Trying this out as it's typed. For background: I really want to love tools like i3 or awesome, but I always go back to Gnome because it juts gets stuff done. I liked Gnome 2, I like 3.
So: just like the site says. Top is the taskbar, which also has a left icon for the current tiling pattern (fullscreen, tiled vertically, etc). The left side panel starts at the top-left with the search button that does the Gnome activities overlay, then a globe icon for each workspace, and a button to create a new workspace. At the bottom of the left panel are the system icons (normally in the upper right in Gnome) and then the clock, crammed into bottom-left.
So I don't hate the tiling, and one of the layout options is "floating" so you can have a workspace full of floating windows. Cool.
My first thought was that the panels are too big -- 48px, which seemed overly large. Luckily this is easily configurable in the extension settings, and updates as you change it so there's no guesswork.
If I switch to floating, or a new workspace, I appear to have no wallpaper behind the windows or the "new workspace" launcher. I liked my wallpaper, and I miss it.
I was going to complain about the globe icons for the workspaces, but it turns out it only preselected those icons because I have browsers primarily in each workspace. It'll pick based on the first open app (I think?) or you can override the icon by right-clicking, or have it display a group of app icons for the open apps in that workspace. This is cool! It's not quite the thumbnail previews of virtual desktops I had in 2004 with Openbox, but It works well.
I'll keep on this for a little while -- I really like that I can turn the whole shebang on and off with a single extension toggle.
I use cinnamon, for that very reason. Just works, and works well for my use case, is very stable, and I've no wish to learn and configure another desktop paradigm.
Thanks for pointing out that it supports floating windows. I use a 55" 4k monitor so I manually lay out my app windows and would hate tiling (only rarely used stuff goes up top and I drag those down when needed). I use and like gnome but there are a few thing I hate about it so I'll give this a try.
> I really want to love tools like i3 or awesome, but I always go back to Gnome because it juts gets stuff done. I liked Gnome 2, I like 3
My approach is to use the window manager best suited for the task, but all at the same time.
That means for my highly structured multi-desktop, multi-git-workspace programming tasks I use i3, which is ideal for those.
However for my less structured tasks like writing or consuming documentation, email, and personal web browsing, I use a more conventional, less constrained desktop environment (i.e gnome), which is more ideally suited for those tasks.
If I'm willing to abuse the term window manager a little further, Vim running inside i3 serves as a third window management environment I run in parallel, optimized specifically for code editing.
The trick is that I use i3 in its own separate Linux desktop window (In my case running on a remote machine, but you could just as well do this running in a local VM). this allows me to have both environment successful on the same screen at the same time.
This also has the added benefit of making it very easy to find my code editing window among the tons of other windows I have open.
I find the app-based window navigation in vanilla GNOME 3 rather frustrating, and try as I might, I just can't get comfortable navigating between what I think of as applications.
This is because I have a few applications (Firefox, Terminal) that are really not applications in and of themselves; the applications are really Outlook, JIRA, Confluence, Slack, OpenShift (logged in as cluster admin), OpenShift (logged in as my regular user), that quick terminal session I opened to work on a script, the SSH connection to an OpenStack director, the 'oc rsh' command that I'm using to administrate a PostgreSQL database running in OpenShift, and so on.
This becomes far worse when using multiple monitors. Say I have teams hanging around on my secondary monitor to keep an eye on stuff. I literally just now alt-tabbed into a terminal and then alt-tabbed back to continue writing this comment. As a result, I'm back in Firefox on my primary monitor (as expected) but now I have an unwanted random Firefox window that I forgot was even open on top of Teams on my secondary monitor!
The only window manager I've ever been at home with while using multiple applications, workspaces and monitors has been i3. Specifically I love how it manages multiple monitors in that each has a current workspace, but workspaces are not bound to a particular monitor. So I was able to have my secondary monitor always showing my 'Slack and email' workspace, and switch between my multiple task-based workspaces on my primary monitor and never get confused like I with GNOME where I want to switch to my email tab but to get there I have to remember ahead of time that I have to switch to my first workspace, then switch applications to Firefox, then switch windows to the one with Outlook in it, and finally switch to the Outlook tab...
Anyway. This project looks awesome and I will try it out!
My mind is not app-centric. I want the shell where I'm looking at logs, the editor where I'm taking notes, the browser where I'm checking some doc. I don't care to think about which terminal application the shell is inside, select that, then find I've opened a different terminal window and have to search through the windows separately. I don't care whether the doc is loaded in Firefox or Chromium so don't ask me to choose based on that.
IMO app-centric task switching works much, much less effectively than window-centric task switching; I hate that all the major DEs have copied the same basic app-based dock design that has been failing in obvious ways since day one.
(Although Windows can at least configure grouping away, and there's the dash-to-panel extension to make GNOME tolerable again.)
I get that an app-centric view is attractive to app developers, who would love me to be engaging with their brand. And that mobile has its own reasons for putting apps in silos. Does nothing for me as a desktop user though.
I recently switched to Sway because gnomes workspaces annoyed me too much. Let me choose a workspace independently on each monitor please! On i3 I was getting really bad screen tearing, even with conpton/picom otherwise I’d have just used that, but Sway/Wayland has no such problems.
Sadly a few things don’t work so well in Wayland. For example, Windows games under Proton work fine on X but not on Wayland/Xwayland (I guess since they’re not Wayland aware they can’t bypass the compositor?)
So, I too will try this project out as it looks like it may be a nice middleground where I can be productive in gnome on X.
You can kind of implement this in Gnome 3 by putting windows that go together on a workspace, the same way you do in i3. Hoewever, using workspaces in Gnome never felt as fluid as it does in i3.
It rarely affects me. I'd say 99% of my time in Gnome is spent in either Firefox or terminal.
Suddenly I'll need a program so I hit windows key, type in the start of the program name, and smash the Enter key. It's super simple. What's the problem?
>I find the app-based window navigation in vanilla GNOME 3 rather frustrating, and try as I might, I just can't get comfortable navigating between what I think of as applications.
Perhaps as a slight work around for gnome-3 users. I use workspaces across two monitors with the `window list` extension. To address your 'X window is not in Y workspace issue' you can assign a hotkey in gnome to move the currently active window up or down a workspace.
So I have ctrl-alt-shift-up and ctrl-alt-shift-down bound to move windows up and down.
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications '[]'
gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-windows '["<Alt>Tab"]'
There are more settings like that which you can find in the manual, or from other frustrated users.
These settings seem to be stored in a binary format so the resulting rc-files can not easily be commited to git. I keep a dozen lines like the above in a script I run on any new gnome-like desktop to make it somewhat sane.
There's a config for that in the tweak tool. It makes secondary monitor workspaces static. It's not exactly what you want but it gets kinda close for me. Wayland does away with the shitty X conventions so maybe there is hope once X finally dies.
> As a result, I'm back in Firefox on my primary monitor (as expected) but now I have an unwanted random Firefox window that I forgot was even open on top of Teams on my secondary monitor!
The idea here is to also use the tilde while alt-tabbing. Also shift comes in handy to wheel back through the applications.
The word "modern" is really overused in tech, and it doesn't really tell you all that much, just that "this is better because it's new, and new stuff is better than old stuff".
Consider a more descriptive word, such as:
- minimal
- streamlined
- sleek
- simple
- opinionated
- spatial
- comprehensive
How about providing an explanation for those words?
- minimal: limited features set aka either you like it in 10 seconds or you don't
- streamlined: good looking?!?
- sleek: combination of streamlined and minimal?
- simple: IMO even more overused than 'modern' and as diverse in its meaning
- opinionated: There is exactly one way of doing it right and either you like it or you don't, but it might come with an extensive feature set compared to minimal.
- spatial: no idea; Endless space? 3D? Depending on my geolocation?!?
- comprehensive: 'Oh, I have to learn something, but not too much'
Modern, on the other hand, means to me: Mainstream look & feel (kinda polished) and with considerable feature set.
I would argue all of you suggested words are just as overused and meaningless as "modern". At the end of the day, I would still need to see the product to understand what it does.
Good point️
Additionally, people seem to forget about the term CONTEMPORARY..
It annoys me out that I can't use the word 'contemporary' when talking to 50% (~a lot?) of people.
Somebody whose talking about some band they like and, I ask if they are a "CONTEMPORARY act?", they OFTEN reply, "No, they are a new/modern band".. lol
You are over analyzing the marketing pitch, and/or expecting it to be the exact specification. It’s not. IMO it’s fine for a project to pick a few vapid buzz words to get you interested, because a complete specification of the project certainly isn’t going to catch eyes.
Tried it briefly, I currently use i3 on ubuntu and found it to be much much slower than that, the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often. I much prefer the i3 style of just showing a blinking cursor on switching windows.
The grid layout is interesting but I found it strange that the all tabs are shown along the left side in split mode.
It would be interesting to see how the grid differs from the tree layout that i3 uses.
I did like their default hot keys and the side bar for switching work spaces.
Ultimately though if you don't like gnome this isn't going to change that.
But if you do prefer i3 and want a more nicer environment with all the gnome system management ui's consider using https://regolith-linux.org/
I Ctrl+F'ed in this thread for Regolith, this should be higher.
Zero setup, incredible keybindings.
You can install it on top of your existing Distro, as an apt package. And then log out + log back in using new DE.
I had never used a tiling WM before Regolith, i3 seemed too difficult to configure for someone who didn't truly didn't understand the point/benefit of using tiling WM's.
A day into using Regolith on Ubuntu I was hooked. Been using it for years now and it's the best decision I've ever made, productivity skyrocketed and it looks nice.
I tried Pop_OS shell's tiling WM, as I was hopeful, but the keybindings and behavior aren't as nice as Regolith. It does a "swap" animation when changing tile positioning that slows stuff down, and I could never get the gap borders to disappear completely.
I'm going through a distro hopping phase, so recently hopped to Fedora spins (am currently on KDE)...but had heard of regolith separately and really liked the idea. So i went to DistroTest[0] and took it for a spin, and it won me over. I still ant to finish my experiment with fedora spins, but right after, I'll be heading Regolith!
> Tried it briefly, I currently use i3 on ubuntu and found it to be much much slower than that, the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often. I much prefer the i3 style of just showing a blinking cursor on switching windows.
I've seen this complaint about GNOME in general before, so I want to mention that animations can be disabled or sped up in GNOME. There's a toggle to disable animations in GNOME completely (using the GNOME tweak tool, in the general setting). There are also add-ons to change their speed (I use Impatience [0]).
> […] the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often.
Agree. I have used i3 for several years, but tried GNOME again recently to experience with Pop_OS's tiling feature. It was OK-ish, but a bit slow when resizing windows when rearranging / opening / closing windows, even with animations disabled.
I have read about Material Shell before, but did not try it. Gave it a try today, and I am pleasantly surprised so far. The animations get old very quickly, so I do what I always do in GNOME – disable all animations in Tweak Tools. This made the experience as close to i3 as GNOME has ever been for me. I will keep using the Material Shell for a while and stress-test it a bit.
I'd actually somewhat given up trying to keep i3 working nicely and reverted to XFCE (which is at least far less obnoxious then Gnome 3) until I discovered Regolith and have been using it happily ever since.
Nice!!! This is the kind of thing I visit Hacker News for.
I wonder how this compares with the Gnome tiling Add-on from Pop!_OS that is becoming very popular. But this material shell sounds like a much more holistic approach than just adding tiling to Gnome. I'll definitely try this out.
I tried this a couple years ago on a Atom tablet. If memory serves it had no tiling yet, but I liked it because it was the only working solution that would allow a tablet-like experience under Linux, all others being either buggy or incomplete (rotation not working or not consistent with mouse, etc.). I admit it was well thought, beautiful to look at and very usable, although they didn't resist the temptation to dumb down even further the config panels by removing more and more options, which is the reason I avoid Gnome in all my PCs. The only real problem is that it was slow, I mean really slow, and memory hungry. OK, in 2018 having 2GB RAM it's the users fault, although that tablet was impossible to upgrade, so I had no other choice than either reinstall Windows 10 (which was a lot more snappy) or give the tablet away, which I did.
I seem to have read somewhere that an open phone manufacturer (Librem?) is using a deeply optimized version of Gnome 3 to overcome its slugginess on less powerful hardware. Are there any chances their optimizations can be merged back so that every platform could take advantage of them?
Pop Shell from System76 also does something similar. That is a gnome shell extension that provides tiling window management. It's focus is keyboard driven window navigation and has the option to switch between tiling and floating mode.
> "Improve your user experience and get rid of the anarchy of traditional desktop workflows."
This usage of "anarchy" makes me wonder what is so satisfying to advocates of "tiling". I personally don't have a need for new windows to conform to a strict placement algorithm.
My usability requirement for new windows: a) open the window in a timely manner and make it distinct so I can identify it; b) don't fiddle with my visual field unnecessarily.
I use OpenBox. I make the "active" window distinct using a custom theme. I open what I need and hide the rest in a shaded window and/or virtual desktop until I need it. I find what I need in the menus.
(I won't debate the qualities of Gnome, but I prefer a lighter DE.)
I don't see why you would need such a complex system (spatial model) to switch between your apps.
In my opinion, this has been solved perfectly many years ago. I simply use Super+<num> to launch/switch to my 10 most important applications. Supported out-of-the box by both Windows and Gnome and 100% predictable. Every shortcut invocation will launch exactly the right application.
I've always wanted to try a tiling window system, but they just don't seem to gel with how I work at all. Rarely, if ever, do I want a window to take up some common percentage of the screen. My editor is ~100 columns, which will change depending on the font / font size. My terminal is all over the place. My browser is multiple widths, because I need to test responsiveness, or what fits in my current tab does not fit what's in my next tab.
Is there any sort of middle ground tiling solution for people like me?
In Pop OS the windows can have two states. Stickied to a part of the screen with auto-tiling with other stickied windows or free floating. I would guess many Linux flavors can do something like that. To me the ideal solution was Spectacle for MacOS - key shortcuts for a window to take up the space of a predetermined space. I just don't think automatic tiling makes all that much sense unless you're building some kind of a dashboard.
Tiling web browsers is especially bad since I use a lot of websites that flip to mobile mode or are just plain unusable when tiled into the wrong shape.
Can the user merge the workspace panel into the the system panel and move all that to the bottom of the screen instead?
I honestly can't stand global top bars and "system panels" that are nothing more than always-visible launcher menus. They're just a waste of space. IMO Chrome looks ridiculous in the video, with a set of tabs directly underneath the workspace panel tabs.
What I'd really like to see is XFCE with automatic tiling. I can probably script a half-assed version of it myself without too much trouble, but it would be nice to have a full-assed version of that.
I tried tiling WM: i3/i3gap for a year, then sway and bspwm for a few days but finally went back to Gnome.
I got fed-up spending way too much tweaking the UI to my "needs". (To be fair, most of the time was spent on the toolbar (polybar, i3bar) configuration). I also realized that I mostly needed tiling for the terminal.
Thus I embraced Gnome UI with a few extensions: unite, dash-to-dock, system-monitor, etc. and started using tmux for the terminal.
I might try Material Shell but I am actually happy with today's Gnome3. Performance is decent, and the level of configuration is enough for me with a few extensions. It is not as stable and polished as MacOSX but there is no blocking point.
N.B: I kept i3 for my work Linux VM due to very limited system resources.
Can two windows overlap? Or are they just opened full-screen or inside a tile side-by-side?
If not, then I don't like that very much. For example the calculator: I don't want it to take 1/3 or 1/4 of the screen. It's like going back into a 35 years ago pre DESQview era.
Edit: nevermind. "In Material Shell windows are tiled. These means they are organised in a predictable way in which they do not overlap".
I guess I like my windows to be not predictable, whatever that means.
I like the tiling. Unfortunately it breaks my beloved workflow with GNOME 3: I'm using an extension to switch workspaces via scrolling on the top panel, which makes the workspace approach very useful and fast for me.
I also rather would like the left panel at the top since window lists aren't important to me anymore (hot corner for overview is so much faster for me finding the window I am looking for)
For the life of me, I can't understand why there are that many GNOME-based desktop environments. I personally dislike most of their approach to UI. Maybe the innards are very pleasant to work with, but it's GTK-based, isn't it? That a somewhat-dated C toolkit, even if it has bindings in other languages. So I kind of doubt that.
And yet - MATE, Cinnamon, XFCE (ok, that's just GTK, not GNOME proper), Unity.
This is not a rant, I'm actually curious why GNOME is that popular, and those projects did not choose some other basis. I mean, that should be possible, right? LXDE switched from GTK to Qt a few years back.
Looks really nice. I like how creative the Linux community is with their GUI experimentation.
My favourite feature is the ability to tile windows with a little gap between them. Having visibility (even a little) into the wallpaper when you're doing work makes a big difference for me. It's like it grounds you in a more natural frame of reference. I'm sure Mac users can relate to this due to the late introduction of true window maximisation, but as a Windows user I'm coming to appreciate the "non-fullscreen" or "edge-to-edge tiled" working environment.
Thinking about those default keybindings (super+<w,a,s,d>) make my wrists hurt. Since the typical keyboard only has super (win) on the left, they should've used super+ <i,j,k,l> or <h,j,k,l>.
[+] [-] generalk|5 years ago|reply
So: just like the site says. Top is the taskbar, which also has a left icon for the current tiling pattern (fullscreen, tiled vertically, etc). The left side panel starts at the top-left with the search button that does the Gnome activities overlay, then a globe icon for each workspace, and a button to create a new workspace. At the bottom of the left panel are the system icons (normally in the upper right in Gnome) and then the clock, crammed into bottom-left.
So I don't hate the tiling, and one of the layout options is "floating" so you can have a workspace full of floating windows. Cool.
My first thought was that the panels are too big -- 48px, which seemed overly large. Luckily this is easily configurable in the extension settings, and updates as you change it so there's no guesswork.
If I switch to floating, or a new workspace, I appear to have no wallpaper behind the windows or the "new workspace" launcher. I liked my wallpaper, and I miss it.
I was going to complain about the globe icons for the workspaces, but it turns out it only preselected those icons because I have browsers primarily in each workspace. It'll pick based on the first open app (I think?) or you can override the icon by right-clicking, or have it display a group of app icons for the open apps in that workspace. This is cool! It's not quite the thumbnail previews of virtual desktops I had in 2004 with Openbox, but It works well.
I'll keep on this for a little while -- I really like that I can turn the whole shebang on and off with a single extension toggle.
[+] [-] andrepd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Naac|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://regolith-linux.org/
[+] [-] danans|5 years ago|reply
My approach is to use the window manager best suited for the task, but all at the same time.
That means for my highly structured multi-desktop, multi-git-workspace programming tasks I use i3, which is ideal for those.
However for my less structured tasks like writing or consuming documentation, email, and personal web browsing, I use a more conventional, less constrained desktop environment (i.e gnome), which is more ideally suited for those tasks.
If I'm willing to abuse the term window manager a little further, Vim running inside i3 serves as a third window management environment I run in parallel, optimized specifically for code editing.
The trick is that I use i3 in its own separate Linux desktop window (In my case running on a remote machine, but you could just as well do this running in a local VM). this allows me to have both environment successful on the same screen at the same time.
This also has the added benefit of making it very easy to find my code editing window among the tons of other windows I have open.
[+] [-] cflewis|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yrro|5 years ago|reply
This is because I have a few applications (Firefox, Terminal) that are really not applications in and of themselves; the applications are really Outlook, JIRA, Confluence, Slack, OpenShift (logged in as cluster admin), OpenShift (logged in as my regular user), that quick terminal session I opened to work on a script, the SSH connection to an OpenStack director, the 'oc rsh' command that I'm using to administrate a PostgreSQL database running in OpenShift, and so on.
This becomes far worse when using multiple monitors. Say I have teams hanging around on my secondary monitor to keep an eye on stuff. I literally just now alt-tabbed into a terminal and then alt-tabbed back to continue writing this comment. As a result, I'm back in Firefox on my primary monitor (as expected) but now I have an unwanted random Firefox window that I forgot was even open on top of Teams on my secondary monitor!
The only window manager I've ever been at home with while using multiple applications, workspaces and monitors has been i3. Specifically I love how it manages multiple monitors in that each has a current workspace, but workspaces are not bound to a particular monitor. So I was able to have my secondary monitor always showing my 'Slack and email' workspace, and switch between my multiple task-based workspaces on my primary monitor and never get confused like I with GNOME where I want to switch to my email tab but to get there I have to remember ahead of time that I have to switch to my first workspace, then switch applications to Firefox, then switch windows to the one with Outlook in it, and finally switch to the Outlook tab...
Anyway. This project looks awesome and I will try it out!
[+] [-] bobince|5 years ago|reply
My mind is not app-centric. I want the shell where I'm looking at logs, the editor where I'm taking notes, the browser where I'm checking some doc. I don't care to think about which terminal application the shell is inside, select that, then find I've opened a different terminal window and have to search through the windows separately. I don't care whether the doc is loaded in Firefox or Chromium so don't ask me to choose based on that.
IMO app-centric task switching works much, much less effectively than window-centric task switching; I hate that all the major DEs have copied the same basic app-based dock design that has been failing in obvious ways since day one.
(Although Windows can at least configure grouping away, and there's the dash-to-panel extension to make GNOME tolerable again.)
I get that an app-centric view is attractive to app developers, who would love me to be engaging with their brand. And that mobile has its own reasons for putting apps in silos. Does nothing for me as a desktop user though.
[+] [-] dkersten|5 years ago|reply
Sadly a few things don’t work so well in Wayland. For example, Windows games under Proton work fine on X but not on Wayland/Xwayland (I guess since they’re not Wayland aware they can’t bypass the compositor?)
So, I too will try this project out as it looks like it may be a nice middleground where I can be productive in gnome on X.
[+] [-] vladvasiliu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] INTPenis|5 years ago|reply
Suddenly I'll need a program so I hit windows key, type in the start of the program name, and smash the Enter key. It's super simple. What's the problem?
[+] [-] silon42|5 years ago|reply
Same here. Gone from GNOME because of this.
[+] [-] mleonhard|5 years ago|reply
I wish a company would make a good portable computer to fit my work style:
- tall 20" x 12" matte screen with built-in stand to raise it up to eye level
- detachable corded tenting keyboard
- detachable corded tenting vertical mouse
- hot-swappable battery with various weights available
- thin 20-foot power cable with magnetic release on both ends
- vertical docking station with battery charge-level indicator
[+] [-] boogies|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] callamdelaney|5 years ago|reply
So I have ctrl-alt-shift-up and ctrl-alt-shift-down bound to move windows up and down.
[+] [-] xorcist|5 years ago|reply
These settings seem to be stored in a binary format so the resulting rc-files can not easily be commited to git. I keep a dozen lines like the above in a script I run on any new gnome-like desktop to make it somewhat sane.
[+] [-] Angeo34|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robinoh|5 years ago|reply
The idea here is to also use the tilde while alt-tabbing. Also shift comes in handy to wheel back through the applications.
[+] [-] pimlottc|5 years ago|reply
Consider a more descriptive word, such as: - minimal - streamlined - sleek - simple - opinionated - spatial - comprehensive
etc...
[+] [-] arendtio|5 years ago|reply
- minimal: limited features set aka either you like it in 10 seconds or you don't
- streamlined: good looking?!?
- sleek: combination of streamlined and minimal?
- simple: IMO even more overused than 'modern' and as diverse in its meaning
- opinionated: There is exactly one way of doing it right and either you like it or you don't, but it might come with an extensive feature set compared to minimal.
- spatial: no idea; Endless space? 3D? Depending on my geolocation?!?
- comprehensive: 'Oh, I have to learn something, but not too much'
Modern, on the other hand, means to me: Mainstream look & feel (kinda polished) and with considerable feature set.
Whats your definition?
[+] [-] slingnow|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mobb_solo|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mixmastamyk|5 years ago|reply
However, in practice typically means that there are hundreds of edge cases not yet solved.
[+] [-] corytheboyd|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aszen|5 years ago|reply
The grid layout is interesting but I found it strange that the all tabs are shown along the left side in split mode. It would be interesting to see how the grid differs from the tree layout that i3 uses.
I did like their default hot keys and the side bar for switching work spaces. Ultimately though if you don't like gnome this isn't going to change that. But if you do prefer i3 and want a more nicer environment with all the gnome system management ui's consider using https://regolith-linux.org/
[+] [-] gavinray|5 years ago|reply
Zero setup, incredible keybindings.
You can install it on top of your existing Distro, as an apt package. And then log out + log back in using new DE.
I had never used a tiling WM before Regolith, i3 seemed too difficult to configure for someone who didn't truly didn't understand the point/benefit of using tiling WM's.
A day into using Regolith on Ubuntu I was hooked. Been using it for years now and it's the best decision I've ever made, productivity skyrocketed and it looks nice.
I tried Pop_OS shell's tiling WM, as I was hopeful, but the keybindings and behavior aren't as nice as Regolith. It does a "swap" animation when changing tile positioning that slows stuff down, and I could never get the gap borders to disappear completely.
[+] [-] mxuribe|5 years ago|reply
[0] https://distrotest.net/Regolith%20Linux/R1.1
[+] [-] JeremyNT|5 years ago|reply
I've seen this complaint about GNOME in general before, so I want to mention that animations can be disabled or sped up in GNOME. There's a toggle to disable animations in GNOME completely (using the GNOME tweak tool, in the general setting). There are also add-ons to change their speed (I use Impatience [0]).
[0] https://github.com/timbertson/gnome-shell-impatience
[+] [-] messo|5 years ago|reply
Agree. I have used i3 for several years, but tried GNOME again recently to experience with Pop_OS's tiling feature. It was OK-ish, but a bit slow when resizing windows when rearranging / opening / closing windows, even with animations disabled.
I have read about Material Shell before, but did not try it. Gave it a try today, and I am pleasantly surprised so far. The animations get old very quickly, so I do what I always do in GNOME – disable all animations in Tweak Tools. This made the experience as close to i3 as GNOME has ever been for me. I will keep using the Material Shell for a while and stress-test it a bit.
[+] [-] barnabee|5 years ago|reply
I'd actually somewhat given up trying to keep i3 working nicely and reverted to XFCE (which is at least far less obnoxious then Gnome 3) until I discovered Regolith and have been using it happily ever since.
[+] [-] GekkePrutser|5 years ago|reply
I wonder how this compares with the Gnome tiling Add-on from Pop!_OS that is becoming very popular. But this material shell sounds like a much more holistic approach than just adding tiling to Gnome. I'll definitely try this out.
[+] [-] squarefoot|5 years ago|reply
I seem to have read somewhere that an open phone manufacturer (Librem?) is using a deeply optimized version of Gnome 3 to overcome its slugginess on less powerful hardware. Are there any chances their optimizations can be merged back so that every platform could take advantage of them?
[+] [-] V6HBGNQHU|5 years ago|reply
https://github.com/pop-os/shell
[+] [-] heresie-dabord|5 years ago|reply
This usage of "anarchy" makes me wonder what is so satisfying to advocates of "tiling". I personally don't have a need for new windows to conform to a strict placement algorithm.
My usability requirement for new windows: a) open the window in a timely manner and make it distinct so I can identify it; b) don't fiddle with my visual field unnecessarily.
I use OpenBox. I make the "active" window distinct using a custom theme. I open what I need and hide the rest in a shaded window and/or virtual desktop until I need it. I find what I need in the menus.
(I won't debate the qualities of Gnome, but I prefer a lighter DE.)
[+] [-] tkainrad|5 years ago|reply
In my opinion, this has been solved perfectly many years ago. I simply use Super+<num> to launch/switch to my 10 most important applications. Supported out-of-the box by both Windows and Gnome and 100% predictable. Every shortcut invocation will launch exactly the right application.
[+] [-] mikewhy|5 years ago|reply
Is there any sort of middle ground tiling solution for people like me?
[+] [-] olejorgenb|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gkop|5 years ago|reply
macOS: try Magnet app, it’s fantastic. Great out of the box config, fairly powerful (caveat: the mouse targets stink; but who uses the mouse anyway?)
[+] [-] redisman|5 years ago|reply
Tiling web browsers is especially bad since I use a lot of websites that flip to mobile mode or are just plain unusable when tiled into the wrong shape.
[+] [-] narwally|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wayneftw|5 years ago|reply
I honestly can't stand global top bars and "system panels" that are nothing more than always-visible launcher menus. They're just a waste of space. IMO Chrome looks ridiculous in the video, with a set of tabs directly underneath the workspace panel tabs.
What I'd really like to see is XFCE with automatic tiling. I can probably script a half-assed version of it myself without too much trouble, but it would be nice to have a full-assed version of that.
[+] [-] christophilus|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] yboris|5 years ago|reply
A user interface mockup where everything is grouped, spatially oriented, and scrollable.
https://vimeo.com/6712657
[+] [-] bengalister|5 years ago|reply
I got fed-up spending way too much tweaking the UI to my "needs". (To be fair, most of the time was spent on the toolbar (polybar, i3bar) configuration). I also realized that I mostly needed tiling for the terminal.
Thus I embraced Gnome UI with a few extensions: unite, dash-to-dock, system-monitor, etc. and started using tmux for the terminal.
I might try Material Shell but I am actually happy with today's Gnome3. Performance is decent, and the level of configuration is enough for me with a few extensions. It is not as stable and polished as MacOSX but there is no blocking point.
N.B: I kept i3 for my work Linux VM due to very limited system resources.
[+] [-] felixfoertsch|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scoutt|5 years ago|reply
If not, then I don't like that very much. For example the calculator: I don't want it to take 1/3 or 1/4 of the screen. It's like going back into a 35 years ago pre DESQview era.
Edit: nevermind. "In Material Shell windows are tiled. These means they are organised in a predictable way in which they do not overlap".
I guess I like my windows to be not predictable, whatever that means.
[+] [-] _def|5 years ago|reply
I also rather would like the left panel at the top since window lists aren't important to me anymore (hot corner for overview is so much faster for me finding the window I am looking for)
[+] [-] einpoklum|5 years ago|reply
For the life of me, I can't understand why there are that many GNOME-based desktop environments. I personally dislike most of their approach to UI. Maybe the innards are very pleasant to work with, but it's GTK-based, isn't it? That a somewhat-dated C toolkit, even if it has bindings in other languages. So I kind of doubt that.
And yet - MATE, Cinnamon, XFCE (ok, that's just GTK, not GNOME proper), Unity.
This is not a rant, I'm actually curious why GNOME is that popular, and those projects did not choose some other basis. I mean, that should be possible, right? LXDE switched from GTK to Qt a few years back.
[+] [-] trilinearnz|5 years ago|reply
My favourite feature is the ability to tile windows with a little gap between them. Having visibility (even a little) into the wallpaper when you're doing work makes a big difference for me. It's like it grounds you in a more natural frame of reference. I'm sure Mac users can relate to this due to the late introduction of true window maximisation, but as a Windows user I'm coming to appreciate the "non-fullscreen" or "edge-to-edge tiled" working environment.
[+] [-] asciimov|5 years ago|reply