open?

I’d love to hear from people that use it and thrive in it.

  • alfisya@lemm.ee
    331·
    1 year ago

    Switching between a few workspaces looks cool, but once you have 10+ programs open, it becomes an unmanageable hell that requires memorizing which workspace each application is in and which hotkey you have each application set to.

    Alt+Tab or Super+Tab is your friend. Surely you dont have 10 workspace for 10 windows. Also probably just dont isolate Alt+Tab for each workspace.

    How is this better than simply having icons on the taskbar? By the way, the taskbar still exists in GNOME! It’s just empty and seems to take up space at the top for no apparent reason other than displaying the time.

    GNOME panel definitely takes significantly less space than KDE or Windows takbar. Also at least me, even on Windows I barely click taskbar icon to switch window, alt+tab is faster

    But everything is each for their own. If vanilla GNOME doesnt work for you, just install extension or move to another DE. Cheers!

    • shapis@lemmy.mlOP
      10·
      1 year ago

      Surely you dont have 10 workspace for 10 windows.

      Am I not supposed to?

      This is kind of the problem, if you add multiple apps in a random workspace, the only way I can think of to know which apps are in the background of that workspace is to memorize it. Which feels bad having to use my brain for that instead of focusing on whatever I’m doing.

      If vanilla GNOME doesnt work for you, just install extension or move to another DE.

      I’m trying dash to panel now, it seems to fix quite a few of my gripes.

      • alfisya@lemm.ee
        5·
        1 year ago

        Am I not supposed to?

        Hmm, problably so. Its called “workspace”, each space should contain apps/windows that related/required for that work. For example, I have to write a report about my office quarterly financial. On workspace 1, i open all opened apps firefox, geary, nautilus. On workspace 2, i open libreoffice, calculator, another nautilus window, another firefox window. If I want to download game on steam, i open steam on workspace 3. So on and so forth

      • SillyBanana@lemmy.world
        1·
        1 year ago

        the only way I can think of to know which apps are in the background of that workspace is to memorize it

        If you press Meta key and scroll, it shows all windows in each workspace. I think that’s also in vanilla, not one of my many extensions, haha.