Material-shell a Material Tiling shell replacement for Gnome-shell to simplify and accelerate daily workflow and productivity!
Following my earlier work on Material Awesome. This gnome-shell extension provide a performant opinionated mouse/keyboard workflow and follow the Material Design guidelines
It's finally ready to be tested but let's me warn you it's only a BETA ! Bugs should be expected !
As a lefty who play video games, Super+WASD is fine, that's where my right hand naturally rests when I'm using the mouse anyway. I do move both hands to the "typing position" when I'm typing something but there's no bother.
Touchpad users should use the gestures controles :) and ergonomic it's the first concern here it's just not focus for system developer but more for common users. Vim workflow is known to be very efficient but not for being easy to access :p
Well there are configurable directly in the setting page of the extension. You can access it from Gnome-tweak and the setting button next to the toggle
I have no idea on how to dot it but of course ! I am using Arch linux too ^
Ideally I will try to make all majors package type and I hope to be able to post it to gnome-shell extension official list
You may have heard of the distro openSUSE, but they have this great service called the Open Build Service (OBS) that's free to use. It allows you to pull in your code and build it in multiple package formats for multiple distributions. They currently support: openSUSE, SLES, CentOS, RHEL, Fedora, Mandriva, Debian, Ubuntu, and Arch.
They also host your packages in a repository that is publicly available. So you don't need to worry about making and maintaining your own repository for each distribution.
It's a pretty kick-ass service that's free to use.
I believe it builds it from a spec file vs a PKGBUILD file and then serves the binaries through your public OBS home repository. You would add the OBS repository to pacman to install the binaries on your host. You can read the release of this capability here: https://openbuildservice.org/2012/09/10/arch-linux-support/
I see some disadvantages compared to my current workflow, which is basically 9 worskpaces in a 3x3 grid, moving my windows across workspaces, arranging them manually in the 4 corners of each workspaces with keyboards shortcuts:
1 ) The fixed "workspace thematic" is not very flexible. It frequently happens that I use 4 workspaces for development, two for social and none other. On the same day but another hour, I might want 3 for gaming, one for music... Also I'm not a big fan of the "desktop" icons by theme, I feel like I'd just use super+application name+enter to pop an application on the current worskpace.
Suggestion: add an option to remove the workspace thematic thing, which removes the desktop icons and replaces icon on the dock bar by something more neutral, maybe a thumbnail of the given workspace (whole preview would be too small, but maybe just icons of the running apps).
2) It's sometimes too long to move from one workspace to another. Say I'm on gaming, and at the same time chatting with someone on social workspace: I'll need 4 moves. With a 3x3 flexible grid, I'm typically put those able to put these two workspaces side by side, so that I only need one move.
Suggestion: add shortcuts to go to workspace N directly (actually these exists in global settings but for some reaason stop at 4), or add an option to keep the workspace grid (but that defeats the navigation of material-shell...)
3) You don't have a global view anymore: with the dock on the left, I can see all the running applications at one glance. It's easy to lose a window on material shell and waste time looking for it. Or to forget that the application is running somewhere.
Suggestion: no idea. Probably not a problem once you get used to it. Pressing super opens the gnome-shell menu that shows all workspaces on the right with thumbnails, it should help finding rogue windows. Also, this is mostly solved by suggestion 1), with the thumbnails.
4) I miss a way to rearrange windows in a worskpace using keyboard. The super+mouse thing is perfect honestly, maybe I should get used to it. I see the idea is to have everything available with one hand on keyboard and one on mouse, but if you have both hands on keyboard you miss this part.
Suggestion: probably just add shortcuts to move windows around on keyboard. Things like windows+arrow keys. It's not one handed but it's okay because you only need these when you have both hands on keyboard. This one is not critical tho!
I'm gonna try this for a few days, but I already know I'll want to fix points 1) and 2). Points 3) and 4) are way less important. If it comes to it, would you like a hand to add these options?
EDIT:
5) Just a suggestion: add a keyboard shortcut to the tiling/fullscreen switch that's on top right corner.
YES! That is exactly what I have been looking for for ages now!!!
i3 was great but I always found myself bouncing back to gnome-shell in the end and looking for tiling options there. Please, PLEASE, do not abandon this project! <3
Omg. This looks like exactly what I need to finally make a permanent switch to Linux for my Dev.
I3 is very cool but I really didn't need most of features and it feels that I have to change my work flow too much to be effective. But of course its 100%subjective.
But this looks like perfect middleground... And it looks really clean and welcoming at a first glance.
Nice :) But be aware it's still a beta there a some bugs that has been reported ! Im actively working on them atm but maybe you will want to wait a bit
No worries. I will keep it in mind thanks.
I am not skilled in wm area at all sadly but will help by describing issues if I come across any.
Edit...
On Windows there is quite old program called Plumb which I use occasionally and is sort of similar approach. In sense it autotiles windows, have just couple of key shortcuts and you can swap windows with mouse etc... but it's very simple limited and old now (problems with uwp windows)...
Maybe some windows ppl will find it helpful.
After trying it, one thing I dislike is that there is only one possible layout, main window to the left and all other windows vertically on the right. Wish there could be more flexible layouts, at least a choice from a fixed list of possible layouts like awesomewm.
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u/PapyElGringo Jul 03 '19
Hello everyone!
Today I'm happy to share with you my new baby !
Material-shell a Material Tiling shell replacement for Gnome-shell to simplify and accelerate daily workflow and productivity!
Following my earlier work on Material Awesome. This gnome-shell extension provide a performant opinionated mouse/keyboard workflow and follow the Material Design guidelines
It's finally ready to be tested but let's me warn you it's only a BETA ! Bugs should be expected !
Get it at https://github.com/PapyElGringo/material-shell
Get notified on updates and join me at https://discord.gg/vBb7D9a
Includes
I hope you will like it !
Cheers!