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.

  • 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.

    • 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.

    • Mane25
      1·
      1 year ago

      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.

      The Activities screen shows you everything on each workspace? I tend to go for one workspace per task, rather than one per application and will typically have 2-4 in use at one time, once it gets to 5 it gets too much to keep track of (just as I am not good at multitasking 5 tasks in the real world)

      One thing that can help with workspace management is to set a static number of workspaces, and build a habit of keeping similar types of tasks in the same workspace (for example, when I used to work like this I always had 4 in total with my browser in workspace 1, and things I wanted to keep in the background like music players always went in workspace 4). I knew where everything was because I always put it in the same place.