Nicco suggest never using minimize. How to effectively use virtual desktops instead?

General
1

In a Nicco Loves Linux video, which reacts to PewDiePie’s Linux video, he suggests minimizing apps should be avoided or not used at all. The rationale is minimizing hides applications. It’s better to move windows around. In place, use virtual desktops.

I tried doing this and found it difficult to work with applications because each virtual desktop becomes a silo. When I need apps to cooperate with each other, e.g., copy info from this web browser window to an email, I’m shuffling between desktops. There appears to be a management overhead to using desktops that isn’t there with minimizing.

With minimizing, all apps live in the same space. Minimizing moves them away until needed. Restore them when it’s time to use them. With desktops, I feel like I’m spending lots of time shuffling apps between desktops, locating which desktop has what app, etc.

Is there a good primer on effectively using virtual desktops?

2 Likes
2

Virtual desktops are a bit like minimizing windows in groups with the option of making even their taskbar entries “disappear”.

My setup has 6 virtual desktops and I have given each one a “role”.

Desktop 1 is my “Chat role”, currently with Ruqola and NeoChat.

Desktop 2 is my “PIM role”, currently with KMail and KOrganizer (separate on my desktop, one on each monitor, or integrated as Kontact on my laptop)

Desktop 3 is my “Web role”, currently with multiple Chromium windows.

Desktop 4 is my “Dev role”, currently with QtCreator.

Desktop 5 and 6 a “spares”, though I often use 5 for testing to keep its windows separate from those on 4.

If a desktop has multiple windows I either have them side by side, partially overlapping or fully overlapping, just switching via ALT-Tab or clicking the taskbar entry.

Either method of window switching would be much more hassle if they were all on the same desktop.

Switching from desktop 1 to 2 is a bit like minimizing both Ruqola and NeoChat and restoring both KMail and KOrganizer but also makes the taskbar only show the “current” set of windows.

I only ever minimize if I need to interact with the desktop itself, although desktop 6 is usually free anyway and I can just switch to that :slight_smile:

2 Likes
3

i tend to use the shade feature more than minimize to manage a given desktop when there are multiple windows at play.

or if i’m taking a completely different tangent from what is currently in work on my desktop, then i just switch to a different desktop and start work there.

1 Like
4

Hi - I think the replies above are good examples of ways to use the power of virtual desktops.

For what it’s worth, I tried approaches like those in the past, and they just didn’t click with my brain. Personally, I like having everything that’s open to be presented on the taskbar to help orient myself, and I find minimizing to/restoring from the taskbar to be less visually disorienting than scrolling the entire screen over to another virtual desktop.

I’m mentioning that only to point out that, it’s awesome to be flexible and try out new approaches to using your device and organizing your work - but if you give it a try and it’s just not for you, that’s OK too :slight_smile:

In case you haven’t used it much yet, the Overview - Super+W by default in KDE Plasma - is pretty helpful in my opinion in seeing multiple desktops less as “silos” and more as “sections” or “zones”.

3 Likes
5

Thank you for the breakdown of how you use it in place of minimizing windows.

How are you switching between desktops? What if you are on desktop 4 and realize you need to research something for development on the web? How do you move from 4 to 3?

How do you handle the situation when you find the info you need on the web and need a side by side with QtCreator while you read the web page? Move the window from 3 to 4?

6

I usually use keyboard shortcuts.

For example regardless of where I am, when I see an email notification and I want to read it in full, I just do CTRL+F2 and I am essentially in front of KMail.

Yes, although I will usually first detach that tab into its own window.
Sometimes I already have a browser open on desktop 4 so I end up just copying the URL and opening another tab in that browser.

I guess I could also just start dragging the tab, switch desktop with shortcut and drop it into the existing window :slight_smile:

You can also set windows to show on all desktops.
I usually do that with video conference windows so they “follow me around”

7

i have my desktops tied to my mouse wheel, so all i do is hover over a vacant piece of desktop and slide to the next one… having them move up/down and having my pager (which i could also click on) sitting in a vertical task bar helps to bring the whole UX together.

for moving, have my settings to move a window to the next adjacent desktop whenever i drag it to upper/lower edge.

or i just right click on the title bar and send to the desktop of choice, but i don’t really need to do this that much.

8

Experience is the first. Realising that it’s all ‘virtual’ stuff, as you only have a certain screen estate to work with.

So look at one 1080p screen.

I set shortcuts Meta_Alt ⇐ ⇒ shortcuts for switching to window above/below/left/right… that means I don’t have to restrict my window sizes by tiling them (which is just as valid if it’s feasible, but sometimes you need the screenspace for an app).

So you can also do desktops with Ctrl_Meta shortcuts which is just as valid. I also set a corner (top right) to present my desktops and windows, so I can go that route… sometimes my hand is on keyboard, sometimes on mouse.

Once the desktop slid over, the windows are gone just as if they’re minimised or just covered up. They really are not there any more, only in your imagination - just as minimised windows are gone (but you can see them if you see your taskbar).

Then for picking windows, we have the (Meta_Z for me) toggling of Overview, Desktops… also you can simply present all windows (old school, great for mousers - also ok with keyboard) or present windows only from this desktop.

So if anything is a problem, it’s the plethora of paths and choices you can make.

Just as with tiling, there are problems and issues with any method - so what I tend to do is to use whichever one I fancy at the time and not have a distinct preference.

For example, I often shove PlexHTPC to it’s own desktop, so Ctrl_Meta arrow takes me to my desktop, or to my ‘media centre’ 10 foot UI.

But if I’m browsing, I bring plex to the same desktop where I can shove it in a corner to watch whilst browsing, and easily switch to it and let it take over the screen.

It’s just whatever suits you - and it’s up to you to manage your shortcuts to suit… that is arguably the hardest part.

I like to keep a conky window for shortcuts that times out after a minute - where I can edit/update what shortcuts I need to learn/recall on the desktop.

9

because each virtual desktop becomes a silo. When I need apps to cooperate with each other, e.g., copy info from this web browser window to an email, I’m shuffling between desktops

Yes, Virtual Desktops work best if you have things that are somewhat cleanly separated.

If there’s something you need in multiple desktops, you can have a separate instance on each desktop specific to that. Browsers are a good example, when I’m using desktops I usually end up with a browser window (or multiple) on all workspaces. You can also put indiidual windows on all desktops if you need the same instance in multiple places.

There is a non-significant overhead though; I find it works best if you have predictable locations for different things (e.g. one is dedicated to email and the like). And that doesn’t work well, as you have to set it up on each start (or use window rules which can be a bit messy and requires constant tweaking as your setup evolves). Wayland session will make this a bit better (but many apps will likely still do stupid things like clicking a link in an app not opening it in the correct browser window).

In the end, at present it’s too much of a hassle, so I don’t use virtual desktops that much at the moment - usually everything is on one desktop. They’re still useful because I sometimes need to do something and don’t want it to mess with my current window stack, so I keep another one around for that.

Somewhat more broadly speaking, there’s a tradeoff between attention and memory. Some people find having lots of information available (such as always seeing the list of open windows) distracting because seeing other things takes away attention from the things they’re working on at that moment. Other people find that they’d much rather have the information there, because it means that they have to remember less and can offload more of their working memory to their interface.

I’m very much in the second camp, and even when I use multiple virtual desktops I have my task manager set to always show apps on all virtual desktops.

I disagree with Niccolo though; there is one killer feature of minimizing (though you need to enable it in Task Switcher settings) – you can have it show minimized apps at the bottom, and that’s the only way to quickly manipulate the LRU order there. Say you’re switch mostly between the same 5 windows, but need another one for a moment (and don’t want to close it because you’ll need it later). Now that one window is going to be high up in the Alt-Tab order hindering access to your main windows until you focused each of the other ones (and accidentally switching to that window will undo it all again). Enable that setting, minimize the app, and it’s at the bottom of the list, out of the way but still somewhat quickly accessible with Alt-Shift-Tab. Very convenient.

Firefox’s Winger extension has a cool feature where you can move open tabs between windows. Really helps manage multiple windows, whether you’re using multiple desktops or a single one.

3 Likes
10

Good to know, thanks!

Didn’t consider searching for this in extensions.
Chromium can do this out of the box so I assumed Firefox would either do it itself or not at all.

11

I use both virtual desktops and several activities. I have one activity (the default one) for “Private use” (i.e. watching YT, tinkering with stuff, etc.), one activity for “School stuff” (i.e. where It’sLearning lives in its Firefox window as well as editing documents for school) and one for “Programming stuff”, where I go to develop my own software. I also have one for “YouTube stuff” to record YouTube videos on, but I am quite inactive as a YTer and rarely record anythign for YouTube on my laptop.
Then I have three virtual desktops, the first one being the primary one, then a second and third one for windows or groups of windows that I want to keep separate from the main windows. For example, in my school activity the primary desktop usually has my timetable while I open It’sLearning and documents to edit for school on the second one, rarely using the third one for research if I don’t do it by putting two half-maximized windows side-by-side, one with the research and the other with the document I edit.
But usually I just shuffle maximized windows around and stay on the first desktop.

1 Like
12

i think this best matches up with the strengths and weaknesses for both activities and virtual desktops, and largely aligns with how i use them as well.

short of creating a new user for completely different plasma settings, activities gives you the chance to differentiate your work environment in terms of both visuals as well as workflow.

while virtual desktops are more akin to just having a bigger desk to work on where there is room to shuffle things around and organize your thoughts on a given task.

activities more like getting up and going into another room to work on something completely different, but where you will find your same size desk and all the usual tools.

2 Likes
13

I use 8 desktops (2 rows of 4) : each one has a shortcut (Super + F1[F2,F3,F4,1,2,3,4]) and an be reached with my taskbar (wheel mouse or click). Each one has a role (3D software, Firefox, Music player, browser, widgets, etc.).

To switch, I also use the Super+W and type the app/desktop name (works very well).

1 Like
14

There are some critical points cwo made which I agree with which is why I also almost never use virtual desktops.

First let me explain my workflow;
I have multiple monitors and tend to have the apps for my workflow in specific places on specific monitors so I always know where to look to get things done quickly, everything I need is there and infront of me. The exception is a small number of apps I use infrequently for which there isn’t enough space to leave open, I minimise and raise these as and when needed.

I would be happy to set up virtual desktops based on what I’m doing, such as one for dev work, one for personal stuff, etc. this seems ideal but every time I’ve tried in the past (maybe I’m just doing something wrong?) there are too many issues which cause me significant overhead so I give up. I’ve even tried using DEs other than KDE/Plasma but they all appear to have the same problem…

The browser example cwo mentioned is one of the best examples but the same issue appears to be present with multiple applications. Let me explain:

I start my lunch break and head into my personal virtual desktop and open a fresh browser and start looking for pet food whilst reading emails from friends and taking notes about what DIY I need to do at the weekend in my text editor. Then my lunch break finishes so I head back to my Dev desktop and start coding. Part the way through my coding I get a link to an API document and click it. What happens next is the issue; It seems my choices are to either automatically change the virtual desktop which causes all my monitors suddenly flip to my personal space where it’s opened the link in the wrong browser instance, totally disrupting my workflow and forcing me to have to move the tab. Or to not automatically switch the virtual desktop leaving me thinking my link didn’t work as I can’t see it.

So to solve this I end up setting my browser so it’s always present on all virtual desktops desktops which means I get my personal tabs mixed in with my dev work, this appears to partially negate the benefit of using virtual desktops in the first place but I feel I can live with it.

Then I open a text file, same issue. Then I open an email, same issue. This kept happening to the point where I just gave up on virtual desktops entirely and now stick with minimise.

I totally get this might be a “me” thing and virtual desktops work fine for other users. For example on a laptop with a single screen where you have maybe only one or two apps per virtual desktop and don’t share apps across them I can see way more benefits. But hey, that’s why I love KDE/Plasma, we get the choice to do things in a way that works best for us and our hardware :grinning_face:

3 Likes
15

If windows are never hidden, then taskmanager doesn’t have to be always visible, and you get the current GNOME design.

2 Likes
16

i haven’t experimented with your particular work flow, but as i understand it, the activities feature would likely be a better fit to keep work and lunch break activities separate.

there should not be any notifications coming across activities to disrupt you flow… i could be wrong tho

17

Yeah checking out activities is on my to-do list :grin:

18

Applications are running in the background all the time. The fact that you can’t have primarily GUI driven applications running without a window is unfortunate tech history baggage - unless you do some tray magic. MacOS got that one right.

It’s fine to minimize apps, minimizing is just a necessary crutch for the “can’t run without window”-issue.

19

There is no requirement to have a window to start or run.

Sure, lot of people will expect a program to stop when its last window gets closed but it could easily offer a mode in which it does not do that.

20

In a Nicco Loves Linux video, which reacts to PewDiePie’s Linux video, he suggests minimizing apps should be avoided or not used at all. The rationale is minimizing hides applications. It’s better to move windows around. In place, use virtual desktops.

Nicco is in his head. There is no one way to use a computer for all people. If I wanted to belong to this “you should use your computer the way I think you should” philosophy, then I’d fire up Gnome.

2 Likes