Comment by K0SM0S | Hacker News Reader

Comment by K0SM0S | Hacker News Reader

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Wait until you discover some basic features of KDE or Gnome (especially the former) on Linux then. Using KDE, both MacOS and Windows 10 feel like it's 2009 all over again, by comparison. I just don't understand why MS and Apple don't steal the best stuff, it's literally 'free' as in beer, and so much more important to a good UX compared to the slew of useless features both these commercial vendors keep on piling up...

Things like per-window or per-app settings:

- borderless

- opacity

- default an app to a virtual desktop, position and size, even sub-types of windows (e.g. when you want children to appear in some designated place)

- a few well-placed magnets (sides, center, other windows) to quickly resize 'perfectly' (my OCD loves it haha)

- activities (more like a meta-organization, so powerful when switching tasks/context like home / work / hobby / etc.

- custom shortcuts for anything (any of the above, launch any app, optionally with command-line options)

and so much more...

Don't forget always-on-top.

I shouldn't have to install a new browser that does hacky things with OSX just to keep a YouTube video on top of my workspace.

Safari PiP allows this.

Open YouTube, start a video, right click on the video for YT’s menu, right click again and you’ll have the option for PiP.

For many of the things you list, you may want to have a look at https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm

I cannot say enough good things about chwm (or yabai[0], as he now calls it), by far the best window management tool I've used on macOS. Unlike most other tools, it is instantaneous and requires no mental effort. In conjunction with skhd[1], it gives a super clean interface for you to completely control your desktop. It's only too bad that you have to disable SIP for all the APIs to get exposed.

[0]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

[1]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd

Interesting! The active project (rewrite) moved here apparently: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai

Just to piggyback on your interest:

My comments were more in the way of evangelizing Plasma (iirc KDE is the company, Plasma is their DE product), to share awesome features that I'd love to see generalized on all platforms.

In searching for a productive DE, provided you only want GUI config on the user side and can learn to juggle between 3-4 settings panels, Plasma beats them all.

Defaults are very close to Windows 10 (rather the other way around historically but whatever), with a touch of Linux twist here and there (magnet sides, feature-rich title bar menu, etc.)

The more advanced stuff is only necessary to maximize X (real estate, aesthetics, shortcut-driven controls...), some of it becomes invaluable over time.

I strongly encourage you to spend some time with KDE's Plasma, it's inspiring regarding the 'desktop paradigm' insofar as we just want to refine, not disrupt it (familiarity is a good thing for users imho).

MacOS has custom shortcuts for everything.

Where "everything" is a small subset of KDE's capabilities.

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