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.

  • vampatori
    3·
    1 year ago

    Yes, I love it! Really it’s the MacOS-like “Expose” feature that I find to be essential.

    I would advise against using workspaces though, I find those actually sort of go against the core idea of it IMO. There are a few things I’d really like added to it, but for the most-part when you get into it it’s great.

    My main desktop I have 4 monitors (I know, but once you start a monitor habit it’s really hard to not push it to the limit - this is only the beginning!) It roughly breaks down into:

    1. Primary work (usually a full-screen editor)
    2. Terminals (different windows, some for the project, some monitoring)
    3. Browsers - documentation, various services, my own code output
    4. Communication - signal, discord, what’s app (ugh), etc.

    The key, literally, is you just press the Super key and boom, you can see everything and if you want to interact with something it’s all available in just one click or a few of key presses away.

    On my laptop with just one screen, I find it equally invaluable, and is actually where I started to use it the most - once again, just one press of Super and I can see all the applications I have open and quickly select one or launch something.

    It’s replaced Alt + Tab for me - and I know they’ve made that better, and added Super + Tab, but none of them are as good as just pressing Super.

    The things I’d really love added to it are:

    • Better tiling (including quarter tiling). It’s a sad state of affairs when Windows has far better tiling than Gnome.
    • Super then Search, I’d like it to filter the windows it’s showing and shrink/hide the others, along with a simple way to choose one using the keyboard.
    • Rather than having an icon for each window, I also want the tooltip information to always be shown (e.g. vs code project) and for standard apps to expose better information for that (e.g. Gnome Terminal to expose its prompt/pwd) and/or have a specific mechanism by which apps could communicate.
    • Adding Quicksilver-like functionality to the launcher/search would be amazing. e.g.
      • Super
      • Sp… (auto-populates Spotify)
      • Tab
      • P… (auto-populates Play/Pause)
      • Return
    • Session restoration - it just doesn’t work at the moment for some reason. Some apps do, some don’t. Some go to their correct position/size, some don’t.
    • sab@kbin.social
      4·
      1 year ago

      I would advise against using workspaces […] My main desktop I have 4 monitors

      Hahaha, figures. I mostly only use my laptop monitor, and absolutely depend on workspaces in everything I do. I rarely have more than four open, but I really like that it’s flexible.

      For me the default Gnome workflow is fantastic. I feel like there are always two quick ways of doing anything I want, either with touch pad gestures or with the keyboard depending on situation. I get frustrated trying to use anything else.

      • vampatori
        1·
        1 year ago

        I did start with it and use it on a laptop, honestly I think that’s where it shines the most - but I guess the more windows you open the less useful it becomes. I think if there was a way to do the expose-like “view all things at once” (Super key) that worked across all workspaces, I’d be all over them. But as there’s no easy way to live view everything on all workspaces, I just don’t use them.