Does anyone actually like the default GNOME workflow?
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.
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.
This entry was edited (11 months ago)
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gamer
in reply to sudo_su • • •The large amount of settings are usually set to sane defaults, so you don’t have to change them. There are a lot of settings, but they’re all usually accessible via a GUI, so it’s not hard to change them. The customizability of KDE is it’s biggest strength.
If you like the way Gnome does everything, then you’ll be happy with it. Otherwise, you have no real option but to switch to another DE.
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in reply to shapis • • •shapis
in reply to mudamuda • • •PlexSheep
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shapis
in reply to PlexSheep • • •Indeed. I think the best thing I got out of trying to fully commit to vanilla GNOME was getting used to workspaces, went from never touching them to actually using them now, even with dash to panel, they're alright.
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PlexSheep
in reply to shapis • • •It's a pretty effective system.
Pro tip, if you're using multiple screens it can be helpful to disable the workspace features on the secondaries or to pin the windows on them
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0xtero
in reply to shapis • • •It's so frustratingly close to being excellent, clean desktop - but then it takes some really strange decisions with basic usability (like panel, taskbar, windows without controls etc).
Luckily those are easy to fix with couple of extensions.
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shapis
in reply to Yote.zip • • •Maybe cause the bar at the top causes you to slightly tilt your neck down a bit more on the laptop and that's a non issue on monitors?
Maybe cause with multiple monitors there isn't as much fiddling finding the right workspace?
That's a very interesting point.
edit: I just realized I completely misunderstood what you said, you said the opposite of how I interpreted it, my bad.
shapis
Unknown parent • • •Am I not supposed to?
This is kind of the problem, if you add multiple apps in a random workspace, the only way I can think of to know which apps are in the background of that workspace is to memorize it. Which feels bad having to use my brain for that instead of focusing on whatever I'm doing.
I'm trying dash to panel now, it seems to fix quite a few of my gripes.
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Spectacle8011
in reply to shapis • • •ALT+TABthrough them. I like that the top bar is uncluttered. I don't use the dock at all, but Activity Overview is sometimes useful. I can operate the desktop completely with my keyboard. It's also very minimal without too many options, and it looks pretty. I find it very usable.The only annoying thing was needing to manually create shortcuts inside of dconf for workspaces 5-10. I really don't know why they force you to do that...
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vampatori
in reply to shapis • • •I would advise against using workspaces though, I find those actually sort of go against the core idea of it IMO. There are a few things I'd really like added to it, but for the most-part when you get into it it's great.
My main desktop I have 4 monitors (I know, but once you start a monitor habit it's really hard to not push it to the limit - this is only the beginning!) It roughly breaks down into:
- Primary work (usually a full-screen editor)
- Terminals (different windows, some for the project, some monitoring)
- Browsers - documentation, various services, my own code output
- Communication - signal, discord, what's app (ugh), etc.
The key, literally, is you just press the Super key and boom, you can see everything and if you want to interact with something it's all available in just one click or a few of key presses away.On my laptop with just one screen, I find it equally inva... show more
I would advise against using workspaces though, I find those actually sort of go against the core idea of it IMO. There are a few things I'd really like added to it, but for the most-part when you get into it it's great.
My main desktop I have 4 monitors (I know, but once you start a monitor habit it's really hard to not push it to the limit - this is only the beginning!) It roughly breaks down into:
- Primary work (usually a full-screen editor)
- Terminals (different windows, some for the project, some monitoring)
- Browsers - documentation, various services, my own code output
- Communication - signal, discord, what's app (ugh), etc.
The key, literally, is you just press the Super key and boom, you can see everything and if you want to interact with something it's all available in just one click or a few of key presses away.On my laptop with just one screen, I find it equally invaluable, and is actually where I started to use it the most - once again, just one press of Super and I can see all the applications I have open and quickly select one or launch something.
It's replaced Alt + Tab for me - and I know they've made that better, and added Super + Tab, but none of them are as good as just pressing Super.
The things I'd really love added to it are:
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sab
in reply to vampatori • • •Hahaha, figures. I mostly only use my laptop monitor, and absolutely depend on workspaces in everything I do. I rarely have more than four open, but I really like that it's flexible.
For me the default Gnome workflow is fantastic. I feel like there are always two quick ways of doing anything I want, either with touch pad gestures or with the keyboard depending on situation. I get frustrated trying to use anything else.
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in reply to sab • • •BaalInvoker
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carly™
in reply to shapis • • •That said, while it's definitely not for everyone, I'm very comfortable with it. I like that everything feels "out of my way" unless I need it, and I find the Activities view to be easier for finding a minimized program at a glance than a taskbar.
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mudamuda
in reply to shapis • • •What makes things worse, there was no clear way to keep apps on the background when the main window is closed. It was seemed as antifeature. But that was a different world where weren't so much of internet service applications running on the background 24h a day. Now there is a background portal but with quite minimal support in the DE.
Meseta
in reply to shapis • • •I do all my window management inside of Tmux, which is effectively my actual window manager.
I've tried KDE in the past but I've never liked how it feels like a stepping stone for the Windows interface -- not a huge fan of pullout menus. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost twenty years so I don't have any love for that UX.
I used to use a lot of simple/tiling window managers when I was younger and more patient, Gnome feels similar to those in how it has very few bells and whistles to get in your way.
If only maintaining extensions was easier, it feels like every major release breaks every extension for something stupid like renaming a constant. The Gnome team seems to put very little consideration into making the JS extension API stable.
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Meseta
in reply to shapis • • •I do all my window management inside of Tmux, which is effectively my actual window manager.
I've tried KDE in the past but I've never liked how it feels like a stepping stone for the Windows interface -- not a huge fan of pullout menus. I've been using Linux exclusively for almost twenty years so I don't have any love for that UX.
I used to use a lot of simple/tiling window managers when I was younger and more patient, Gnome feels similar to those in how it has very few bells and whistles to get in your way.
If only maintaining extensions was easier, it feels like every major release breaks every extension for something stupid like renaming a constant. The Gnome team seems to put very little consideration into making the JS extension API stable.
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Crazyroostereye
in reply to shapis • • •So pure Gnome is the bare minimum and can work, but with extensions it can bekomm extremely good. In my opinion.
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everett
in reply to shapis • • •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. 😀
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.
Cryxtalix
in reply to shapis • • •I would also have windows snapped to half screens on the workspaces, so I really only need 5 workspaces. Considering I have a 3 monitor setup at home, I don't think I'll have too much of a problem since I can have 6 windows up at once. Still, juggling 10 bloody windows is going to be annoying whether it's GNOME or not.
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gamer
in reply to shapis • • •It always felt to me like the Gnome designers wanted to create a combination of Windows 8 Metro and Mac OS: The shittiest Windows UI ever combined with the ergonomics of Mac OS (which is foreign to Windows users) and the lack of customizability of Apple products. Hyper optimized for touch screens even though most Linux users are on a mouse&keyboard or laptop. Even the Steam Deck’s desktop mode is perfectly usuable despite KDE not being as optimized for touch as Gnome.
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Mane25
in reply to shapis • • •But I'm not everyone, of course, and I would say GNOME is not necessarily for everybody.
Good that you gave it a fair shot. I feel like a lot of people just throw a lot of extinctions at it first without trying to understand the vanilla workflow - I used to be one of them until I tried vanilla for about 3 months.
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aaaantoine
in reply to Mane25 • • •For example, I often switch between desktop speakers and headphones (where the dongle is always connected), and sometimes other audio devices. I installed the sound input/output chooser so I don't have to go into Settings every time I need to switch inputs. It saves me multiple clicks. But I get that not everyone needs immediate access to change audio devices, so why clutter the UI?
I've used both vanilla GNOME and the post-Unity Ubuntu spin on it. In either case I've grown accustomed to the Activities screen, quickly accessing it pressing the Super key, and using it to switch windows and manage full screen apps on different monitors.
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bluetoque
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aaaantoine
in reply to bluetoque • • •Mane25
in reply to aaaantoine • • •One extension I won't install is dash-to-dock or similar (I know some people like it and that's fine), because being made to switch to the Activities view once you have too many windows to alt+tab between provides a useful psychological prompt to close unused windows or move stuff to other workspaces. That's one of the things I most like about the GNOME workflow.
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SillyBanana
in reply to shapis • • •If you press Meta key and scroll, it shows all windows in each workspace. I think that's also in vanilla, not one of my many extensions, haha.
banazir
in reply to shapis • • •GNOME classic shell was ok, but when I installed KDE Plasma it was like coming home. Everything made sense and everything was where it needed to be. More or less.
In the end I'm just glad Linux has a variety of DEs to choose from. Even if you choose GNOME, you weirdo.
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ffhein
in reply to banazir • • •When Gnome 3 was announced I thought it was cool that they tried something new, and I really wanted to like it. I've given it a couple of more chances over the years, to see if it has changed more to my liking, but after a few weeks of use I always replace it with something else.. The way the UX is designed just reminds me too much of what I dislike about Windows. Having to use dconf editor to change settings feels just like being forced to use regedit.
Firefox also tried to go down this road IMO, but have reverted some of the worst changes an... show more
When Gnome 3 was announced I thought it was cool that they tried something new, and I really wanted to like it. I've given it a couple of more chances over the years, to see if it has changed more to my liking, but after a few weeks of use I always replace it with something else.. The way the UX is designed just reminds me too much of what I dislike about Windows. Having to use dconf editor to change settings feels just like being forced to use regedit.
Firefox also tried to go down this road IMO, but have reverted some of the worst changes and can be made almost to my liking with the help of extensions. Personally I like Vivaldi better but I think it's important to keep Firefox alive so that Chromium/Blink doesn't get complete monopoly.
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wanghis_khan
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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cybersandwich
in reply to wanghis_khan • • •RoboRay
in reply to shapis • • •I use the Workspaces Indicator extension to keep track of which one I'm in, but I use workspaces to focus on specific tasks using groups of applications... not an individual workspace for each application. I normally only have one or two workspaces in use.
I disable the Activities button and Overview (or Overlay or whatever they are calling it now) completely.
I previously used Arc Menu to replace the Applications View, but dropped that when they added folders to the Application View. It's still a bit clunky, but it's usable now.
Espi
in reply to shapis • • •If I used extensions it was small things like Appindicators and small cosmetics like blur my shell.
Now, I don't think GNOME scales very well if you use tens of windows at once, you would need to use too many workspaces, which are slow to navigate, and/or have tiny windows in the overview, which are hard to click because their position is unpredictable unlike traditional taskbars, where the programs are always visible and never move on their own.
My workflow never involved too many windows, so I never had problems with it.
Something else I wish would change is that the top bar should go away or actually do something other than show the time. I would say... show more
If I used extensions it was small things like Appindicators and small cosmetics like blur my shell.
Now, I don't think GNOME scales very well if you use tens of windows at once, you would need to use too many workspaces, which are slow to navigate, and/or have tiny windows in the overview, which are hard to click because their position is unpredictable unlike traditional taskbars, where the programs are always visible and never move on their own.
My workflow never involved too many windows, so I never had problems with it.
Something else I wish would change is that the top bar should go away or actually do something other than show the time. I would say either just take it away entirely and only show it in the overview. Or turn the clock into a notch. Or just make it a half-traditional taskbar, with the clock and options moved to the right and the left side showing as many programs as they fit in thin bars.
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gzrrt
in reply to shapis • • •hozl
in reply to shapis • • •I usually have 3-4 workspaces open, with a specific "environment" in a single or a few workspaces. E.g a browser window with email, todos, calendar etc and other "personal things" in one, maybe one for a certain project I'm working on, another for a work project, etc. This way I'm always focusing on one thing at a time but can quickly context switch and have my laptop "switch with me".
I also make heavy use of alt-tab and Ctrl-tab for window switching. Together with fewer windows per workspace, this makes it super fast to navigate without ever taking my hands off the keyboard. If I forget where things are, a glance at the overview is enough.
It should be noted that I don't use a mouse and if I love touchpad gestures, so gnome is perfect for me. Even using a keyboard only and the very occasional touchpad is very comfortable on gnome. At least compared to macOS and windows.
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in reply to shapis • • •Ozymandias
in reply to shapis • • •I've tried other DE's and window managers, but they all feel like taking a huge step backwards to me. You should however try to find something that suits you the best, maybe KDE?
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shapis
in reply to Ozymandias • • •Nefyedardu
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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in reply to Nefyedardu • • •GNOME does have a launcher, which works just like the launcher on Mac and Android. You can even select whether to see all your apps or only the most-used ones. I do agree that a taskbar/dock with intelligent auto-hide is a must, though (at least for my usability). That's also not to say that some folks would rather have a Windows style launcher, and there are several DEs that provide that.
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s20
in reply to Nefyedardu • • •Gnome has one. You tap the super key for the dock, then again for the full app list. I see thiscoomplaint all the time, and it confuses me every time.
"I don't like the default app launcher" or "I'd prefer an always visible dock" fine, but Gnome doesn't have one? What?
... show more
Gnome has one. You tap the super key for the dock, then again for the full app list. I see thiscoomplaint all the time, and it confuses me every time.
"I don't like the default app launcher" or "I'd prefer an always visible dock" fine, but Gnome doesn't have one? What?
I both agree and disagree with this. Gnome is trying to make a unified system for this sort of thing, and that's admirable, but until it works, we kinda need a notification tray.
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nawan 🇮🇩
in reply to Nefyedardu • • •Ideally the graphical app shouldn’t be running in the background UNLESS the user explicitly allows it. VLC is an example of an application that doesn’t run in the background unless the user allows it.
mekkagodzilla
in reply to shapis • • •Today it's mostly the same, but with a tiling window manager and the same numbers: 3 is thunderbird, 5 is file browser for instance. It's muscle memory at this point, feels great.
Lemmchen
in reply to shapis • • •I really really tried it, but it feels like the whole default GNOME suite has never been used by powerusers at all.
Nemo (is it Nemo?) is especially bad. Once you have to deal with several thousand files in a folder (e.g. drive recovery) it totally breaks apart.
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in reply to Furycd001 • • •TCB13
in reply to shapis • • •ZorinOS? - Lemmy.world
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in reply to shapis • • •like this
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InFerNo
in reply to shapis • • •Now I use dash to dock. I tried a plugin to reinstate vertical desktops but it's buggy as hell.
Also, GNOME doesn't remember window states and positions anymore since the latest version, which annoys the hell out of me. I feel like every new version is equal parts forwards and backwards. Things get better and worse.
One final fuck you to the guy who decided that dead keys and diacritics should be shown while you're creating them. That's decades of muscle memory out the window and switching between other os's just got worse because of it.
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in reply to shapis • • •like this
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V6277
in reply to shapis • • •What's funny is that I actually end up using the overview instead of alt-tab most of the time because it's faster for my workflow, and the default window switcher for apps with different windows open is BAD.
I've gotten so used to the workflow that I find myself dragging my mouse to the top left corner of the screen on Windows lol and painfully wait the extra second it takes to open the Windows overview when swiping up with three fingers on a trackpad.
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in reply to shapis • • •like this
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shapis
in reply to __jov • • •like this
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__jov
in reply to shapis • • •I'd suggest trying to always use the apps in the same workspaces. I always open discord spotify steam in the leftmost workspace, firefox in the rightmost and the 3-4 ides i have open in the middle each on its own. Makes navigating through them a second nature in no time.
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garam
in reply to __jov • • •I'm saying about XFCE, because I'm fond of XFCE workflow
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letbelight
in reply to garam • • •I agree with this, and with no option to enable no csd... it sucks sooooooo much
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lusinge
in reply to shapis • • •Also Libadwaita is so sexy.
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methodicalaspect
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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Yurnero91
in reply to shapis • • •Since two years I'm on KDE but not because I was fed up with GNOME. I just wanted to try something else. Pretty much using stock KDE only that I moved the taskbar to the top of the monitor.
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de_nada
in reply to shapis • • •I use an extension to auto-reveal the dock when I go to the bottom of the screen. The default behavior of going to the top left of the screen, only to traverse all the way down to the dock at the bottom (or the right for workspaces), just seems really inefficient, especially on a touchpad.
I had it all tricked out with other extensions but they keep breaking with new GNOME releases, so I've mostly given up on that.
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s20
in reply to de_nada • • •like this
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OboTheHobo
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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Aki
in reply to OboTheHobo • • •gorogorochan
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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slembcke
in reply to shapis • • •I like that practically all of the OS functionality is behind either super+seach or the quick settings menu. I love how powerful the overview is, and all hidden behind a single key press. I like that asking "Is X possible?" is immediately answerable, and 95% of the time it's right in the first place I think to look. I like the trackpad gestures and workspaces on my laptop where I don't have multiple large screens. I like that it has very little need for system tray icons which are clunky, inconsistent, and ugly. (Ex: Discord can only be quit from it's tray icon... -_-)
I'm not a DE power user apparently, but I'm certainly not the mythical "lowest common denominator" that Gnome supposedly caters to either. I do a lot of programming in C/asm/, and write plenty of code involving lots of esoteric math. I don't have much use for Python for instance, but I don't think it's "dumbed down" either. 😛
KDE (and Windows to a similar extent) always has way too much "stuff" it wants to show yo... show more
I like that practically all of the OS functionality is behind either super+seach or the quick settings menu. I love how powerful the overview is, and all hidden behind a single key press. I like that asking "Is X possible?" is immediately answerable, and 95% of the time it's right in the first place I think to look. I like the trackpad gestures and workspaces on my laptop where I don't have multiple large screens. I like that it has very little need for system tray icons which are clunky, inconsistent, and ugly. (Ex: Discord can only be quit from it's tray icon... -_-)
I'm not a DE power user apparently, but I'm certainly not the mythical "lowest common denominator" that Gnome supposedly caters to either. I do a lot of programming in C/asm/, and write plenty of code involving lots of esoteric math. I don't have much use for Python for instance, but I don't think it's "dumbed down" either. 😛
KDE (and Windows to a similar extent) always has way too much "stuff" it wants to show you, 90% of it I'll never use. Every window toolbar is chock full of icons, and so many actions trigger popups, notifications, or dialogs that have little purpose. It's all terribly distracting and annoying. Still, I've donated hundreds of dollars to KDE foundation as well since it's an important part of the Linux ecosystem. I don't use it, but that doesn't mean I hate it, and I see no reason why it shouldn't flourish too. Open Source is not a competition.
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albertye, Sergey Kozharinov, ⸻ Ban DHMO 🇦🇺 ⸻, shapis, NerdyOldGeek, bev, pitl, Dingsda, andruid, resin85, banazir, WFH, Blaiz0r, Flip, Zinggi57, Holzkohlen, rmstyle, lemmy_99c4zb3e3, zonaston, m0stlyharmless and toikpi like this.
milo128
in reply to slembcke • • •pitl likes this.
slembcke
in reply to milo128 • • •Holzkohlen
in reply to slembcke • • •Yes, I know there are ways around that like Pop-shell and other extensions, but I am specifically curious about the default Gnome workflow. In my opinion Gnome tends to skew too much towards form over function.
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shield
in reply to Holzkohlen • • •palarith likes this.
slembcke
in reply to Holzkohlen • • •Tio
in reply to shapis • •I agree. I used Gnome for several years before switching to XFCE. Gnome feels like a great DE for people who do not do a lot of things on their computers. I normally have 5 or so workspaces and on each a dozen of apps open. Some apps are workspace-specific, some are available on all workspaces. You are right, multitasking when you do so much is a pain in Gnome. And I really really tried to like it.
Not to mention that you need a lot of extensions to make it useful.
Gnome does great in terms of animations and overall look, but not very practical and feels very non-customizable.
XFCE looks awful out of the box and the lack of animations is quite annoying. But you can make it look good - see our custom distro based on XFCE - TROMjaro. And if you give XFCE a try you will realize how sane it is. You can customize it a ton without being overwhelmed by thousands of options. You right click on panels and apps and you get sane options to move or tweak them.
As for workspaces I pe
... show moreI agree. I used Gnome for several years before switching to XFCE. Gnome feels like a great DE for people who do not do a lot of things on their computers. I normally have 5 or so workspaces and on each a dozen of apps open. Some apps are workspace-specific, some are available on all workspaces. You are right, multitasking when you do so much is a pain in Gnome. And I really really tried to like it.
Not to mention that you need a lot of extensions to make it useful.
Gnome does great in terms of animations and overall look, but not very practical and feels very non-customizable.
XFCE looks awful out of the box and the lack of animations is quite annoying. But you can make it look good - see our custom distro based on XFCE - TROMjaro. And if you give XFCE a try you will realize how sane it is. You can customize it a ton without being overwhelmed by thousands of options. You right click on panels and apps and you get sane options to move or tweak them.
As for workspaces I personally use them as "names" on the top bar and can switch between workspaces so fast, almost like tabs in a browser.
Not as fancy as Gnome, but boy this is really useful. And practical.
I've also added mouse gestures on my desktop via Easystroke so I can move windows on any workspace via these gestures. So easy.
So I'd say that Gnome looks fancy, and it is very cool for those who do not do a lot of work on their machines and have to switch between many work spaces and lots of apps. And I'd say XFCE is extremely underrated, perhaps because out of the box it looks terrible. Maybe try TROMjaro....see how it goes.
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eldavi
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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Carrot4016
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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gorogorochan
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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Aki
in reply to gorogorochan • • •vially likes this.
lucidperplexities
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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ikidd
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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andruid
in reply to shapis • • •like this
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Holzkohlen
in reply to andruid • • •andruid likes this.
nomadjoanne
in reply to shapis • • •I may take the plunge to a window manager at some point, but for now it works for me.
chicagohuman likes this.
beeng
in reply to shapis • • •Heavy user of Dock number shortcuts, as well as keyboard swap workspace shortcuts and window resize/splits.
Discipline is good for workspace organisation, I know which "space" contains which groups of applications.
beeng
in reply to shapis • • •WidowsFavoriteSon likes this.
charje
in reply to shapis • • •aadil
in reply to shapis • • •I don't feel at home on any other desktop environment. Even on Ubuntu I revert everything to stock GNOME.