Greetings, I come as an Ubuntu/Unity user and what has kept me around is the wonderful support for a 3x3 virtual desktop setup and hotkeys to move around the desktops in 2d space. Does anything like this exist in any of the modern DE’s? I would love to try it out with cinnamon, plasma, gnome etc but there are so many and I only seem to find screenshots depicting linear desktops.
@mikegioia kde and xfce support it natively. For gnome you have the material shell extension that brings a similar experience
light wm does not necessarily provide layout out of the box, but it may be scriptableThank you so much! I’m going to try those first two today. Appreciate it!
Confirming: KDE/Plasma has it natively. You can configure number of rows and columns, whether movement should be cyclic or not, and shortcuts to change desktop and to bring windows to other desktops. You can create and remove new virtual desktops on the spot by right-clicking the tray icon. Also shortcuts to get an overview of all desktops at once.
KDE also has a slightly different way of separating workspaces: “Activities” (which can co-exists with virtual desktops); although I don’t use it.
I have shortcuts to move to a desktop dx sx up dw, and i use activities to separate in the third dimension.
I have 2 monitors, and i use a grid 5x4. Activities are used to separate home / work.
I also use bismuth for tiling, so each desktop generally have only one window in it.
What’s the shortcut for xfce? The one I know is is a panel plugin.
Cinnamon also has it. As to window managers alone, fvwm has a grid layout with the viewport freely scrolling over the virt desktops. The upcoming wayland compositor Wayfire also has a grid layout.
About 10 years ago, I was using the Window manager Subtle which was very strongly built around a 3x3. I don’t believe the development has remained very active but it might still run properly if you want to try it out.