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?
I prefer a top bar that contains global menu, system tray, launcher icon and applications at around 30px height. I also remove titlebars on windows because I use keyboard shortcuts for all of those actions.
I actually spent a good amount of time trying to remove title bars from gnome the other day and on the version im currently on it seems impossible. Unless I want to potentially break a bunch of stuff to do it anyway.
I liked the concept of Niri, but found some bugs, and now I run Gnome with PaperWM and a couple more customizations. Love my setup.
Bash is awesome. If I ever go blind I could still use linux comfortably with text-to-speech thanks to the terminal. I love that I learned this.
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.
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.
KDE for me with floating windows. For certain things, I’ll use s terminal, but most of my navigation is through KDE and some keybinds I set up on a keypad.
I’ve tried a window manager once and now can’t go back. It’s to a point where I start using my Linux keybinds on my Windows laptop at work.
I tried KDE and Gnome but those weren’t really for me. I did like the polished end-to-end experience you get with those desktop environments though.
I was tiling window manager user too (mainly qtile), nowadays I’m on KDE using extensions to emulate those tiling features. Krohnkite is pretty good, once setup with all the keys and other optional stuff like removing window titles and so on. Recently even switch to a Niri like extension, called Karousel, but this one doesn’t support multi monitors. So I end up getting the KDE set with a tiling experience.
COSMIC will have a builtin support for tiling too, with a seamless integration. So maybe this could be something you explore too.
I changed my taskbar to be like the one in Haiku OS because I don’t like long taskbar.
Not even one that pops up when I move the mouse to the edge of the screen.
how do you do that?
With Gnome it’s the default to not have one on the desktop view. Then to remove the topbar you just use an extension. Just Perfection gives you a lot of UI tweak options.
thank you.
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.
