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?
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
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.
What do you think of niri? I think i’m of a similar mind. I switched to i3 10ish years ago, and could never go back to a floating WM. Now on sway and am perfectly content with my workflow. I’m curious to try out niri, but haven’t really been that motivated to try it.
First, two days ago there there was a post that might interest you (BTW I still don’t get how to link properly in Lemmy): https://lemmy.ml/post/53788147 - Opinions on Niri (and scrollable window managers)?
I always found Niri intriguing. But never tried this type of window managing, because two reasons: a) if windows are layed out out of my view, I still have to scroll or search otherwise, so it is it really a win against floating windows? At least this was my thought process, and b) the automatic tiling is in my flesh and blood, not sure how this would affect me as my thinking and every operation is hard wired to it. But tiling of windows comes with their own problems as you know.
Opening a window that is basically fullscreen or its own size without getting tiled, has its pros. I don’t use Niri, but the KDE extension “Karousel” works pretty well so far. I can still float single window or put them in a stack, or tile (up and bottom part of a group), and I still have my multiple desktops. So it’s a bit weird at the moment, but maybe just need time to get used to it and to rewire some of my brain. It’s too early to talk about experience and what issues could popup. This is my current situation and thoughts about the Niri concept (just not Niri directly).
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.
Back in the days when I used a laptop, I would have really needed tiling window managers. Wish I knew this in 2010 or so.
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.
Do you use the terminal for launching other programs or are you doing things from inside the terminal itself?
Id guess from the terminal itself
Look into:
- fish
- zoxide
- starship
- eza (with ls alias)
- helix editor (or neovim, helix doesn’t need setup)
- yazi file explorer
- many many more
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)
How about Apple M-series hardware with Asahi and Toshy?
Using Waybar I have a detailed clock and a sound widget on bottom right corner of my screen, and left of that is space for “systray” icons.
My windows have a title bar, that show the icon and title, and a close button.
No task bar or other navigation elements on the screen or the windows.
I make heavy use of Alt+Drag actions for resizing moving windows around and constantly have windows rolled up so only the title bar is showing. I never minimize windows and rarely use fullscreen.
For accessing applications in a convenient way I use the root menu on desktop rightclick and the client menu on middleclick.
The whole setup is fully customized and built from ground up to be as least annoying and intrusive as possible.
This is basically my setup since ca. 15-20 years now. Started with Openbox on Debian and since 2008 Arch Linux, and around 2-3 years ago I switched over to labwc on Wayland which allowed me to re-create what I used on Openbox.
You seem to have a ton of screen real estate to work with. Is your monitor really big? I feel like using a small laptop influences what I do a lot since I’m trying to maximize my screen space.
My desktop computer monitor is a 28 inch 4K screen, so yes, it is on the upper end of the median screen size, I guess. I ran Hyprland on my laptop (13 inch 1080p) for some time but I like my environment harmonized, so I use the same configuration there, too.
For easier management I make use of labwc’s areas and snapping feature to have windows proportionally the same size on both screens. The areas use percentages by default, which makes it quite easy. I have top, bottom, left, and right, the four corner quarters and two different center regions.
On my laptop I usually only use the center region for the browser.
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.
I use niri since it solves the issues of positioning that you have with stacking window managers and the amount of organization needed for a tiling window manager. I can add many related windows to the same row and use super+the horizontal scroll on my mouse to scroll between windows, and the normal scroll to scroll between workspaces. I have common apps and shortcuts bound to hotkeys, but I prefer a mainly mouse-driven workflow so for everything else I am just dragging things around.
In my browser I have a collapsed left sidebar for tabs and a collapsed top bar for navigation which I can hover to reveal, so all I see by default is the webpage.
I have windows like desktop navigation, but have EVERYTHING hotkeyed with the maximize, minimize, exit bar barely a whisper of a thing with none of the aforementioned buttons so I can drag windows, but other than that, all hotkeys. Even almost all if my software is hotkeyed.
I see what you mean. You get rid of the buttons so you can click and drag the window bar without accidentally clicking them right? I’ve got everything so smushed into one bar it’s like the opposite. Altho I really don’t USE the buttons since I have it in fullscreen all the time and just close things from the Gnome task switcher. So maybe I’ll remove my buttons too. Might be a good idea.
This is what I mean by the bar being all smushed together:
That’s the entire screen. I messed with the browser settings to make it so I had more screen space for the actual webpage.
Manual tiling/placement and focus with a full sized keyboard, giving me one-key-combo focus of any window on the screen, and exact placement/sizing. Unfortunately most window managers and compositors lack support for this. Tiling WMs are stubbornly self-arranging or only support swapping windows, which they’ll later rearrange.
i3 user detected. :D
Actually not… but I’ll have to check it out now!
i3wm https://i3wm.org/ however it’s X11 only, no Wayland support. Sway https://swaywm.org/ is a close replacement for i3, but for Wayland. Almost a drop in replacement. I didn’t use it for long time, because I actually wanted to have automatic tiling and i3 was too much manual work for my taste. But from the way you describe it, it reminded me how a typical i3 user would respond.
I seriously learned how to use computers on Windows XP, so any computer I set up for myself, I set up to be as similar to Windows XP as possible.
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.
I like the windows/kde style window navigation and always have a touchpad, not always a mouse. I’ll generally use what the system offers with some requirements:
- Changing between windows should be deterministic with no need to look at the screen
- You should be able to do as much as possible from each input method (keyboard/touchpad/mouse) but not require combining them for an action
- You should be able to do “emergency” actions (like locking or sound control) one-handed
Some general preferences:
- Single desktop
- Dock and top panel always visible, no fullscreen apps unless it’s a video
- Keyboard+touchpad shortcut to change between windows (not apps)
- Shortcut to bring up specific app from dock
- Touchpad shortcuts for sound and brightness control
- Shortcuts for moving windows between screens and snapping them to the sides
KDE and gnome can be configured for all of the above. Windows already does most of it. MacOS breaks almost everything and is surprisingly hard to configure (I don’t understand how it’s considered good ui). I haven’t tried tilling managers, they’ll probably pretty usable too.
I miss Bumptop
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.
Simple, decluttered and self-evident.
