Workspaces might be a bit overkill if you’re only switching between two-ish windows. For more you might find a benefit to using workspaces, especially if you group windows related to specific tasks, or if your brain likes having windows “stored” spatially.
Pop! It’s easy to install, stable, and works great with Nvidia drivers. If I have more time on my hands then Arch, because it’s good old-fashioned computing fun.
It's pretty decent for me with ten workspaces (and each one mapped in a sequence from Alt+1 through Alt+0). Text editor always in the first workspace, browser in the second, music in the third, etc. What's nice is that you can (almost) replicate the same workflow if someone forces you to use macOS or Windows at work
Virtual Desktops haven’t really been a thing that I’ve really needed in my work flow. Maybe one day I will give using one a shot. I actually prefer my current setup with dual 27" monitors.
It feels great on my laptop with gestures. On desktop, not so much. Feels like it’s designed to have one full screen application up at a time. Removal of tray icons is just stupid, and they should just give up on their push against them. Which their quest against tray icons is actually worse then just unstandardized tray icons themselves. Still, it’s definitely the most polished DE out there, so that’s why I tend to stick with it and run dash-to-panel. The overview mode is actually better then I realize now that I got used to it. Even pressing the mouse against the top left corner starts to feel nice.
I love it. I have used it for very long time with and without extensions. I love the overview in particular, pressing meta and having everything presented to you is fantastic. I used it by mostly running maximized windows, then each time I wanted to switch to another program I pressed meta and clicked on the app I wanted. I used workspaces to keep separate groups of programs for each workflow separate too.
If I used extensions it was small things like Appindicators and small cosmetics like blur my shell.
Now, I don't think GNOME scales very well if you use tens of windows at once, you would need to use too many workspaces, which are slow to navigate, and/or have tiny windows in the overview, which are hard to click because their position is unpredictable unlike traditional taskbars, where the programs are always visible and never move on their own.
My workflow never involved too many windows, so I never had problems with it.
Something else I wish would change is that the top bar should go away or actually do something other than show the time. I would say either just take it away entirely and only show it in the overview. Or turn the clock into a notch. Or just make it a half-traditional taskbar, with the clock and options moved to the right and the left side showing as many programs as they fit in thin bars.
Yesterday I’ve seen the other thread, curiosity got the best of me so I registered in openstreetmaps and in Organic Maps I’ve added a missing cafe and a restaurant in my area. Fascinating!
I use Dash to Panel to show taskbar icons for running applications, with the topbar moved to a sidebar to save valuable vertical real estate: https://imgur.com/tc0IbuM.png
I use the Workspaces Indicator extension to keep track of which one I'm in, but I use workspaces to focus on specific tasks using groups of applications... not an individual workspace for each application. I normally only have one or two workspaces in use.
I disable the Activities button and Overview completely, with the Super key opening the Applications View directly.
I previously used Arc Menu to replace the Applications View, but dropped that when they added folders to the Application View. It's still a bit clunky, but it's usable now that is supports some minimal organization.
A qualified yes. I love the overview, which is, IMO, the most elegant way to launch applications and manage workspaces of any OS or DE. I also love the general look and fluidity of the environment and how it gets out out of your way when you don’t need it. But I preferred the pre-GNOME 40 vertical workflow to the new horizontal workflow.
There are also three must-have extensions that make GNOME usable for me:
AppIndicator and KStatusNotifierItem Support. GNOME can wish away tray icons if they want to, but the tray hasn’t gone away and is still necessary for some applications.
DashToDock. Makes app switching more accessible and adds right-click to close.
Gnome 4x UI Improvements. Increases the size of the workspace thumbnails so you can actually see what’s in them (like it was before GNOME 40).
I use many extensions, but I also like this “keep the vanilla simple” approach of Gnome. Instead of trying to support many different workflows, it does only one, and it does it well. Everything is much more polished, compared to other DEs, simply because there’s less stuff. And support for extensions seems to be excellent, since there’s so many of them and they often work very well.
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