I don't think I've ever had to change from SUPER in my years of using
Linux, and if I ever had to, it'd be a simple find and replace.
Using SUPER explicitly here makes things easier to read and understand
without having to worry about additional variables.
Super+Enter is now the infamous new terminal keybind, and Super+Q now
closes windows as expected.
Other changes include using a single instance for kitty and adding
basic screenshotting functionality.
This is huge and means that I no longer have to use the buggy libinput
hacks that I used previously. So far, I haven't experienced any bugs
with hyprland gestures that I experienced with libinput-gestures.
From my initial testing, hyprland seems quite nice and opens new windows
similar to bspwm. Not having to specify whether a window should open
horizontally or vertically makes things feel a lot smoother compared to
sway.
This change, in combination with xdg-desktop-portal-termfilechooser-git,
was my attempt to use ranger as a file browser. Although it worked, it
unfortunately caused ranger to crash in some instances, likely due to
incorrect parameters.
I initially programmed this "dynamic desktops" implementation for a
similar feel to GNOME, however after using it for a few months I
realized that I was taking away one of the main advantages of a tiling
window manager by having all windows not tile by default.
Additionally, I ran into some edge cases where the next window would not
show if opened on a desktop that had multiple nodes open. Although I
could probably figure out the cause with some effort, I'd much rather
enjoy the simplicity of the traditional tiling hierarchy once more.
This gives us the convenience of switching desktops while also giving us
the option of the traditional alt+tab approach if needed.
Note that all desktop-related keybinds use the super key so alt and ctrl
modifiers can be used by desktop programs.
This fixes an issue where, at some point, I changed the behavior of
Super+Tab to switch desktops. Having both options gives the flexibility
of choosing whether or not you want to see the other windows while
tabbing through them.
Not sure if I'll remove these again. All I know is that I'll no longer
have to worry about not having certain dotfiles if I want to try a
particular setup again, which is nice.
Although removing these dotfiles gave the repository a clean feeling, it
made it significantly harder to resume using a certain window manager or
other tool at any time.
Instead of removing dotfiles entirely, it's enough to simply not install
the programs you don't want to use, or even install them but not open
them.
2 months ago, I removed bspwm in favor of GNOME. After using GNOME as a
daily driver for some months now, I can appreciate it as a nice desktop
environment for many GNU/Linux users, however it does not meet my needs
as well as a customized window manager setup can.
In reality, I don't need *too much* from a window manager; it just needs
to manage windows in a reasonable way. For anything else I need, I am
free to program it myself as a learning exercise. I prefer understanding
most if not everything running in my environment versus having various
GNOME utilities running in the background.
After using firefox for a while, a deal-breaker for me was that the
regular version is impossible load custom extensions for without signing
them before-hand.
Although it's possible to load extensions through about:debugging every
time the web browser is started, it's significantly easier for me to
simply use librewolf and not worry about it. Additionally, I can now
leverage the many additional features librewolf has compared to firefox,
and now no longer have to worry about "configuring firefox" after
installing it.
Now that I use GNOME, I no longer have a need for neofetch since GNOME
has its own about page in the settings. This also means I no longer have
to deal with neofetch being unmaintained and fetching the wrong
background images under GNOME.
feh was one of the fastest image viewers I've ever used, however since I
now use GNOME, having a minimal keyboard-only image viewer is no longer
necessary.
Although zathura is a great piece of software that opens pdf files at
blazing fast speeds, I no longer have a use for it since GNOME's
document viewer works just as well, and even lets you use a mouse with
it!
The recent blur additions in picom were absolutely stunning, and I'm a
bit saddened to have to leave it, however I also no longer need to worry
about the compositor only working under X11.
tint2 is a great piece of software that I enjoyed playing with, however
it is drastically easier and more convenient to simply use dash-to-panel
in GNOME if you're looking for that traditional taskbar-like experience.
As a bonus, such a taskbar would work under both Xorg and Wayland, have
features such as preview on hover, and won't have anti-features such as
the bar not being clickable unless you perform Xorg shenanigans.
After over 5 years of bspwm, I have decided to enjoy myself in the
luxurious life that is GNOME.
Using bspwm and window managers in general was an invaluable learning
experience that gave me a deep understanding of many of the novelties
of the current linux desktop computing model. It had a profound impact
on my understanding of how operating systems work in general, and I
now wish to move on and enjoy modern GNOME simplicity.
What a ride. Although I absolutely loved configuring my keybinds through
sxhkd, more so than i3 / sway and similar window managers, I didn't
realize that most of what I was doing under bspwm could also be
accomplished under GNOME through gsettings.
Since I now use GNOME, I no longer need to worry about configuring a
separate program to show notifications. Although GNOME notifications
aren't nearly as customizable, they match the theme of the desktop
environment and get the job done.
Although qutebrowser was very cute, there are too many disadvantages to
using it that can be solved by simply using a more mainstream browser. I
cover some of those issues in previous commit messages.
