For me it’s:
- Workstuff
- Games
- Main browser for mail, etc.
- All the messenger apps
Music player lives in yakuake dropdown terminal.
Why bother with desktops?
Embrace sway and exec swaymsg “layout tabbed”
Only one program on the screen at a time.
I’m pretty sure that most sway users have multiple virtual desktops, which I suspect is what OP is talking about when he says “desktop”. Not physical monitors.
That would suck when comparing between windows.
Or you could just use meld and a single screen makes it trivial to compare and apply differences
Or take screenshots and print them off and compare the two sheets of paper using a highlighter to mark them up. Easy!
I once worked for a researcher who probably did a bunch of his programming in the 1970s or so, when I guess he developed his habits. He did not like to review code onscreen. All of the code I wrote for him he wanted printed out so that he could examine and mark it up and take notes with a highlighter and pens.
I guess the workflow worked for him.
I have mine as
- Fronted
- Backend
- Database
- Browser
- Music
- Project management
- Messaging/Email
All bound to Meta+h/j/k/l/y/u/i and have a bash function to run and configured to go to the right places. KDE is good
What’s the bash function doing? Moving windows to the right desktops when they’re open? Do you have them open on system startup?
Moving windows to the right desktops when they’re open?
You can do that with Window Rules in KDE.
Ah I’ve found my people, I’m doing 9 atm to complete a 3x3 square in the overview. Only on my laptop though, using the trackpad guestures to switch or overview.
1: Terminal 2: Editor 3: Git
4: Terminal 5: Browser 6: Browser
7: Terminal 8: Any GUI 9: RestThis but with other order and Gnome. Fucking love workspaces.
Desktop 1 - terminals Desktop 2 - browser Desktop 3 - files Desktop 4+ whatever programs I’m using
Reminds me of compiz in the old school days. The desktop cube was the (impractical) shit!
Can’t tell from the screenshot (need moar pixels), but that reminds me of the old software that would give Windows XP, 6 workspaces… It was so amazing but would utterly kill my old PIII with 192MB of RAM.
Desktop 1: the shit I’m meant to be doing Desktop 2: the shit I’m actually doing
friendship ended with workspaces/virtual-deskltops, now tags are my best friend
what’s that
In a broad sense tags are like workspaces but one can toggle to view multiple of those at the same time. One can do much more but that is the gist of it.
which compositor you’re using tag with?
You sick! Media players go on workspace 10!
Nah, music players get minimised to the status panel.
Can’t minimize soma.fm
You can if you’re listening to it in VLC or Clementine.
Lol you use VLC? I’m using Kew running on Cool Retro Term.
I never got into these at all. My coworker thought it was crazy that I never did. I just get a bigger monitor to fit all my stuff, lol. Right now, it’s a 49" ultrawide and have no issues.
You only use four virtual desktops‽
😬
I sometimes use virtual desktops if I have a lot of stuff going on at once. Though, with a duel monitor set up, I hardly need it. My commands are a simple Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right Arrow Keys
At work I tend to have like 3 workspaces just for stuff I need to be doing. Different projects. My second monitor tends to be reserved for the documentation etc that I need for that project. Then there are multiple workspaces with terminals for ssh, screenshares, and other terminal hackeroni. And one for messages etc.
I prefer to use i3 or away for this but unfortunately not every workplace lets you have that
I tried using them but in the end it becomes too much of a hassle. I tried doing a work-out work kind of setup with my laptop but it’s more cumbersome to maintain than just closing it all
They’re great for work from home, especially when sharing screens. My background and task panel changes when I change desktops, and a script controls which Firefox profile is the default.
So one VD is work, another is play.
Yep, really only use them at home
-Native desktop is for random shit
-“Fun” is for games, and… Fun stuff
-“Work Shit” is work shit
-“Bidness” is for home stuff that’s not necessarily mindless entertainment. Banking, home projects, etc
“Schoo” is for college
Bidness desktop is the only one that’s a giant beast. So many windows and tabs, each FF instance is relating to a home project with a ton of tabs, can be car shit, electronics, networking, whatever. So much shit. It’s like having too many tabs open but exponentially bad.
1 games 2 fedi (lemmy and masto clirnt) 3 mail 4 emacs 5 browser 6 chats 7 steam 8 music 9 jellyfin
Does anyone else never use them ever?
Multi-monitor setups make more sense to me, but I don’t even use that anymore after switching to a 65" 4K gaming OLED as my primary monitor. Its like having four 32" 1080p monitors arranged in a grid, except without any bezels. Plenty of screen real estate for anything I need to do.
For more than a decade I developed a 3x3 grid with intuitive shortcuts with one monitor, a very visual space distribution, and I do not change it for anything (even when docking my laptop I use only the main monitor, I find it much more mentally efficient, since desktop swaping is faster than moving my head)
I use both
Quad monitors + GNOME workspaces are awesome
Never used them in my life and I’ve been machine computing over 25 years. Always one monitor, one desktop. I close shit I dont need regularly, I click on icons on the tab bar to get to the app I need. The tab bar is wide enough to hold like 30+ of them. Why do I need more than one desktop? Windows go over another, the tab bar shows everything I have open. Why switch? I never got it.
Tiling WMs are just faster. So much faster. They remove so much annoyance it’s really hard to put it to words. Binding programs to workspaces is what finally sealed the deal for me.
Alt+tab (and alt+shift+tab) is all you need imo.
Ctrl+tab for paging through browser tabs is helpful too.
I see it like this: alt+tab only toggles among the two latest things, on a 3x3 grid win+arrows, on a tidy usage of some fixed desktops (one for browser, one for mail, one for current subject…), you have inmediate swaps to multiple relevant programs, not just the latest which also mutates… also it adds some visual mental distribution which I find extremely efficient… never went back and I struggle/frustrate with looking for stuff in a fixed bar… (I had to use quite often both types, so I feel the difference)
alt+tab only toggles among the two latest things
This is simply untrue in KDE. Can’t speak for Windows or other DEs.
If I have more apps open on at same desktop I can switch to other apps without disturbing the setup. So for example I have a terminal with build output, my app in a browser and inspector open at the same time. I can switch to all the other apps without moving any of it. I just jump back to this workspace and everything is still in the same place. With single desktop if I switch to Firefox I have to bright all 3 windows to the top separately.
With two monitors I can have documentation open in a browser right next to my IDE, both fullscreen. Or have the IDE and my app open. Or a website and it’s logs. Or IDE and Postman. I have multiple firefox windows and terminals open at the same time. This doesn’t work well with single monitor/single desktop because it’s hard to keep track which window is which. If you only use one app at a time (like you only switch between firefox, steam and spotify) one desktop is perfectly fine. When you do bunch of stuff at the same time it gets messy real quick.
How far do you even have to be to use a 65" screen? Doesn’t seem practical at all for desktop use.
Never once used them. My spouse has them on her mac book, which I know because she’ll randomly just lose whatever she’s doing and have some video playing that she can’t find again for another few minutes. So other than a minute of entertainment once every few months, not sure why they even exist.
TIL þere exist people who don’t use virtual desktops.
How do you even?
Does anyone else never use them ever?
Indispensable on laptop computers!
