"Activities Overview" or "Dashboard" For Trisquel 9
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At a job I worked at recently, I manged to gain significant productivity from using the "Misson Control" that exists on MacOS. On Gnome this i called "Activities Overview". Also, while I was using Ubuntu Studio I found that "xfdashboard" exists which imitates the Gnome "Activities Overview" and I found it quite uesful. In Trisquel 8, I can't seem to find an equivalent. Will Trisquel 9 have this functionality? If not is there a way that perhaps we could include "xfDashboard" in the next version of Trisquel?
I have not check to see if it would just work in Trisquel 8 Mate desktop, but I based on my experience with using other desktops tools in Mate, I feel like it might not work well. In any case, if nothing else, as a creative who uses mutliple multi-window apps at the same time I found this "Dashboard" feature amazing for my productivity.
Why not simply installing GNOME Shell? Here is how: https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/installing-gnome-shell
After having done that, there's the issue of all the duplicate apps. Unavoidable? Ah yes, I see, after looking more closely I see that it would just install the shell, but then I lose the integrations just as icons on the desktop, some right click menus, etc.... Hrmmm.
On 05/22, name at domain wrote:
> Unavoidable?
Start with a netinstall.
The netinstaller on trisquel.info via the download link always produces an error for me, so I stopped trying to use it.
The paragraph "Installation of the full GNOME desktop environment on Trisquel 8" of https://trisquel.info/en/wiki/installing-gnome-shell says:
The package "gnome" provides the full GNOME desktop environment. You probably do not want it on top of a Regular/Mini/Sugar edition of Trisquel 8 because that would mean two programs for most tasks: the GNOME program and the program you got when you installed Trisquel. Executing 'sudo apt install gnome' or 'sudo apt install gnome-core' (for a more reduced set of applications) on a NetInstall makes sense.
The rest of the manual explains how to easily get GNOME Shell, optionally a few utilities (less than ten additional MB), but not the full desktop environment.
> Will Trisquel 9 have this functionality? If not is
> there a way that perhaps we could include "xfDashboard" in the next
> version of Trisquel?
Even though Xfdashboard was written for Xfce, I'm pretty sure that it
can work in any desktop environment. It is not in the Trisquel 8 repo,
but it is in the Trisquel 9 repo. If you like the GNOME 3 interface but
your computer is to old to run GNOME 3 then I could see Xfdashboard
being a good alternative. Otherwise, if you like GNOME 3 then just use
GNOME 3.
It's true that with Debian-based distros it can be hard to fully remove
a desktop environment, so you can end up with some redundant
programs. However, DE-specific programs should generally be hidden when
using a different DE. For example, open the file
/usr/share/applications/caja.desktop and scroll to the bottom. You'll
see a line near the end that says "OnlyShowIn=MATE;". While using
another DE, Caja will be ignored. In GNOME, for example, you'll see
Nautilus instead.
So in terms of clutter it's really not too bad to have multiple DEs
installed, which is nice if you have multiple users on the same machine
who prefer different DEs. Again, though, if you only want GNOME
installed the cleanest approach is to start with a netinstall with only
the base system installed. After installing you'll start with no DE,
just a command line.
Then install a display manager (login screen),
$ sudo apt install lightdm lightdm-gtk-greeter # or slim, gdm, etc.
install your preferred DE
$ sudo apt install gnome # or xfce, cinnamon, etc.
and reboot
$ sudo reboot
> I manged to gain significant productivity from using the "Misson
> Control" that exists on MacOS. On Gnome this i called "Activities
> Overview".
Personally I prefer using a dynamic tiling window manager like i3 rather
than deal with the annoyance of trying to figure out where all your
windows are. With a stacking window manager I can see how the "Mission
Control" and "Activities Overview" can help find windows when things get
cluttered. Far from increasing productivity though, when I watch macOS
and GNOME users work it seems that Misson Control and Activities
Overview are in fact more of a bottleneck in their workflow than Alt+Tab
would be.
I took a quick look at i3and it seems geared towards people who want to have multiple textual windows open at the same time. My situation is more like I have Godot, Blender, GIMP, ABrowser and Termoinal open at the same time. I need to switch between them and sometimes reference mtultiple simultaneously. Its not about finding windows it more like Alt_Tab is not the funcytionality I need. I don't want to use multiple desktops unless I absolutely have to. All of them basically do what I need, but to me the most integrated one is best.
I'll try installing xfdashboard -- its good to know it will be available in the next Trisquel though, which is the concern that caused me to open a query.
As always, thanks for the thoughtful assistance.
I use GNOME Shell. I always open, full-screen, the same application on the same workspace:
- Emacs;
- Icedove;
- Liferea;
- Abrowser
- GNOME Terminal;
- Something else (usually Atril).
By defining and using keyboard shortcuts to switch to each of those workspaces, the navigation becomes a reflex. And, again, the application are *full-screen*. There are as well keyboard shortcuts to move windows across worksapaces and to have them occupy the left or the right half of the screen (useful when you need to look at some document for some work in another window). Also, Alt+[key above Tab] allows to navigate between the windows of a same application (typically between Icedove's main window and another one where you write an email).
The Activities Overview is great to launch applications: press [System (Windows)]", the first letter(s) of the application and [Enter]. I do not think there exists a more efficient way to launch applications (well, beside defining and remembering a keyboard shortcut or each of them).
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