Multi-monitor setups make more sense to me, but I don’t even use that anymore after switching to a 65" 4K gaming OLED as my primary monitor. Its like having four 32" 1080p monitors arranged in a grid, except without any bezels. Plenty of screen real estate for anything I need to do.
I took long train rides for a few years, where I’d work with a laptop, so my entire workflow is now single-monitor. I frequently sit down at workplaces at $DAYJOB where I would have two monitors and then I disable one of them, because it’s just genuinely not useful to me.
And if that didn’t terrify you, I also prefer touchpads now. 🙃
Basically, I do lots of things with keyboard shortcuts, so my hand is hovering over the keyboard by default. Which means, it’s just much quicker for me to reach for the touchpad below the spacebar, and particularly also to later move back to the keyboard without having to find my position anew.
I do still find touchpads less precise, but I often accomplish the clicking of buttons via keyboard shortcuts, and mostly need the mouse pointer for dragging or hovering things, which don’t require a ton of precision.
I think touchpads can be better for anything except video games. But a lot of trackpads are shit, some are too small, others lag, others are made of some material that feels weird to drag your finger onto. Although im not a fan of macbooks for many reasons, they do have great trackpads.
Ah yeah, I don’t do a ton of gaming and mostly keyboard-only. I mean, I do possess a mouse and a game controller, but an advantage of the laptop-only life is that you can throw yourself onto the couch, which I do enjoy.
And I do tend to buy higher-end laptops anyways, so luckily haven’t had to think too much about touchpad quality…
For more than a decade I developed a 3x3 grid with intuitive shortcuts with one monitor, a very visual space distribution, and I do not change it for anything (even when docking my laptop I use only the main monitor, I find it much more mentally efficient, since desktop swaping is faster than moving my head)
Never used them in my life and I’ve been machine computing over 25 years. Always one monitor, one desktop. I close shit I dont need regularly, I click on icons on the tab bar to get to the app I need. The tab bar is wide enough to hold like 30+ of them. Why do I need more than one desktop? Windows go over another, the tab bar shows everything I have open. Why switch? I never got it.
Tiling WMs are just faster. So much faster. They remove so much annoyance it’s really hard to put it to words. Binding programs to workspaces is what finally sealed the deal for me.
I see it like this: alt+tab only toggles among the two latest things, on a 3x3 grid win+arrows, on a tidy usage of some fixed desktops (one for browser, one for mail, one for current subject…), you have inmediate swaps to multiple relevant programs, not just the latest which also mutates… also it adds some visual mental distribution which I find extremely efficient… never went back and I struggle/frustrate with looking for stuff in a fixed bar… (I had to use quite often both types, so I feel the difference)
If you keep holdind alt while pressing tab multiple times it will cycle over every open window, not only the latest two. You just have no not release alt before you reach the window you want, otherwise it restarts the cycling with the new order of most recently used windows.
Well, they mean with one keypress or at least fairly quickly. Like, I don’t know, maybe you keep in your working memory which windows you had used and then can just hit Alt+Tab+Tab+Tab without looking.
But yeah, as soon as you have to look at the individual windows while switching, it’s gonna take longer and particularly also kind of take you out of your current task.
I just use an alt+tab, uh… skin(?) that is a list of all of my open windows in the middle of the screen. Alt+tab scrolls through them, and as each one is highlighted, it’s brought to the front of the screen.
If I have more apps open on at same desktop I can switch to other apps without disturbing the setup. So for example I have a terminal with build output, my app in a browser and inspector open at the same time. I can switch to all the other apps without moving any of it. I just jump back to this workspace and everything is still in the same place. With single desktop if I switch to Firefox I have to bright all 3 windows to the top separately.
With two monitors I can have documentation open in a browser right next to my IDE, both fullscreen. Or have the IDE and my app open. Or a website and it’s logs. Or IDE and Postman. I have multiple firefox windows and terminals open at the same time. This doesn’t work well with single monitor/single desktop because it’s hard to keep track which window is which. If you only use one app at a time (like you only switch between firefox, steam and spotify) one desktop is perfectly fine. When you do bunch of stuff at the same time it gets messy real quick.
Never once used them. My spouse has them on her mac book, which I know because she’ll randomly just lose whatever she’s doing and have some video playing that she can’t find again for another few minutes. So other than a minute of entertainment once every few months, not sure why they even exist.
I’m thinking of trying them, but hard for me to find a usecase. I have two monitors and it’s often useful for me to have different combos of apps open at the sane time, so not sure how to properly use it.
I have a 34" 1440p monitor, which I almost always have tiled in half, and a 1080p monitor next to that. Some more involved workflows will have me branching out to other desktops but I can get a lot done with two monitors. A third would be nice but I’ll need a new desk for that.
Does anyone else never use them ever?
Multi-monitor setups make more sense to me, but I don’t even use that anymore after switching to a 65" 4K gaming OLED as my primary monitor. Its like having four 32" 1080p monitors arranged in a grid, except without any bezels. Plenty of screen real estate for anything I need to do.
I took long train rides for a few years, where I’d work with a laptop, so my entire workflow is now single-monitor. I frequently sit down at workplaces at $DAYJOB where I would have two monitors and then I disable one of them, because it’s just genuinely not useful to me.
And if that didn’t terrify you, I also prefer touchpads now. 🙃
Basically, I do lots of things with keyboard shortcuts, so my hand is hovering over the keyboard by default. Which means, it’s just much quicker for me to reach for the touchpad below the spacebar, and particularly also to later move back to the keyboard without having to find my position anew.
I do still find touchpads less precise, but I often accomplish the clicking of buttons via keyboard shortcuts, and mostly need the mouse pointer for dragging or hovering things, which don’t require a ton of precision.
I think touchpads can be better for anything except video games. But a lot of trackpads are shit, some are too small, others lag, others are made of some material that feels weird to drag your finger onto. Although im not a fan of macbooks for many reasons, they do have great trackpads.
Ah yeah, I don’t do a ton of gaming and mostly keyboard-only. I mean, I do possess a mouse and a game controller, but an advantage of the laptop-only life is that you can throw yourself onto the couch, which I do enjoy.
And I do tend to buy higher-end laptops anyways, so luckily haven’t had to think too much about touchpad quality…
For more than a decade I developed a 3x3 grid with intuitive shortcuts with one monitor, a very visual space distribution, and I do not change it for anything (even when docking my laptop I use only the main monitor, I find it much more mentally efficient, since desktop swaping is faster than moving my head)
Indispensable on laptop computers!
Never used them in my life and I’ve been machine computing over 25 years. Always one monitor, one desktop. I close shit I dont need regularly, I click on icons on the tab bar to get to the app I need. The tab bar is wide enough to hold like 30+ of them. Why do I need more than one desktop? Windows go over another, the tab bar shows everything I have open. Why switch? I never got it.
Tiling WMs are just faster. So much faster. They remove so much annoyance it’s really hard to put it to words. Binding programs to workspaces is what finally sealed the deal for me.
Alt+tab (and alt+shift+tab) is all you need imo.
Ctrl+tab for paging through browser tabs is helpful too.
I see it like this: alt+tab only toggles among the two latest things, on a 3x3 grid win+arrows, on a tidy usage of some fixed desktops (one for browser, one for mail, one for current subject…), you have inmediate swaps to multiple relevant programs, not just the latest which also mutates… also it adds some visual mental distribution which I find extremely efficient… never went back and I struggle/frustrate with looking for stuff in a fixed bar… (I had to use quite often both types, so I feel the difference)
If you keep holdind alt while pressing tab multiple times it will cycle over every open window, not only the latest two. You just have no not release alt before you reach the window you want, otherwise it restarts the cycling with the new order of most recently used windows.
This is simply untrue in KDE. Can’t speak for Windows or other DEs.
Well, they mean with one keypress or at least fairly quickly. Like, I don’t know, maybe you keep in your working memory which windows you had used and then can just hit Alt+Tab+Tab+Tab without looking.
But yeah, as soon as you have to look at the individual windows while switching, it’s gonna take longer and particularly also kind of take you out of your current task.
I just use an alt+tab, uh… skin(?) that is a list of all of my open windows in the middle of the screen. Alt+tab scrolls through them, and as each one is highlighted, it’s brought to the front of the screen.
If I have more apps open on at same desktop I can switch to other apps without disturbing the setup. So for example I have a terminal with build output, my app in a browser and inspector open at the same time. I can switch to all the other apps without moving any of it. I just jump back to this workspace and everything is still in the same place. With single desktop if I switch to Firefox I have to bright all 3 windows to the top separately.
With two monitors I can have documentation open in a browser right next to my IDE, both fullscreen. Or have the IDE and my app open. Or a website and it’s logs. Or IDE and Postman. I have multiple firefox windows and terminals open at the same time. This doesn’t work well with single monitor/single desktop because it’s hard to keep track which window is which. If you only use one app at a time (like you only switch between firefox, steam and spotify) one desktop is perfectly fine. When you do bunch of stuff at the same time it gets messy real quick.
Never once used them. My spouse has them on her mac book, which I know because she’ll randomly just lose whatever she’s doing and have some video playing that she can’t find again for another few minutes. So other than a minute of entertainment once every few months, not sure why they even exist.
TIL þere exist people who don’t use virtual desktops.
How do you even?
How far do you even have to be to use a 65" screen? Doesn’t seem practical at all for desktop use.
I use both
Quad monitors + GNOME workspaces are awesome
I’m thinking of trying them, but hard for me to find a usecase. I have two monitors and it’s often useful for me to have different combos of apps open at the sane time, so not sure how to properly use it.
I have a 34" 1440p monitor, which I almost always have tiled in half, and a 1080p monitor next to that. Some more involved workflows will have me branching out to other desktops but I can get a lot done with two monitors. A third would be nice but I’ll need a new desk for that.