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Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

material-shell.com

121–130 of 271 posts

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#121
post #56
post #39

I find the app-based window navigation in vanilla GNOME 3 rather frustrating, and try as I might, I just can't get comfortable navigating between what I think of as applications. This is because I have a few applications (Firefox, Terminal) that are really not applications in and of themselves; the applications are really Outlook, JIRA, Confluence, Slack, OpenShift (logged in as cluster admin), OpenShift (logged in a…

> As a result, I'm back in Firefox on my primary monitor (as expected) but now I have an unwanted random Firefox window that I forgot was even open on top of Teams on my secondary monitor! The idea here is to also use the tilde while alt-tabbing. Also shift comes in handy to wheel back through the applications.

Please note that I never selected this random Firefox window. I wasn't even aware that it was open.

The problem is that when I tabbed back to Firefox, all Firefox windows on all monitors were raised.

And if you expect me to Alt-Tab to terminal, and then remember to use a _different_ keyboard shortcut, that is now no longer so short because I need to holt alt, press tab, release tab and keep holding alt while then pressing ` until the window with Hacker News is selected then... no way pal I'm not even going to go there, this is madness!

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#122

Pop Shell from System76 also does something similar. That is a gnome shell extension that provides tiling window management. It's focus is keyboard driven window navigation and has the option to switch between tiling and floating mode. https://github.com/pop-os/shell

I was going to mention the same thing. I liked the old Pop Shell and have now been experimenting with the new tiling interface.

Off topic, but System76 really seems like a great company. I enjoy my Linux laptop and their software support is good. I am stuck on Apple's platform for the Apple Watch and iPhone (and I like iPads), but I wonder if I would ever buy another Mac laptop. Turnkey Linux systems, like those of System76, Dell, etc. really make using Linux low overhead.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#123

I've always wanted to try a tiling window system, but they just don't seem to gel with how I work at all. Rarely, if ever, do I want a window to take up some common percentage of the screen. My editor is ~100 columns, which will change depending on the font / font size. My terminal is all over the place. My browser is multiple widths, because I need to test responsiveness, or what fits in my current tab does not fit…

In Pop OS the windows can have two states. Stickied to a part of the screen with auto-tiling with other stickied windows or free floating. I would guess many Linux flavors can do something like that. To me the ideal solution was Spectacle for MacOS - key shortcuts for a window to take up the space of a predetermined space. I just don't think automatic tiling makes all that much sense unless you're building some kind of a dashboard.

Tiling web browsers is especially bad since I use a lot of websites that flip to mobile mode or are just plain unusable when tiled into the wrong shape.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#124
post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Doesn’t GNOME at least have a setting to change alt-tab to window- instead of app-based?

It does, but the fact that the default is so braindead and annoying, and that I have to configure it to make it usable, is well.. very annoying. Like, why would they think that it is a good idea? No other desktop does this.

[deleted]

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#125

As an i3-gaps user... I would try this.

I love how beautiful i3-gaps is. I worked awfully hard to get i3, Dunst, Polybar and many other tools to give me a WM only experience. And frankly, I hate that part of it. Simple things like configuring bluetooth, or switching audio... or working with multiple displays are just painful. I expected this when I started using Linux in 1996ish. That was part of the hobbiest experience. These days, I just want to get my w…

You can run "gnome-flashback" somehow below i3 using https://github.com/i3-gnome/i3-gnome

This is nothing too complicated, just a session with the right components selected to provide whatever services you need: display management, screen locking, WiFi, etc.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#126

I've always wanted to try a tiling window system, but they just don't seem to gel with how I work at all. Rarely, if ever, do I want a window to take up some common percentage of the screen. My editor is ~100 columns, which will change depending on the font / font size. My terminal is all over the place. My browser is multiple widths, because I need to test responsiveness, or what fits in my current tab does not fit…

Take a look at dynamic window managers. They allow for switching between tiling and floating windows.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#127
post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Running Noscript doesn't show you how much of the internet is broken but instead is you purposefully breaking the internet for yourself.

You don't need Javascript for static content.

And dynamic content isn't broken content. Choosing to only view static content is a personal preference.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#128

The word "modern" is really overused in tech, and it doesn't really tell you all that much, just that "this is better because it's new, and new stuff is better than old stuff". Consider a more descriptive word, such as: - minimal - streamlined - sleek - simple - opinionated - spatial - comprehensive etc...

I would argue all of you suggested words are just as overused and meaningless as "modern". At the end of the day, I would still need to see the product to understand what it does.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#129

Trying this out as it's typed. For background: I really want to love tools like i3 or awesome, but I always go back to Gnome because it juts gets stuff done. I liked Gnome 2, I like 3. So: just like the site says. Top is the taskbar, which also has a left icon for the current tiling pattern (fullscreen, tiled vertically, etc). The left side panel starts at the top-left with the search button that does the Gnome activ…

How do you access the Material Shell settings? I can't find them _anywhere_.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#130

I've always wanted to try a tiling window system, but they just don't seem to gel with how I work at all. Rarely, if ever, do I want a window to take up some common percentage of the screen. My editor is ~100 columns, which will change depending on the font / font size. My terminal is all over the place. My browser is multiple widths, because I need to test responsiveness, or what fits in my current tab does not fit…

In Pop OS the windows can have two states. Stickied to a part of the screen with auto-tiling with other stickied windows or free floating. I would guess many Linux flavors can do something like that. To me the ideal solution was Spectacle for MacOS - key shortcuts for a window to take up the space of a predetermined space. I just don't think automatic tiling makes all that much sense unless you're building some kind…

For certain websites forcing them into their mobile version can be pretty useful, but it takes a bit of playing around to make everything work nicely together. I have a group of browser windows and a layout defined in stumpwm that includes gmail, spotify, and a few other sites that have good responsive design.
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