Comment by esarbe | Hacker News Reader

Comment by esarbe | Hacker News Reader

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> I have too many windows open to keep them all maximised.

You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

> Those are undiscoverable and should not be the only option.

Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

> Shoulda, coulda, woulda. I manage with the programs that are, not the ones that could be. I'm not interested in developing my own DE, not redeveloping all the other programs surrounding it.

> One isn't even a GUI application. The second sees regular use with a GUI, but only for reconfigurations that take less than 10 seconds.

The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

> Why would I want to relearn a new UI for only marginal benefits?

To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

[0] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Systemd/User

> You can have as many windows maximized as you want. There's not upper limit to maximized windows.

I phrased that wrongly. Sorry about that.

I constantly maximise windows, and I often minimise them too. I use the buttons for that. Sometimes i double click the title bar, and sometimes I just drag to the top. Neither of the latter two, or any other way to maximise or minimise windows, implie that the buttons shouldn't be there. I still use them, regardless of the other options, and I like it that way.

> Just do `<super> + appname` and you'll jump to the window in question. No discovery required. The WM will do the discovery for you.

Knowing that you're supposed to do '<super> + appname' is undiscoverable.

> The not-gui application you could put into a user-defined daemon (check [0] on how to create user services). The GUI-for-reconfiguration thingy you can put on a workspace, then it's out of your way and still accessible for reconfiguration.

No thanks. I'm good.

> To be snarky; "Why would I want to relearn riding for a new horseless carriage with only marginal benefits?"

To be even snarkier: Why live? I still haven't found a good reason. But while I'm doing it, I don't want to make my existence harder.

Relearning a new UI doesn't have any obvious benefits. People would have told me about the benefits by now. The horseless carriage has obvious benefits. People have told me about those, and it didn't take much to convince me. It shouldn't take much to convince me to relearn a new UI. The UI simply has to be good and have features which make my life easier. Gnome isn't and doesn't have any, going by the times I've tried to use it and the ways people try to convince me that it's actually good.

> Relearning a new UI doesn't have any obvious benefits. People would have told me about the benefits by now.

Gnome for me has the benefit of being usable without ever actually touching the mouse. I can keep my fingers on the keyboard without ever having to lift my hand and push around the mouse to switch applications, to start applications, find applications. The only time I need to use the mouse is if I'm using applications that have some kind of obligatory/mandatory mouse usage, e.g. Blender or Gimp or the like.

YMMV.

Most of the programs I use require the mouse often enough that this isn't really a workflow I'm interested in. And even if those edge-case actions can be done without a mouse, it's usually some arcane keyboard shortcut to do so, which isn't actually any faster than just using the mouse unless you've already optimised your way to only using the keyboard.

YMMV indeed.

Surely you realize that using a computer in this fashion in the modern era is relegated to a fraction of a percentage of people, right? I agree with the sentiment that an OS should be usable without a pointing device, especially for accessibility reasons or instances where a pointing device is faulty or unavailable, but it should also consider the other 99.999% of general purpose computer users.

It should be usable by both a mouse-only, by both a keyboard-only and with a combination of the two.

Accessibility is paramount in and of itself, but it also has the added benefit of helping non-standard situations. Like I occasionally use my desktop over TV from bed with only a mouse, or the reverse, I may only have a keyboard at the time. Or I'm just eating/drinking something.

Gnome performs splendidly here, windows and Mac, much less so.

I'm curious; why do you minimize windows? What's your use case for that?

I remember that I stopped minimizing windows when I stopped putting application starters and folders on the desktop - this was the one thing that forced me to minimize windows, because otherwise I couldn't access those (obviously).

> I'm curious; why do you minimize windows? What's your use case for that?

Because there are windows behind the one I want to minimise that I wish to see. Each of my monitors has at least two programs on it, most of which are best viewed maximised (a video, a full screen game, a remote session to a different desktop, a text editor, probably more in some extreme cases).

> I remember that I stopped minimizing windows when I stopped putting application starters and folders on the desktop - this was the one thing that forced me to minimize windows, because otherwise I couldn't access those (obviously).

My desktop isn't quite sterile, but there's nothing there I need immediate access to. And if I do, I use the file manager anyway.

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