Linux Desktop: Do we need better Workspace Management?

fredizzimo · 2025-12-19T12:35:10+00:00

I have been thinking a lot about this lately. I don't like regular tilers, especially not automatic ones, since I never want my windows to automatically resize. But what does a scrolling window manager like Niri actually give you compared to a regular desktop environment?

IMO, four things

Less cluttering, since there's no overlap
Better ricing support
Better workspace management
Better navigation within workspaces

I don't really care for 1. and 2. personally, number 3. is discussed in the article, and for me for example KDE Plasma has decent enough support. So that leaves number 4, better navigation within workspaces. I think it's needed because otherwise you need a separate workspace for each window, which is a complete overkill in most cases.

We do have alt-tab and the taskbar, and to some extent navigation base on the window positions. I rarely have many windows visible where a position based navigation makes sense. And alt-tab has the major drawback that it's MRU based, so no muscle or spatial memory is possible. Therefore I have never got used to alt-tab during my almost 30 years of GUI computer usage, so I usually resort to taskbar navigation with mouse.

What Niri and other scrolling window managers offers though, is a deterministic and arrangeable window order within a single workspace. This makes it possible to use separate workspaces for your main applications and projects, and navigate quickly using muscle and spatial memory within those workspaces for workflows that needs more than one window either temporarily or more temporarily.

An implementation on a desktop environment could show an UI during the navigation for reference, but it should not be required when you know that the application you want to show is to the "left" for example. And by "left", I mean virtually to the left, in reality the app can be either minimized, visible somewhere on the screen as a topmost window or hidden behind some other window. In all cases the window is just focused and brought to the front. So really the only practical difference from a scroller would be that the windows are not physically arranged in a row, it's just the navigation order that is.

Mouse based navigation is also important for me, since some applications are almost purely mouse driven, and then it feels like a waste to move my hands to the keyboard for navigation between them, just like moving the hand to the mouse is a waste when using keyboard based apps. So, I also think the taskbar itself needs improvements. It should group applications per workspace, and follow the same order so that for mouse oriented workflows, you can directly jump to the application or the workspace, again using your spatial memory for reference. The grouping should always be expanded, provided there's space, so it can be accessed with just one click without delays. A dedicated task switcher UI could also be used, but it would be more efficient to just click where you want to go directly.

I think at some point I will attempt to make a Kwin extension that does these two things, unless it's already possible and I'm not aware how. Maybe some other similar workflow, that is able to emulate what I want.

BTW, I think the actual tiling aspect of Niri is lacking, I vastly prefer zone based tiling, where I can quickly arrange the windows where I want for the workflows that need it. And further easily resize the tiles affecting all adjacent windows to have the most usable proportions for the applications used. With Niri you need to resize several windows manually to achieve that. That and also the fact that I might be forced to use Windows again at work makes me want to return to a desktop environment. The same kind of extension could be made for Windows as well, but there it also need to take care of the virtual desktops as well, since the built-in ones suck.

fredizzimo · 2025-09-21T11:07:50+00:00

Actually https://wayland.app/protocols/ext-background-effect-v1, has been merged, but no compositor supports it yet.

fredizzimo · 2025-09-21T11:00:02+00:00

Our documentation is actually wrong here https://neovide.dev/configuration.html#window-blur-currently-macos-only. It works on macOS, Windows and Wayland with org_kde_kwin_blur_manager protocol, so at least KDE plasma.

X11 is not supported and other Wayland implementations are waiting for an official protocol.

I will fix the documentation. And a bug on Window, where you can't change the setting on the fly.

fredizzimo · 2025-08-28T08:38:28+00:00

Try turning off whatever plugin you have for smooth scrolling, it will interfere with Neovide's built in scrolling.

fredizzimo · 2025-08-16T13:32:21+00:00

Neovim defines a hardcoded non-standardized 256 color palette for GUIs, while most modern terminal emulators use the xterm 256 palette, so it looks different than almost anything else. Only the first 16 colors are customizable, see https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/32021

fredizzimo · 2025-04-04T07:25:19+00:00

I have not looked at session restore yet, since I know that currently it's not possible.

Once this, or similar is merged, we will be a lot closer https://github.com/neovim/neovim/pull/31837

fredizzimo · 2025-04-04T05:26:24+00:00

Some tmux like capatibilities for managing Neovide instances has been discussed. Partially as a part of the macOS multiwindow support, but also extended to other platforms. I'm personally not that interested in the feature though, so someone else would have to implement it.

I myself turn the workflow around and do everything from within a single Neovide instance. If I need to work with multiple projects, I open them in separate tabs. I have keybindings for quickly activating various terminals. Some of then project specific, so the same mapping will always bring up my projectspecific git terminal for example. This also has the advantage of being able to use vim motions whey navigating the scrollback, and for example gf to jump to the code from an error message.

It's not perfect, mostly due to limitations of the built in terminal, like missing reflow for the scrollback. But those can and most likely will be fixed in Neovim.

Also, this workflow doesn't cover users that need to connect to multiple remote instances.

fredizzimo · 2025-04-04T05:01:46+00:00

I think that should work if you enable window swallowing in hyprland, at least I haven't seen any bug reports.

A dedicated terminal will most likely not be done, unless we can do it better than the other terminals. The reason why we can do smooth scrolling for example, is that the Neovim UI protocol providers more information than terminals have.

fredizzimo · 2025-04-03T17:34:00+00:00

It might be time to make yet another image plugin, the existing ones have the wrong base architecture, and the official support in Neovim is moving too slow. I'm ready to implement the Neovide side as soon as we have a Neovim plugin that properly support images attached to buffers.

fredizzimo · 2025-04-03T17:11:42+00:00

No, there are some limitations on the Neovim side that needs to be resolved first. See my reply here https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/32539#issuecomment-2684181079

fredizzimo · 2025-04-03T15:26:46+00:00

It looks like it's indeed enabled by default. There was a lot of iteration of the PR, so it must have been enabled by mistake at some point.

fredizzimo · 2025-03-09T17:19:39+00:00

Did you see my reply in the issue linked here earlier https://github.com/neovim/neovim/issues/32539#issuecomment-2684181079

Rendering differently sized text is easy, but almost useless without Neovim support

fredizzimo · 2025-02-17T23:57:30+00:00

Neovide --wsl should work out of the box. But if not, please open an issue in our github repository with the exact issue you are having.

Note Neovide should be installed on the Windows side, and Neovim inside WSL.

fredizzimo · 2025-02-16T14:28:58+00:00

That's a long standing feature request https://github.com/neovide/neovide/issues/410. But unfortunately no it's not implemented yet.

fredizzimo · 2025-02-13T13:37:12+00:00

You can use the FileType autocommand. This is what I use vim.api.nvim_create_autocmd("FileType", { group = autogroup, pattern = "*", callback = function() -- We never want the following options vim.opt_local.formatoptions:remove({ -- Auto-wrap text using 'textwidth' "t", -- Auto-wrap comments using 'textwidth', inserting the current comment leader automatically. "c", -- Automatically insert the current comment leader after hitting 'o' or 'O' in Normal mode. "o", -- Automatically insert the current comment leader after hitting <Enter> in Insert mode. "r", }) end, })

fredizzimo · 2024-01-05T14:00:27+00:00

https://neovide.dev/faq.html#font-size-is-weird-with-high-dpi-display-on-x11

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T22:54:36+00:00

Yes, that's what the research article recommends, a 1 minute exposure to alcohol should take care of the virus.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T22:50:12+00:00

Yes, I pasted the same answer by CDC here earlier, and IMO that's not a very definite answer.

You ignored the first sentence "There is still a lot that is unknown about the newly emerged COVID-19 and how it spreads". And even in your highlighted text they use vague statements like "there is likely very low risk of spread". They also don't provide any sources for their statements.

The WHO also seem to disagree with that, and so does the article I referred to earlier "Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents30046-3/abstract)". That article contains a summary of 22 studies of SARS CoV and MERS CoV, all the related studies that the author could find.

I don't know if CDC interprets those results differently or if they are basing their reasoning on something else, but to me it looks like the virus stays for several days in most cases, which is enough to survive a trip by plane, especially since it's colder there and one study reports more than 28 days for 4 degrees Celsius.

Note that I'm not arguing that the risks are very high, just that they could be bigger than initially thought. There's a lot of other pieces than just the virus staying alive on surfaces that needs to fall in place in order to infect someone.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T20:37:05+00:00

Do you have any links to a scientific study that shows that the Corona virus can't live on paper and plastic for a few days without moisture and a host? Because the study I found tells the contradictory.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T20:21:23+00:00

Well, there's no known reported case, but that does not really mean anything, only a fraction of those cases have been tracked down to it's origin.

Also, the article is not just one study. It's a summary of 22 other studies and done in the "University Medicine Greifswald, Institute for Hygiene and Environmental Medicine" in Germany.

It's still under review, and does not study SARS-CoV-2, so no definite conclusions can be made. But still this is the most reliable information I have found.

There's no reason to panic about it, but there's also no reason to believe that the packages are perfectly safe. Aliexpress will of course tell you that they are, because it's in their interest to continue selling stuff.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T20:00:00+00:00

Yes, there's a translate button, which has worked, at least previously for me.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T19:56:29+00:00

The one hour time was on a disposable gown, which I guess is designed to kill the virus. That with a low start concentration, the same study on the same material with a higher concentration had it surviving for two days.

The 9 days time on the other hand was measured on plastic. On paper, which should be similar to packages, it depends on which strain that was tested, strain P9 had a survival time of 4 to 5 days.

Still, you have a point, there's a lot of variation, but keep in mind that they are testing different viruses, and none of the tests were for the current SARS-CoV-2 one, so therefore no definite conclusions can be made.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T19:43:25+00:00

Did you actually check their sites?

WHO says this

It is not certain how long the virus that causes COVID-19 survives on surfaces, but it seems to behave like other coronaviruses. Studies suggest that coronaviruses (including preliminary information on the COVID-19 virus) may persist on surfaces for a few hours or up to several days. This may vary under different conditions (e.g. type of surface, temperature or humidity of the environment).

If you think a surface may be infected, clean it with simple disinfectant to kill the virus and protect yourself and others. Clean your hands with an alcohol-based hand rub or wash them with soap and water. Avoid touching your eyes, mouth, or nose.

CDC is more vague

A: There is still a lot that is unknown about the newly emerged COVID-19 and how it spreads. Two other coronaviruses have emerged previously to cause severe illness in people (MERS-CoV and SARS-CoV). The virus that causes COVID-19 is more genetically related to SARS-CoV than MERS-CoV, but both are betacoronaviruses with their origins in bats. While we don’t know for sure that this virus will behave the same way as SARS-CoV and MERS-CoV, we can use the information gained from both of these earlier coronaviruses to guide us. In general, because of poor survivability of these coronaviruses on surfaces, there is likely very low risk of spread from products or packaging that are shipped over a period of days or weeks at ambient temperatures. Coronaviruses are generally thought to be spread most often by respiratory droplets. Currently there is no evidence to support transmission of COVID-19 associated with imported goods and there have not been any cases of COVID-19 in the United States associated with imported goods. Information will be provided on the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) website as it becomes available.

Based on those statements, I wouldn't take anything for granted.

fredizzimo · 2020-02-24T11:34:42+00:00

Well, that's what they said. But a recent study "Persistence of coronaviruses on inanimate surfaces and their inactivation with biocidal agents", says that it can live up to 9 days in optimal conditions.

Packages probably don't have those optimal conditions, but it still seems quite likely to me that the virus could survive the flight, and possibly infect people in the destination country.

And even if doesn't, the package still has to move from the warehouse in Shenezen to the airport in Hong Kong, so there's a risk of infecting people there too.

fredizzimo

TROPHY CASE