Rethinking Window Management in Gnome

This page summarizes the projects mentioned and recommended in the original post on news.ycombinator.com

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  • shell

    Pop!_OS Shell

  • 2. https://github.com/pop-os/shell

    I use it as a daily driver on Debian 11. It's the best balance of tiling and "normal" desktop UI I've found so far.

  • PaperWM

    Tiled scrollable window management for Gnome Shell

  • InfluxDB

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  • i3-auto-layout

    Automatic, optimal tiling for i3wm

  • The problem with this fairly complex solution is that the easier path by far is simpler window arrangements, multiple monitors, and many workspaces. Once you have more windows than fit on a workspace its easier just to have more workspaces and 1-3 windows is what basically universally fits on most monitors.

    If you organize more things in the same space you probably need indivdual apps that themselves have tabs like browsers, editors, IDEs rather than more windows.

    Personally I use https://github.com/chmln/i3-auto-layout to make slightly better layouts automatically be automatically alternating between v and h splits and find this fits my needs 95% of the time.

    Shit work under i3 is already very small but if you wanted to reduce it further I think you could probably go a long way with a very simple feature.

    Add a save button that saves current layout to a list like so

    Browser, calculator

    Browser, pdf reader

    terminal terminal terminal

    ide terminal terminal

    Then have a restore function that simply walks the list finds the entry that matches the kind and number of window and shoves existing windows into that layout. You can at creation time use something like i3-save-tree, edit the json, yada yada but its all fairly manual and I think for the use case it would be relatively simpler. The few non standard all match for me a simple pattern eg there really isn't 2 different ways I want IDE terminal terminal

  • sway

    i3-compatible Wayland compositor

  • sway does all those things very well: https://swaywm.org/

  • dots-hyprland

    Modern, feature-rich and accessible desktop configuration.

  • > What made you choose hyprland over sway?

    The number of people talking about how great it was, while it's much more recent that sway.

    Eyecandy is important to, so is flexibility: check https://github.com/end-4/dots-hyprland and you'll see very different styles made from the same hyprland that I use in "each window is fullscreen" mode.

    But to stay with a desktop, you've got to integrate it to your workflow.

  • matrix.to

    A simple stateless privacy-protecting URL redirecting service for Matrix

  • > I'd love to chat with the gnome guys. They miss so much and I'm not sure why.

    Feel free to join https://matrix.to/#/#design:gnome.org

    Tobias will be happy to discuss with you (and everybody else who has constructive insights)

  • unity-x

  • > I wish Unity didn't die

    Hi from Unity on Ubuntu 23.04.

    I am running the Unity flavour:

    https://ubuntuunity.org/

    It uses the latest Unity 7.7, released earlier this year:

    https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx

    I run it on 3 or 4 machines, one of which has 2 screens and one of which has 3. Works great, scales well, handles modern Ubuntu just fine.

    I use it with the Waterfox browser, which integrates natively with the Unity global menu bar, without any addons or config. I am currently on -- (hits alt-H, A) -- version 5.1.9.

    https://www.waterfox.net/

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  • Waterfox

    The official Waterfox 💧 source code repository

  • > I wish Unity didn't die

    Hi from Unity on Ubuntu 23.04.

    I am running the Unity flavour:

    https://ubuntuunity.org/

    It uses the latest Unity 7.7, released earlier this year:

    https://gitlab.com/ubuntu-unity/unity-x/unityx

    I run it on 3 or 4 machines, one of which has 2 screens and one of which has 3. Works great, scales well, handles modern Ubuntu just fine.

    I use it with the Waterfox browser, which integrates natively with the Unity global menu bar, without any addons or config. I am currently on -- (hits alt-H, A) -- version 5.1.9.

    https://www.waterfox.net/

  • AHK_X11

    AutoHotkey for Linux (X11-based systems)

  • Just FYI the exact same thing is now also possible with AHK_X11 on Linux https://github.com/phil294/AHK_X11

NOTE: The number of mentions on this list indicates mentions on common posts plus user suggested alternatives. Hence, a higher number means a more popular project.

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