Do you actually use desktop workspaces? | Hacker News Reader

Do you actually use desktop workspaces?

6 pointsviswanathk15 comments

Ubuntu workspaces have added another layer to the desktop window manager. They claim that it makes your work easier to organise. As a Ubuntu power user, I have never really used the workspaces. So do you use the workspace feature in Ubuntu or is Windows right in guessing that people don't need workspaces and then never implementing them on their OS?

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Yes, in a sense. I use tags (slightly more powerful) as part of awesome[1], a DIY tiling window manager (with very sensible defaults)

I have 18 tags across two screens with delegations as follows.

Screen 1:

1-2 Thunderbird + composing new emails

3-4 Jabber conversations

5-9 Coding related terminals

Screen 2:

1-2 work-related chromium

3-7 sysadmin related terminals

8 general internet surfing

9 IRC

I find clearly splitting out my work related chromium windows and non-work related helps with procrastination. HN doesn't call as often when it's not already open in a tab where I can see it.

Meta-[1-9] switches to a tag on the active screen, Meta-shift-j switches screens. So 1-2 commands brings me to whatever I'm looking for.

[1] http://awesome.naquadah.org/

I work best with 3 virtual desktops on my laptop and 4 on my desktop, and the XFCE desktop environment has the best tweaks built in - that is, switching to the next desktop can be done by mousing past the edge of the screen. Of course you can click your chosen desktop in the indicator applet in the panel, and I'm sure there's a goofy key-combo that will do the same thing. But having a super fast target 1080 pixels tall at each edge of the screen is unbeatable. Application windows are always maximized, they never have to take turns sharing the same screen.

In Gnome2/Mate desktops, this switching action isn't built in, but available with the "brightside-properties" package. Brightside-properties also worked on the early Ubuntu Netbook Remix, but since Unity/Gnome3 came along it doesn't work in those environments and I've found no way to make it happen.

Although Windows didn't do virtual desktops, at least they didn't stand in the way of OEMs making their own desktops. My first pc was a Win95 Sony Vaio (200Mhz, 32MB RAM!) and Sony had some sort of desktop mask that would allow you to have a ridiculously huge desktop, like 4096^2, but it was windowed to whatever 800x600 section you felt like seeing at the time. It rocked! It's was better than what Gnome3/Unity have become now, 15 years later.

Virtual workspaces are not new. They've been around for decades, on Linux at least. They've been around on Windows for decades too if you count third-party software. They're great for when you're doing several screen-real-estate-intensive tasks in tandem. e.g. Making/editting figures in a graphics program and working on a LaTeX file they go in. Workspaces come in particularly handy when you have multiple windows going per task. e.g. Say you're making a figure and drawing images from several sources. You can switch to another task by switching workspaces and then come back and not have to go looking for windows.

Virtual workspaces can be confusing, which is probably why they haven't really made inroads on most OS's targeting everyone right down to neophyte users. The more recent versions of OSX do include them, although they're turned off by default and not implemented with much configurability or power.

I have yet to try Unity, but I'm actually surprised it didn't have virtual desktop support from the get-go, if indeed that is the case. That would have been a rather glaring omission.

Unity and Gnome3 have virtual desktops, just not the best functionality. You either do a key-combo or move the mouse to a hot corner, pause, then it shows a sort of tiled or thumbnailed view of each open application as if it was on it's own desktop, and you click on the one you want and it then fills the screen.

Instead of behaving like multiple desktops, it's more like a slow way to maximize the application window you want to use next It's almost like the Windows Alt-Tab/Alt-Shift-Tab maneuver to scroll through to the next or previous open application windows.

What I was describing in XFCE is how you switch workspaces.

Multiple desktops is indeed on by default in Mountain Lion, but you aren't given any instruction on how to use them. Putting an application into fullscreen (the new button on the top right of a window) will put it into a new desktop, and four finger swipes switch workspaces (along with ctrl+direction), four finger upswipe will display all visible desktops, and allows you to create new ones and close discarded ones, as well as move windows between desktops. Again, this is indeed all turned on by default. Even the dashboard is now implemented as a virtual desktop, instead of an overlay like in previous versions of the OS.

As i switched to a minimalistic tiling window manager, i more and more saw the value in them.

I have by default 9 virtual desktops, use different ones for different tasks.

Instead of minimizing/maximizing windows i just switch virtual desktops. It perfectly suits my work flow.

In my opinion: 2 monitors instead of one and quick shortcut switching through virtual desktops, developing some routine in using them, definitely boosts ones productivity.

But have to admit that i also didn't quite see value in them while using full Desktop Environment.

Regarding the question of Microsoft not implementing the feature in Windows:

Since the typical Windows User is a heavily mouse dependent one, i think they can do without it.

Hint: Change the title from "Ubuntu workplaces" to just "workplaces" or "Desktop workplaces". I don't see how this is Ubuntu specific

Thanks for the idea. I changed it. And you are right actually. For a full desktop environment such as Unity or Gnome3, virtual desktops do not make that much sense as it does for desktop environments such as awesome.

The ability to quickly switch to a clean workspace is imperative for me. When I'm doing something fairly intensive I have at least 15 open across both my monitors.

The other option, is less workspaces and more split windows. I personally don't like this setup because it means more varied key combinations to go from any desired window to another, whereas in my case I only need one combination: Alt-<x>. That is not to say I don't use splitting because that is sometimes imperative for quick reference from one window to another (although in this case a second monitor helps a lot too).

I see desktop workspaces as virtual auxiliary displays. I prefer a dual-display setup, and it's changed the way I use a computer. When I am on my laptop I feel extremely constrained by having only one display, so I make extensive use of OSX's virtual desktops. I never had the urge to use these extra desktops before changing my workstation to dual monitors, so for me at least that's the causality. Mountain Lion also makes it very easy to full-screen applications, and switching between them via a trackpad swipe is very convenient.

After switching away from a 5 monitor setup to just using a laptop I began using multiple workspaces. As a vim user the default Ubuntu key bindings left something to be desired so I remapped them so that Alt-(h|j|k|l) move around in workspace... space and Ctrl-Alt-(h|j|k|l) move the current window similarly.

I am surprised that after enjoying multiple monitors for so many years, this way of working fits me well. I have been using this setup for more than two years now.

i always reduced the number of workspaces in ubuntu to 1 until i got my hands on a macbook pro and figured out the gestures. it's incredibly easy to manage your opened apps especially on small displays. if you assign your programs to run on specific workspaces like <<plantain>> said you might be surprised. i know i was. and it only took me a couple of days to get used to them.

the biggest problem i see is the interface. gestures on mac saves you a lot of trouble as switching a workspace is only a three finger swipe. so, on linux, no gestures, this means keybinds -- god! i hate keybinds (i work on win, mac and linux and i get confused sometimes :)).

maybe a combo of mouse gesture + click/keypress could ease our lives in linux.

any ideas?

I have a 13' I use a lot on the move and use 2 workspaces usually 1 with a full screen terminal and other with a browser. It's just easier to sort work on a small screen that way for me. At a desktop with 2+ screens I've never really had a need for them.

I have used them pretty heavily at times. It's certainly nice to have the concept of multiple desktops to work with.

I don't use workspaces, but I also really only ever have two applications open, chrome and terminal.

yup, since a long time, having a 13' screen pushes me to do it: screen 1 browser, screen 2 terminal full screen with vim, ssh whatever, screen 3 torrent client and music player

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