After trying out Cosmic, Gnome,KDE Plasma, and Hyprland, I feel like plasma is the most usable for me coming from Windows. It solves the gripes I had about lack of customizability while still starting me off with a familiar homebar. I will be going back and forth with gnome for a while.
I really like gnome and the sliding desktops, and all the extensions seem to make it very customizable as well, but not directly like plasma, instead you mix and match (or make) extensions to get the look you want. (correct me if im wrong, I used it for a day)
Hyprland seems very nice for multitasking but the keyboard focus of the presets ive tried doesn’t really appeal to me, I like being able to just use my mouse sometimes.
Cosmic, is definitely an alpha and im interested to see what it becomes, wont be using it now.
Never used hyprland but Sway you can use the mouse to move stuff around, resize windows, etc. just hold down you mod key, usually super/windows key. If you have a bar setup correctly you can even click between workspaces or have a task list like on windows that you can click on. Alt Tab needs some re-imagining as its now three dimensional, but that’s easy to tweak to how you want it with something like swayr. You can even add a start button equivalent if you wish.
I use Sway on Tumbleweed, before that Sway on Ubuntu. I have six main workspaces defined, odd numbered workspaces on my left monitor and evens on my right monitor. Both monitors are 32"@4k so a ton of real estate, I can easy fit in four large tiles per monitor, eight is a stretch but if you use the option to make windows full screen then you can run stuff in the background and then flip between things that are running in the background.
I use the layman add on to predefined layouts for my different workspaces, then bind apps on start up using my config to a particular workspace. I can still move them around, but automating as much as possible with a tiling windows manager is the secret IMO. Having everything just work and appear where I want with zero faffing around speeds up my workflow enormously. On Windows I use power-toys to provide a noddy version of tiling, but everything has to be done manually and its a complete PITA over a work day where I am opening and closing stuff.
As an example, I have my third workspace as my main coding workspace. Its divided into 3/4 and 1/4. The larger part I lock VS Code to it, the smaller part is usually a Firefox tab for reviewing documentation. My second workspace is my social workspace, that’s divided into four long quarters, one for music, one for discord, one for signal, one for mail. All of this, including binding the apps to the workspace, are fully automatic.
I use the keyboard for most things. I use QMK based keyboards (configured using Vial), so I can bind multi modifier shortcuts to just two keys either on a separate layer (activating the layer is one of the two keys) or a chord. Reducing the number of keys you press really helps the ergonomics of activating them, especially if you move them to the home row and away from the pinky finger hell hole that is where the modifiers are on most standard keyboards.
I think the biggest problem is that it requires work to get the right add ons and make it work the way you want to work, but get it right and the WM becomes transparent to how you work.
Sway is it. I tried originally building it all up from scratch. It was fun, and taught me how all the pieces fit together, but now I just grab the EOS community dotfiles and make a few minor tweaks.
For me, it’s not a “workflow” that is sped up, it really just helps me remember where stuff “belongs”. Workspace 1 always has my Spotify, audio mixer, and discord/signal. Workspace 5 is gaming, etc.
Resizing and swapping window locations around is so simple with just super+mouse click/drag.
I should take another crack at sway. I didn’t know about EOS. I started with nwg-shell.
I love EOS. I have both sway and plasma installed. I prefer sway, but sometimes I get frustrated with troubleshooting and I can use plasma as a safety net. I’ve only had to do it once, but it’s nice knowing it’s there.
The EOS files look a great place to start.
Do you default your apps to start on a particular workspace?
I tried to do that when I started, but now it’s just habit. Super+Shift+# does most of the work.
My only complaint with the EOS configuration is the lack of Bluetooth on the bar. And the sound/screen brightness buttons don’t give any visual/audio feedback. I have some notifications imbedded, but they look and feel kinda janky compared to how nice and clean they are in Plasma.
Yeah I added bluetooth in mine, it’ll show me whats connected on hover and just launch the gnome app for bluetooth if I click it, super lazy implementation. I don’t need brightness controls so never looked at them.
EOS seems to use mako for notifications? I have never tried it.
I use swaync, which once themed and the rights bits you want, added, is ok. I wanted something more like the Gnome notification drop down that had do not disturb, media player controls, extensible menus, etc. in it.
Yeah, I just have one that launches blueman-manager. Not elegant, but works well. I only ever use BT on my laptop. So my desktop doesn’t even have it.
For music control I added a custom Spotify element to my waybar that shows now-playing, and lets me play/pause/skip/etc without having to go back to workspace 1. That’s all I need.
Tiling is just so nice once you get used to it. No more fiddling around with window placement.