Fluxbox vs. GNOME, etc. - desktop/UI and workflow

[tkn (thom)]

By the way, take a look a Fluxbox MX-linux:

Doesn’t it look stunning ?
In my opinion it beats GNOME on all fronts
Even the panel has more functionality than GNOMEs panel.

[hydn (Hayden James)]

Retro-modern Gnome 3 has a panel?! jk. You mean that top bar thingy?

[tkn (thom)]

Yes! And as far as I can see an almost identical dock on the side

[hydn (Hayden James)]

Ah yes. I do see what you mean.

So with default Gnome 3 you press the super key to see the apps panel in the desktop “overview” mode.

However, if you want to see it all the time you would install a plugin like Dash to Dock:

I no longer like that method.

But yeah Gnome desktop defaults to having the top bar only (which I have grown to prefer). Then one can use the super + app-shortcut-key to open apps so I don’t use/need a panel.

To open the browser = Super + B, file manager = Super + F, Terminal = Super + Enter, Gimp = Super + G and so on. However, if I for some reason want to see the panel then I just tap Super key only and it looks like this:

I favor keyboard use over mouse use, especially towards the end of using GNOME. I prefer the default clean look:

You can see a demo here (near the end of video) of one of my past favorite GNOME setups (workspaces in overview take over the function of the apps panel):

Here the workspaces take over much of the need for panel because I know workspace 1 is always browser, workspace to is always terminal, and so on right up to workspace 9.

Workflow (workspace organization as a panel replacement), mostly explained here:

Fedora-KDE-43 review

@Brian_Masinick I haven’t forgotten, but thanks for the gentle reminder. I remember DT on youtube put it best, many of us use tiling window managers, not for the tiling but for the workspace organization. So on my home system I have 22 workspaces. 1-10 is for home projects, F1-F12 is for Office Apps. As a sampling, on workspace 1 I have terminals, workspace 2 is firefox, workspace 5 is google, workspace 7 is a file browser. Because specific apps are on a specific workspace, I just press Meta…

Edit: moved this to its own topic so that our DE discussion can live seperate to that MATE Desktop specific thread.

[Brian_Masinick]

Very nice stuff!

I see that while on one hand, we have a lot of diversity and differences in some of the desktop details, personal workflow, and yet we all seem to explore many similar concepts - just different user interfaces.

Very nice work and examples throughout this topic!

[hydn (Hayden James)]

Indeed, and it’s a thin line sometimes. Just because any of us here can explain exactly why something works for us doesn’t mean it’s the right option, or even the best option, for everyone else.

That said, if I hadn’t kept an open mind and been willing to try everything, I never would have ended up on the distro I run today (Kali)! Lol. It’s labeled by most people as not being suitable for daily use.

But that’s undoubtedly why it’s worth exploring different things. I’m sure many if not most of us here ended up on Fluxbox, MATE, antiX, IceWM, KDE, Sway, etc from a place where you never expected those choices would fit you so well. But they do!