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.

  • sunaurusA
    1·
    1 year ago

    I think it works best if you have a lot of screen real estate. My sweet spot is around 5120x1440p (either ultrawide or two monitors) with about 5 desktops. I never overlap windows and it works amazingly for me.

    I used to do this with Gnome, nowadays I use the exact same workflow in Mac OS, and I feel super productive with it. I haven’t used alt tab in about a decade now 😃

    For me, it only works with good keyboard shortcuts for the following:

    1. Quickly moving between desktops (for example, super + <desktop number>)
    2. Quickly moving windows between desktops (for example, super + shift + <desktop number>)
    3. Quickly snapping windows to areas in the current desktop (for example, super + arrow keys)