I have a similar, but different setup for similar, but different reasons. Some call it ADHD. That’s a terrible term for it but that’s another conversation. I get sidetracked easily, so multitasking is risky. When that happens, I forget everything. If I get distracted, it can lead to hours, if not days, of forgetting to do critical things like: sleep, bathroom, eat, bathe, reply to texts from friends, family, bosses etc. An innocent wikipedia link can cause me to lose a day or two. So I use the virtual desktops as a way to ‘break away’ from whatever meaningless distraction has pulled me away from whatever i was doing. More on that in a bit.
Other important notes: I am left handed. I have rheumatoid arthritis. It effects both hands but my right hand is much worse. Keyboard shortcuts are not friendly to people who are left hand dominant. Keyboards period, are usually not left hand friendly. I have 2 monitors always and sometimes 3 or 4. I recently got an ultrawide and have been using just 2 lately. The 2nd monitor, the smaller one, is where I usually put things that are always running like chat clients, music player, daily agenda, timers for cooking etc. If I have a 3rd, it will have a text editor, firefox or things i read to assist with whatever i’m working on.
I have 4 virtual desktops. They are arranged and named like so: | Main | System | | Art | Porn |
Don’t let the names fool you.
“Main” is what it sounds like. It’s where I do most of my work. It’s also where I keep my ‘to do’ list. The list keeps me organized somewhat. It’s a shortlist of important things I need to remember.
The other 3 are where my biggest sources of distraction go.
“System” is where I put anything related to the tools I use. This is not limited to the operating system, it includes software and hardware troubleshooting stuff but also things like the manuals for my car, planners for building computers, electronic schematics, health related stuff like insurance crap or research papers and plenty more. Stuff that I need to be operational. It’s also a week/month/year planner and where I keep phone numbers, notes for projects, all sorts of stuff.
“Art” is mostly for image and video editing software. If I get frustrated by something, it becomes a vacation spot. A zen garden of sorts. Occasionally I will run “feh -rzsZFD 5 /path/to/my/shittyart” which starts a nice slideshow of images and watch it for awhile.
“Porn” is for anything that is not important. This is where wikipedia lives if it’s not related to anything important. This is where the youtube videos go, that friends/family send me that i’m worried they will distract me. It’s more of a ‘to do later’ section. That’s part of the choice in name for the desktop, ‘do’ sometimes used as a euphemism for sex. Another way of putting it, it’s the “fuck that for now” desktop. Also, I quit watching TV and movies and also playing videogames, as a new year resolution back in 2020. This is where those things used to go. Also, this is where I watch porn.
Keyboard: I remapped a lot of keyboard shortcuts. I wont list all of them, just the important/relevant ones. CTRL+[F1…F4] These switch to the virtual desktops. F1 is Main, F2 is System, F3 is Art and F4 Porn. CTRL+[top row 1…4] These send the currently focused window to the corresponding desktop. Most useful when I catch myself getting distracted by something. I can CTRL+4 to ‘throw it away for later’ Meta+top row 1/Meta+ top row 3 Moves current focused window left or right in regard to which monitor it is on. Meta+ top row 2 Maximize toggle focused window. Meta+4
Meta+WSAD Tile ↑↓←→ F1 Application Launcher (because I don’t need help lol) F2 Window menu F3 Krunner F4 Yakuake toggle
This allows me to use my left hand almost entirely by itself, useful when my right hand is locked and curled up in a clenched fist from the rheumatism. Another part of the reason I named the 4th desktop what I named it, because i’ve become really good at typing with one hand.
There are a lot of F row combinations that are unused. F5-F8 with shift, alt, meta and ctrl can be done with either hand once you do it a few times and understand how your hand can reach them. F5 alone is refresh. meta+f5 and f6 do mouse focus stuff i don’t really understand or use. I don’t use or know of any programs that use any combinations of them. To me it means there are 30+ shortcuts that could be made if i include shift+another modifer key.
I also made caps lock the 3rd level chooser, pause/break the compose key, mousewheel on the desktop switches desktops, mousewheel on the titlebar of any window moves that window and switches desktop, alt+menu (the keyboard menu button) and crtl+menu to open the emmoji picker and special character select dialogues.
I originally designed this with the KDE desktop cube switcher. It really helped the ADHD aspect of things. Something about being able to mentally ‘put stuff on the cube’ helped keep me focused. The visualization itself also worked as a distraction, one that I could use to help break away from my distractions. Convoluted way to do things, I know. Losing that silly cube animation really messed me up for awhile. I can’t wait for it to return, although I doubt it will have the same functionality.
Like you mentioned at the end, I am probably forgetting to talk about something.
This is a low quality gif I made, when I was first working out the shortcuts and stuff. Felt relevant.