Well, first I tweak my windows to mimic the appearance of the windows that I liked, windows 7. Then I tweak my Linux to mimic that.
Just because hurr durr windows bad, doesn’t mean their huge team of UI and UX designers didn’t ever come up with a good design. And like most things Microsoft, I take pleasure in pirating it when I can.
I don’t really like the feel of a full tiling windows manager, I’ve tried it and I just can’t vibe with it. I use fancyzones on windows and fancytiles on mint, because I like to be able to define my zones of arbitrary size and position, like 3/8ths of a vertical screen, and snap a window to it, but then also sometimes adjust the window border a bit with the mouse. Or just stack window on top of each other. I use mouse a lot on both my work windows PC and my home Linux PC, so I customise both of them to be very similar and have the exact workflow I want, which is hyper specific. I even have the same 3-monitor layout, and keyboard and mouse on both my work PC and home pc so my muscle memory between work and home doesn’t suffer 😅
I’m pretty much always picking XFCE or KDE over just a WM. In the case of KDE, I use it like Windows. I make XFCE as Unity-like as possible, which I believe is the best interface for limited screen real estate.
I’m using the term “WM” loosely, as a more of a general term here.
And no, i can’t call a DE that adds a title bar to every window, has a huge-ass taskbar, and a limited amount of free space per workspace “best for limited screen real estate”. Something like Niri, MangoWC or Hyprland (with scrolling layout enabled) works much better and cleaner precisely in that regard, since they offer
a) a hotkey-first UX, meaning that everything usually represented by a UI button is moved to the keyboard and no longer needs to clutter the screen
b) literally infinite horizontal space.
I literally can’t go back ever since i gave tiling a try, any floating de/wm now feels clunky and awkward to me.
I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context. I have a large monitor, so I can afford to lose some pixels to my taskbar or window borders. That being said, if I did care, I can make the taskbar autohide and pick a slim/minimal theme for the window borders. With regard to XFCE, I said I make it Unity-like. As such, there is no taskbar. I have a slim panel at the top that shows stuff I want to be able to see easily (i.e., pinned background applications, battery life, date, time, etc.) My dock-like panel autohides, so it takes up no real estate. Maximized windows merge into the top panel like in Unity, so the window borders take up no extra room.
Any DE can become “hotkey-first.” For example, I launch terminal with CTRL+ALT+T. My application launcher is CTRL+SPACE, and it is text-based. Most DEs have default hotkeys for a lot of functions, and they are customizable.
Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is. I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling. Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it. Different strokes for different folks.
Well, first I tweak my windows to mimic the appearance of the windows that I liked, windows 7. Then I tweak my Linux to mimic that.
Just because hurr durr windows bad, doesn’t mean their huge team of UI and UX designers didn’t ever come up with a good design. And like most things Microsoft, I take pleasure in pirating it when I can.
Goddamn it I still miss 7
IMO, Windows’s UI/UX might seem good only if you haven’t tried anything actually different. Tiling/scrolling WMs is the way.
I don’t really like the feel of a full tiling windows manager, I’ve tried it and I just can’t vibe with it. I use fancyzones on windows and fancytiles on mint, because I like to be able to define my zones of arbitrary size and position, like 3/8ths of a vertical screen, and snap a window to it, but then also sometimes adjust the window border a bit with the mouse. Or just stack window on top of each other. I use mouse a lot on both my work windows PC and my home Linux PC, so I customise both of them to be very similar and have the exact workflow I want, which is hyper specific. I even have the same 3-monitor layout, and keyboard and mouse on both my work PC and home pc so my muscle memory between work and home doesn’t suffer 😅
I’m pretty much always picking XFCE or KDE over just a WM. In the case of KDE, I use it like Windows. I make XFCE as Unity-like as possible, which I believe is the best interface for limited screen real estate.
I’m using the term “WM” loosely, as a more of a general term here.
And no, i can’t call a DE that adds a title bar to every window, has a huge-ass taskbar, and a limited amount of free space per workspace “best for limited screen real estate”. Something like Niri, MangoWC or Hyprland (with scrolling layout enabled) works much better and cleaner precisely in that regard, since they offer
a) a hotkey-first UX, meaning that everything usually represented by a UI button is moved to the keyboard and no longer needs to clutter the screen
b) literally infinite horizontal space.
I literally can’t go back ever since i gave tiling a try, any floating de/wm now feels clunky and awkward to me.
I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context. I have a large monitor, so I can afford to lose some pixels to my taskbar or window borders. That being said, if I did care, I can make the taskbar autohide and pick a slim/minimal theme for the window borders. With regard to XFCE, I said I make it Unity-like. As such, there is no taskbar. I have a slim panel at the top that shows stuff I want to be able to see easily (i.e., pinned background applications, battery life, date, time, etc.) My dock-like panel autohides, so it takes up no real estate. Maximized windows merge into the top panel like in Unity, so the window borders take up no extra room.
Any DE can become “hotkey-first.” For example, I launch terminal with CTRL+ALT+T. My application launcher is CTRL+SPACE, and it is text-based. Most DEs have default hotkeys for a lot of functions, and they are customizable.
Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is. I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling. Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it. Different strokes for different folks.