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Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

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Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#191

Post by xorcist »

yrro wrote: 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…

You can bind back alt-tab to switch-window:

  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-applications '[]'
  gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.keybindings switch-windows '["Tab"]'
There are more settings like that which you can find in the manual, or from other frustrated users.

These settings seem to be stored in a binary format so the resulting rc-files can not easily be commited to git. I keep a dozen lines like the above in a script I run on any new gnome-like desktop to make it somewhat sane.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#192

Post by choward »

arendtio wrote: post #149
pimlottc wrote: post #113

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...

How about providing an explanation for those words? - minimal: limited features set aka either you like it in 10 seconds or you don't - streamlined: good looking?!? - sleek: combination of streamlined and minimal? - simple: IMO even more overused than 'modern' and as diverse in its meaning - opinionated: There is exactly one way of doing it right and either you like it or you don't, but it might come with an extensiv…

Modern is associated with your definition and has a positive connotation. However, it really just means it's new. That doesn't necessarily mean the things you listed. But it does mean that it's probably under active development, the creator has it fresh in their mind, and you can probably contact them.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#193

Post by heisenzombie »

arendtio wrote: post #149
pimlottc wrote: post #113

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...

How about providing an explanation for those words? - minimal: limited features set aka either you like it in 10 seconds or you don't - streamlined: good looking?!? - sleek: combination of streamlined and minimal? - simple: IMO even more overused than 'modern' and as diverse in its meaning - opinionated: There is exactly one way of doing it right and either you like it or you don't, but it might come with an extensiv…

"Spatial" is, I think, a term of art. It refers to conceptual objects in the software having a 1:1 correspondence with a UI element with a single, stable location.

The metaphor is with the real world: If a put an object somewhere, it stays there. My notebook is in the front-right corner of my desk and nowhere else.

Notably, the "Finder" application in Mac OS used to be spatial. Opening a folder opened a window, and that window would be exactly where it was the last time you opened that folder. Conceptually, the window is the folder.

Here's an article about it from John Siracusa, who is a proponent of spatial interfaces: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2003/04/finder/3/

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#194

Post by eximius »

I can't recommend AwesomeWM enough. You don't really have to customize it at all for the workspaces + basic tiling to be incredibly useful. And the workspaces can be per monitor!!! Or you can tie them together! Or use them as tags instead of workspaces! It's really just so good.

I think the only thing I really added was audio key support and I changed the menu shortcut...?

I'm not actually sure what the argument is to not use it. (it supports floating windows, if you want that as the default)

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#196

Post by harha »

pimlottc wrote: post #113

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...

Not only in tech, e.g., modern portfolio theory.

Agree that it would be better to use more descriptive names.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#197

Post by kevincox »

michaelmrose wrote: post #102

How does this handle multiple monitors? Isn't the default on gnome 3 still to only switch the primary monitor when switching workspaces?

It doesn't appear to work well with multiple monitors. I could open apps on different monitors but not move them between. The native GNOME shortcuts just caused the windows to flicker and their shortcuts don't have anything to do with monitors.

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#198

Post by tadfisher »

spiffytech wrote: post #63
boogies wrote: 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 e.g. on Ubuntu you have to install an extra configurator tool to access that setting.

This is incorrect; you can rebind the shell's keyboard shortcuts in Settings -> Keyboard Shortcuts. There are entries for "Switch applications", "Switch windows of an application", and "Switch windows of an app directly"; you want to switch the two that are bound to "Alt+Tab" and "Alt+`".

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#199

Post by Naac »

generalk wrote: post #34

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…

I would check out Regolith[0]. It's i3 on top of gnome, so you get the best of both worlds. It's available as a distro or an Ubuntu PPA.

[0] https://regolith-linux.org/

Re: Material Shell – A modern desktop interface for GNOME

#200

Post by hobofan »

michaelsbradley wrote: post #91
ebiester wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Tiling people would create a group up on the top. When you want to bring it down, it's just a keyboard command away. After going back to mac (for work reasons), It's been a painful experience adjusting to the lack of tiling.

Tiling isn't particularly difficult to implement on macOS with e.g. Phoenix: https://github.com/kasper/phoenix/ I hacked something together several+ years ago (see below) based on someone else's config, and I've maybe edited it twice since then, so it likely can be substantially improved. Also, I'm sure it's not as slick as a true tiling manager, but I've certainly gotten a lot of mileage out of it: https://gist.gith…

No need to implement anything at all, as Amethyst[0] already provides a pretty good tiling WM. It's so easy to setup that even some of my not-so-techy friends started using it.

[0]: https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

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