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Comment by panarky | Hacker News Reader

When the display goes to sleep due to lack of input or whatever, you have to drag upwards with your mouse to unlock the screen. Like some common dirty frickin' smart phone.

Yes!

Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. FOR GODS SAKE WHY.

Double yes!

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> Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. FOR GODS SAKE WHY.

I use this all the time when working with several monitors. Just press Alt, click somewhere onto a window, move this window to a different monitor, smash window to the top of the screen. Bam, instant monitor-switching of full-screen windows.

(And yes, usually I use keyboard shortcuts for this but when the hand is already on the mouse then this is the best way to do it)

I love those features so much. Dragging the window near a side of the screen make it fills half of it too.

I learned that Windows has another nice variation on this: When you vertically resize (not drag!) a window to the top, it vertically maximizes the window. On Linux I configure a double click on the top bar to do this. I like to vertically maximize my terminals.

Windows has a few tricks that are nice.

One feature I miss from it is that if you drag and drop something from a windows below another, the one from which you drag the item from doesn't get focused and doesn't raise to the front.

In Xfce, you can put the mouse where it shows the resize arrow and double click to maximize in that direction. Windows has that for vertical but not horizontal. Neither has it for diagonal, it would be sweet if that pushed the activated corner to the desktop corner.

You can double-click vertical edges too

Like this in theory but they manage to screw it up. The new size is a state that is lost when moving again. :(

Personally I appreciate that, so YMMV. Makes it easy to divide the screen between two windows and then return the windows to normal size without manually resizing them.

And (at least in Xfce) dragging to a corner makes it fill that quarter of the screen. Really nice for building tri-window layouts where you need one tall and two short windows, which is how I typically arrange my windows when I use a tiling WM anyway, especially when programming: tall window for code, top short for Magit, bottom short for DirEd (if I have a high enough resolution, I might sometimes turn that into three smalls - Magit + DirEd + a REPL - which Xfce doesn't seem to support, unfortunately).

I use shortcuts a lot. Three desktops,

Top: Dev environment (VS Code + browsers + git extensions)

Middle: Servers, frontend servers and test runner console (anything I need to check or restart from time to time)

Bottom: anything that I'd rather not touch (I start some windows from a shell and move them to desktop 1, this is probabably not the most optimal way but I try to be more pragmatic and spend less time on tweaking my setup and this is a step in the right direction.)

I use Super + arrow up/down to move between them, I've assigned super + ctrl + shif + arrow up/down to move the currently focused window up or down etc.

> I use this all the time when working with several monitors. Just press Alt, click somewhere onto a window, move this window to a different monitor, smash window to the top of the screen. Bam, instant monitor-switching of full-screen windows.

1. What's wrong with the maximise button? It wasn't broken, it didn't need fixing.

2. What if you want the window at the top of the screen without being maximised?

1. I think the maximise button is still there. I don't think they altered it at all.

2. If small targets like the maximise button aren't a problem for you, then stopping the windows drag a few pixels before the mouse hits the top of the screen should be easy for you as well.

The drag to the top is nice because it mirrors the drag to left and right side. Since this is Linux, I'm sure you can configure this stuff somewhere.

It's GNOME, so nope, no setting for that.

Try this:

    dconf write /org/gnome/shell/extensions/classic-overrides/edge-tiling false

Didn't change anything.

How about:

    dconf write /org/gnome/mutter/edge-tiling false

Also doesn't work.

> If small targets like the maximise button aren't a problem for you, then stopping the windows drag a few pixels before the mouse hits the top of the screen should be easy for you as well

I certainly could do that. However (1) it wastes space, and (2) it's a crappy UI: moving the window some distance does one thing, moving it a bit more does something completely different.

> Since this is Linux, I'm sure you can configure this stuff somewhere.

I agree, the relevant command is:

    $ sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop

:-)

> 2. What if you want the window at the top of the screen without being maximised?

I'm using Unity in Ubuntu 16.04, and there a window only gets maximized if you drag it very close to the top edge of the screen. If you drag it to the bottom of the top bar or anywhere in the bottom half of the top bar, it moves to the bottom edge of the top bar without maximizing.

I got so much used to Unity. 17.04 felt more alien to me than when I first tried Win8 Metro. I'm getting old...

17.04 still had unity.

17.10 you mean? I haven't enjoyed that release at all, for me personally Ubuntu's Gnome 3 (could be everyone's Gnome 3 - I dunno) is just clunky and buggy compared to Unity.

I'll upgrade to 18.04, but if it isn't an improvement over 17.10 in that regard, it'll be time for me to check out other desktops.

Yes, 17.10 was the latest one I tried.

I prefer using LTS releases myself, so it's probably time to test 18.04.

> 1. What's wrong with the maximise button? It wasn't broken, it didn't need fixing

Using the maximise button takes more clicks and more aiming.

Maximize maximizes onto the current screen. I might want it maximized on another screen. The maximize button is also super tiny and harder to hit compared to the title bar.

I also think that in those rare cases you actually want to put a window at the top without maximizing it you are better off with a tiling window manager with keyboard shortcuts. In Windows you can quickly get top left quarter with win+left, win+up. On the other hand, win+up, ctrl+win+left also gives you full screen on another monitor.

> I might want it maximized on another screen.

Then move it to that screen first.

> The maximize button is also super tiny and harder to hit compared to the title bar.

Then the button needs to be bigger.

> I also think that in those rare cases you actually want to put a window at the top without maximizing it you are better off with a tiling window manager with keyboard shortcuts.

That may be true for you; it isn't for me.

I find keyboard shortcuts hard to remember and often inadvertantly press keys (don't know which one I've pressed) with shortcuts which do things I don't like.

You mean it has the super annoying snap to window edge that windows 10 has

>You mean it has the super functional snap to window edge that windows 10 has

See how opinions work?

Well if and only have a laptop screen to work with trying to adjust windows and have it to do something stupid that hids other windows you want to see.

Alt + double click can also toggle maximize the window under the cursor.

> Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. FOR GODS SAKE WHY.

Because it's a handy gesture.

> you have to drag upwards with your mouse to unlock the screen. Like some common dirty frickin' smart phone.

Yeah, that's pretty stupid.

You can also just press enter and type your password like normal.

I've noticed at least in 17.10 that hitting enter does not always seem to work and I have to drag up (this took me a while to even figure out).

Yeah, but for the past 25 years or so, the conventional way to wake up a desktop computer whose monitor has gone to sleep was a nonspecific mouse wiggle or keyboard press. Why change that? Like how big of a deal was accidentally waking up your monitor? What problem are we fixing? What's our usability goal here? Is this requirement discoverable to the user or not?

> Why change that?

Because it's NEW!! And therefore BETTER!!!!

> What problem are we fixing?

The problem that desktops were BORING, they had always worked the same way for SO LONG. They needed to be NEW! And therefore BETTER!!!!

I would like to switch round the accelerator and brake pedals on the cars of the people who make decisions like this. I'm sure they would thank me (provided they survived the experience), because having the pedals in the same position is OLD and BORING and changing them would be NEW!! And BETTER!!!!

For me it's not a very big deal; so many systems expect Enter now that I've turned Enter into my "nonspecific" keyboard press even in situations where it doesn't necessarily have to be Enter (like waking up a machine that's locked with XScreenSaver).

If I'm going to wake up a computer whose monitor is dark, I typically hit the super key, arrow keys, or sometimes the space bar and would never hit Enter as the first key. Why? I remember when people used to just turn monitors off manually before monitor power management, and I remember blank screen savers with first gen energy saving monitors that would turn off if they detected a blank screen. It only takes once where the monitor is off and you hit a key to turn it back on and accidentally confirm some dialog or accept changes or execute a command before you start using keys that don't actually do anything.

That's fair. In my case I have a habit of locking my screen, so that's rarely (if ever) a concern, but I suppose muscle memory is indeed hard to forget.

I move the mouse, actually the touchpad. It's safer than hitting a key. Then the password prompt appears. Why force us to swype up too? And why up when on phones we swype horizontally, patents?

True, I do favor the mouse. I should have said, "If I'm going to wake up a computer using the keyboard."

So instead of just typing your password, you prefer to wiggle your mouse first, and then start typing your password?

Yes. Because then I know I'm actually typing into the password box and not the username box which will be shown in plaintext once the monitor wakes up.

Then press enter, and then type in your password.

Or more importantly, checking that the screen actually locked and didn't just turn off. You could be about to broadcast your password in a chat.

The keypresses go directly to the password box BTW. That is, you don't have to "swipe" or hit return before you can type your password, you can just type away your password and hit return.

I learned not to type enter a long time ago. Press shift.

> Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. FOR GODS SAKE WHY.

This also works in Xfce and I love it.

In xfce you can switch that behaviour off in Window Manager Tweaks and the Accessibility tab. Not sure about Gnome shell.

I use xfce, and have Alt-Left half width full height on the left, Alt-Right does the same on the right. Alt-up is half height, full width on top, Alt-down on bottom, and Alt-F10 maximise.

I tend to only use the mouse to point to the window I want focus on, although on the occasion I do use a mouse I have it that dragging to the top/bottom/left/right does the same behaviour.

I had to really think about those shortcuts (on my phone at the moment) as it's just muscle memory.

I never noticed until now. (After just posting a comment that I stuck with Xfce to avoid crap like that...)

Actually you can just directly type your password without dragging/pressing anything.

Yeah, the gnome lockscreen drove me nuts until I figured that out.

Just press enter to get to the password prompt without using the mouse.

or just start typing your password

Interestingly pressing the Up arrow, as might be expected after seeing the upwards-pointing chevrons on the lock screen, doesn't work.

Xubuntu, all the benefits of using a popular Linux distro without the UI surprises every few years.

I will never understand why Ubuntu took a very nice desktop Linux distribution, and fucked it up with all these mobile and tablet centric UI absurdities.

Isn't it Gnome or the *dm? I use Arch with vanilla Gnome3 and it has the same drag up thing. I just press enter.

Mostly GNOME is to blame for this.

They did that because they'd caught the one-size-fits-all virus which made them yearn for Ubuntu phones and Ubuntu tablets. Those ventures did not really come to fruition but the side effects still show. Given the prevalence of touch-screen laptops it wouldn't surprise me if part of this idea actually does find a niche to settle in on convertible devices.

It's the way of the world. Apple and Microsoft seem hell-bent on introducing "phone/tablet" type gestures into their desktop UIs also. It seems only natural that linux distros would follow.

Lesson for the kids making these decisions: "new and/or different" != better

No, Unity came before Windows 8.

And with Windows 8 noone actually used Metro, the real desktop environment wasn't really touched so you always had a polished desktop-oriented UI one key stroke away. Not so with ubuntu that single-handedly obliterated the desktop Linux market dominance it had.

On the other hand, browser mouse gestures were awesome for half a decade before smartphones were a thing.

Gnome is more keyboard centric than mobile centric.

Never? It's not that hard to understand. To gain market share.

Current users aren't going to abandon it because of these various stupidities. The market they need to capture is the market that wants a look-and-feel-alike product.

> Dragging a window to the top of the screen maximizes the window. FOR GODS SAKE WHY.

It must be great for avoiding accidental unlocks, but I always feel a bit dirty swiping up the mouse to unlock.

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