I have used Linux on and off for 15 years. I consider myself a casual user and stuck to the mainstream DEs (mostly KDE, XFCE and some Cinnamon). Gnome has been a hurdle for me before and after the big version 40 changes, I couldn’t get my head around how they handled the workspaces and workflow. At some point I I tried out an extension hat changed all of it.

Material Shell

It moves the workspaces to a vertical panel and the programs onto a horizontal panel. In a workspace you can view the programs full screen or tile them.

Several Programs inside a Workspace. It’s basically they same way Gnome works. However for some reason it just makes sense in my brain. No idea why. (I’m looking at WMs that work in a similar way atm. Maybe I’ll take the plunge away from DEs at some point)

Has such a small change ever saved a Desktop Environment for you and is essential if you ever install it?

  • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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    11 months ago

    I really like compositor/wm/DE which allow for keyboard driven movement of windows between workspaces and workspaces between monitors. Especially the latter requirement is only met by a few wms, e.g. sway/i3, hyprland.

    I can’t stand it if switching to the next workspace all workspaces on all monitors change. This makes it annoying to use with a second monitor that mostly display the same windows (e.g. messaging, video, docs).

    • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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      11 months ago

      compositor/wm/DE which allow for keyboard driven movement of windows between workspaces and workspaces between monitors

      Wait isn’t that standard? It should be supported by all of them.

      • Chewy@discuss.tchncs.de
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        11 months ago

        I don’t think Gnome, KDE and XFCE support moving workspaces between monitors. They only support moving windows between workspaces and monitors.

        Sway/i3 have a single set of workspaces while most DEs have a set for each monitor. On these DEs switching between workspaces applies to all monitors.

        • lemmyvore@feddit.nl
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          11 months ago

          That’s true, most WMs have a simplistic workspace geometry, where they spread a workspace across all monitors (regardless of their placement). I suspect that, since the workspace abstraction comes above monitors it may not even be possible for them to have a workspace split between monitors.