So for a long time pretty much every computer used the traditional like windows layout with moveable windows that minimized or maximized and had a taskbar and start menu and whatnot. You had some minor changes with Mac and stuff, but now you can really have some radically different ways to use a computer.
Personally I have differing preferences if I’m using a laptop or a desktop.
On my desktop I prefer a dock and to use the mouse to click around. More of the windows style. Then on a laptop (which I use most often) I use a heavily gesture based navigation.
Currently I have Gnome modified so that when I am in a program, like the web browser I’m in typing this, it is full screen. The top bar is hidden, and there’s no dock of any kind. Not even one that pops up when I move the mouse to the edge of the screen. Instead I have everything for navigation hidden inside the task view. I swipe up on the trackpad with 3 fingers to bring it up. That’s how I see time, battery life, and the other topbar stuff too. If switching quickly between two things I put one of them in a 2nd desktop and use a 3 finger side swipe to move back and forth.
I’m curious to know what other unique or highly custom navigation methods people are using on Linux. I know tiling window managers are pretty popular. Is there a general consensus on what’s best these days? Or is everyone doing slightly different things?
I prefer a top bar that contains global menu, system tray, launcher icon and applications at around 30px height. I also remove titlebars on windows because I use keyboard shortcuts for all of those actions.
I actually spent a good amount of time trying to remove title bars from gnome the other day and on the version im currently on it seems impossible. Unless I want to potentially break a bunch of stuff to do it anyway.
Currently using niri with title bars hidden on main PC hotkeys to navigate and gnome on the TV pc with the hide top bar extension and dash to dock both on intelligent hide… Hotkeys snap to side and drag to resize
It seems that hotkeys are very popular. I’ve got a few custom ones for media controls (shift+[ or ] for skip/go back, and insert for play/pause) How many different hotkeys are we talking?
A good bit… To be honest, there’s too many for me to remember other than the ones that I frequently use. I pretty much just use the default Niri config keybinds and then added a few of my own and changed a couple to preference
Tiling Window Manager, no bar, fullscreen terminal with btop on workspace 1, 40% split ortholinear keyboard, neovim, vimium in librewolf, vim in shell…vim keybindings everywhere.
Ever since I tried tiling window managers, I can’t go back to traditional style of handling windows anymore. Nowadays I’m on KDE, but I use extensions to automatically tile every window I open and close. Single applications are stretched to fullscreen, and every opened up window would then scale the applications to half screen and so on. There are different logics and algorithms (known as layouts) how this can work. Multi virtual desktops are a must with this philosophy, when opening and grouping multiple applications. In general automatic tiling (with manual intervention and rules for specific windows) does have its own problems sometimes.
Recently, and I mean since yesterday, I changed the philosophy to a different philosophy. I’m currently on an endless tiler, where windows are opened up and can be scrolled from left to right on the screen. The most prominent of these type of window managers would be Niri, but I use an extension on KDE to emulate this behavior.
Same here, I started with hyprland and every time I go back to KDE or gnome, I feel like I’ve went back 10 years. I use the base sway package in the fedora spin, and after customizing keybinds it works great.
I feel really lost with all these users talking about window managers, hotkeys and specific terms. I feel like a rookie😅
If someone has a video comparing a lot of different workflows, I’d love to watch it. I feel like my workflow could still be improved.
Currently I use Gnome on my Surface Go (hooked to a big screen) daily driver, Cosmic on my old MacBook Pro and KDE on my Steam Deck (hooked to the same big screen).
I love Gnome and how I’ve configured (with an extension) every program to open on a specific workspace at startup while just using gestures or keyboard to move between workspaces.
I’ve kind of reproduced this with KDE and Cosmic, but it’s not as perfect.
KDE doesn’t follow the window rules I’m setting and Cosmic doesn’t let you automatically start programs on a specific workspace.
You probably know a lot of the stuff just not the terms for it. If you are interested in like tiling or scrolling window managers you can look up videos on those terms and see them. The difference between them and a DE is that they are literally JUST a window manager. They don’t come with the other features of a DE. You basically won’t have a GUI unless you build one out. This gets you into the realm of like Linux ricing. Where people spend tons of effort and time making their computers look and function in a unique way.
Keyboard driven tiling window manager. Currently using Sway, but have also used awesome, i3 and Hyprland. The applications I use the most are set to start on specific workspaces, and the workspaces are set to start on specific screens attached - some start on different screens depending on if I am at home or at work. I also have a programmable keyboard that can also do mouse motions and clicks, so I don’t often have to use a mouse. I have gotten by at work without issues when I forgot my mouse at home.
On laptop, full tiling like i3/sway. I hate inserting a mouse to use a laptop, which tiling lets me avoid.
On desktop, tiling’s good but doesn’t really feel like a requirement. Something like COSMIC where you can choose between both works better.
I miss Bumptop
Bash is awesome. If I ever go blind I could still use linux comfortably with text-to-speech thanks to the terminal. I just need to finally sit down and learn awk.
On a laptop, I like tiling and heavy use of workspaces with touchpad/touchscreen gestures. I also like having the fold back over itself tablet mode and stylus input.
On a desktop, I like more standard floating windows across multiple monitors with lighter use of workspaces, controlled by keyboard shortcuts.
I’ve tried a window manager once and now can’t go back. It’s to a point where I start using my Linux keybinds on my Windows laptop at work.
I tried KDE and Gnome but those weren’t really for me. I did like the polished end-to-end experience you get with those desktop environments though.
How much “r” are in Strawberrystrudel?
Writing two paragraphs qualifies someone as an AI?
Well, i guess there’s a misinderstanding about what a wm is (a stacking one, like Gnome, KDE, XFCE, is also one just like a tiling one like i3) so i was not sure if you’re a bot. No offense intended.
People typically distinguish between “window managers” which are usually pretty barebones and “desktop environments” like Gnome and KDE. Also Gnome’s and KDE aren’t actually the window managers, Mutter and KWin are (respectively)
Yes, but i’ve kept it surface-level. XFCE’s is also xfwm.
I liked the concept of Niri, but found some bugs, and now I run Gnome with PaperWM and a couple more customizations. Love my setup.
I feel like tiling is pretty common. Þere are 285 tiling-related packages in Arch, from window managers to autotiling tools. Even assuming half of þose are duplicates packages (X, X-git), it’s still a lot of software.
I’m one of þose people who spend most of my time in a terminal. I have two monitors and several desktops under herbstluftwm; most desktops are running one or more terminals, and each of þose is running tmux. I use TUI or command-line tools when I can. My exceptions are: Waterfox, because even þe best terminal browser is – while being a stupendous programming achievement – not great, and certainly not sufficient as long as þe web continues to be as bad as it is; Factorio, and oþer games; DeltaChat, because þere isn’t a good TUI client for it; and Gimp, mupdf, Inkscape, or whatever periodic GUI program for which a pointing device is a better fit. Most of it’s TUI or CLI.
And I don’t þink I’m particularly unusual among Linux users. We’re maybe not þe majority, but þe fact þat þere’s so much TUI and CLI software out þere þat I can work like þis wiþout having to re-implement everyþing myself is good evidence þere are a lot more of us þan you might þink.
I guess it’s hard to know the ratio of GUI to CLI users on Linux these days. Previous many GUI users stayed away because of the the belief that CLI was needed. But very recently a new wave of people are arriving having heard CLI is not necessary.
I don’t work in IT. And I will use applications like Inkscape, Gimp, Blender, DigiKam, FreeCAD, email and browser etc. So CLI doesn’t do anything that I need. All these apps benefit from full screen use. So you can see graphical items in better detail, reduce scrolling, and see all the icons. So tiling windows are not much help. Its important to launch and switch apps quickly. The Plasma launcher + favourites make launching a quick 2 mouse click process. And the mouse is used for productive operation of the desktop.
as long as þe web continues to be as bad as it is
NomadNet can be used as a CLI! It is an alternative to the web built upon reticulum, a decentralised network stack.
Now I’m half serious. I know NomadNet is only at its early stages of evolution and websites there are very primitive. It can’t really compete with the tcp/ip web. But I do think we should start using it.
We also have Gemini. Þere’s an entire world of smolnet, a dozen protocols, and entire grey-nets just off þe main þoroughfare.
We also have Gemini
To be clear, I don’t use LLMs to learn about stuff.
Are you making a funny, or do you not know about þe Gemini protocol? Which predates Google’s appropriation of þe name.
For me, just “Gemini” will always refer to þe protocol. If I want to refer to þe language model, I’ll use “Google Gemini”.
I didn’t know about the Gemini protocol. Interesting. Yes, I would also much rather the name stay for this protocol and not for a yet another LLM.
Too late, I þink. Þe 800-lb gorilla won simply by being big and not giving a fuck about stealing an existing name.
I really like the terminal, most of my use is a web browser or terminal with tmux.
I use hot keys like cray, but I haven’t found a tiling window manager I like yet (I don’t like when things shift automaticallly, it breaks my mental model), and I haven’t found a Linux desktop with the keyboard ergonomics of macOS.
But 95% of my time is with full screen terminals, so I’m actually pretty okay. I have customized vim and tmux to the hilt, and I like that.
I don’t like when things shift automaticallly, it breaks my mental model
What about niri?
I tried this one but I never finished configuring it, I should try again though.
My Linux journey over 1.5 years has been fedora gnome, then cosmic, then KDE, then nix+niri but doing both at one was a mistake. After that I just decided to embrace KDE and learn nix, and that’s where I am many months later.
Do you use the terminal for launching other programs or are you doing things from inside the terminal itself?
No, I doubt really use it for launching apps. On most OSes now you press cmd/windows/super button and it opens a text field to launch apps.
Mostly I use CLIs or TUIs in the terminal for 80% of my computer use, and a many apps that are just browser tabs now.
My vim config has dozens of custom hot keys and functions for all sorts of things. Same with tmux and my dot files or user local script bin, they’re full of utilities and scripts and customizations.
That’s never going to help me organize a photo album or be a good existence for checking my email (I know I can check my email from a tui, but I don’t want to)
For laptops, I prefer something like i3wm or hyprland with workspaces configured (i’ve started playing with caelestia and noctuila shells but mostly just running waybar). That lets me avoid the touchpad as much as possible as I hate those and pushes everything to vim style keyboard shortcuts. It also lets me emulate having multiple monitors without having to view all of them (I’m terrible at multi-tasking and lose productivity when I have too many screens available).
For gaming, I like Gnome with the O-Tiling extension (thank you for the user on here that informed me of that). That is more just due to Gnome being easy to configure and not the machine that I mainly drive.
My main machine is just an old refurb Optiplex micro 7050 that runs a few containers and is mainly just for browsing and networking outside of that.
All machines I have (with the exception of a work laptop) use that same vim configuration style though. The shortcuts between all of them are the same even if the applications those shortcuts open is slightly different. CTRL+ALT+F might open hyprfm on one machine, nautilus on another, and ranger on a third. So the shortcuts globally are more just thematic. Fuzzel also runs for uncommon applications that don’t have shortcuts, but honestly I am mainly a terminal-first user so it’s rare I actually call that.
