So for a long time pretty much every computer used the traditional like windows layout with moveable windows that minimized or maximized and had a taskbar and start menu and whatnot. You had some minor changes with Mac and stuff, but now you can really have some radically different ways to use a computer.
Personally I have differing preferences if I’m using a laptop or a desktop.
On my desktop I prefer a dock and to use the mouse to click around. More of the windows style. Then on a laptop (which I use most often) I use a heavily gesture based navigation.
Currently I have Gnome modified so that when I am in a program, like the web browser I’m in typing this, it is full screen. The top bar is hidden, and there’s no dock of any kind. Not even one that pops up when I move the mouse to the edge of the screen. Instead I have everything for navigation hidden inside the task view. I swipe up on the trackpad with 3 fingers to bring it up. That’s how I see time, battery life, and the other topbar stuff too. If switching quickly between two things I put one of them in a 2nd desktop and use a 3 finger side swipe to move back and forth.
I’m curious to know what other unique or highly custom navigation methods people are using on Linux. I know tiling window managers are pretty popular. Is there a general consensus on what’s best these days? Or is everyone doing slightly different things?
I have windows like desktop navigation, but have EVERYTHING hotkeyed with the maximize, minimize, exit bar barely a whisper of a thing with none of the aforementioned buttons so I can drag windows, but other than that, all hotkeys. Even almost all if my software is hotkeyed.
I see what you mean. You get rid of the buttons so you can click and drag the window bar without accidentally clicking them right? I’ve got everything so smushed into one bar it’s like the opposite. Altho I really don’t USE the buttons since I have it in fullscreen all the time and just close things from the Gnome task switcher. So maybe I’ll remove my buttons too. Might be a good idea.
This is what I mean by the bar being all smushed together:
That’s the entire screen. I messed with the browser settings to make it so I had more screen space for the actual webpage.