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.

  • everett@lemmy.ml
    0·
    2 years 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

    I think a big part of the problem is Gnome’s limitation of a 1-dimensional workspace list. I don’t think I’d be able to use that many workspaces in a flat list, Gnome/Mac style, though I find a 4x2 grid of workspaces manageable. But of course I use a DE that has options. :)

    and which hotkey you have each application set to.

    I wonder if this is also part of the issue. If you’re arranging windows spatially across workspaces, it seems antithetical to use shortcuts to skip directly to one window or the other vs. moving through workspaces. Again, quickly navigating workspaces spatially is easy when your workspaces can be arranged into rows, and not just as a single long list.