[SwellJoe]

Workspaces are such an obviously great idea that it astounds me that Windows and Mac OS X still don't have them (I guess Mac OS X has a functional equivalent as of Leopard or Snow Leopard, if you squint right, but I find it less intuitive and I use it less even after months of having it available on my hackintosh). Given that they've been a part of X Windows window managers for a couple of decades, it's just astonishing that they've never made an appearance as a standard feature of other windowing systems.

This, of course, isn't a new feature in GNOME 3, and so I guess it's not really relevant, but I just felt like ranting about the one thing that I think the Linux desktop has always had such a clear lead on, and that until you've used it you don't even know how much it sucks to not have it.

[jsz0]

I haven't used GNOME 3 but it sounds like OSX's Spaces are a bit more usable at this point. This article talks about dragging icons around to move applications between spaces -- in OSX you can just drag the window itself independent of the application so you could have a Numbers spreadsheet in Space 1 and another in Space 2. It's based on the window not the application though you can statically bind certain applications to their own space if that works better. Multiple monitor support is nice too. I think I remember using that in GNOME 2 though so I'm sure 3 will support it too.

[SwellJoe]

I don't find Spaces to be more usable, I find them clunky and confusing...but I have a dozen years worth of habits on Linux desktops which may be working against me. Honestly, though, I find a lot of Mac OS X and Apple interfaces clunky and confusing (and I generally have horrible things happen when I try to use them, like deleting my whole music collection when trying to use iTunes to put stuff on an iPod; iPhones also confuse the heck out of me). I've often referred to myself as "Appletarded" because I don't think I think like a normal person at this point, when it comes to interacting with technology. Apparently, many people find Mac OS X intuitive and easy to use...I find it really difficult to do anything beyond just using applications at a very basic level, and even that is often filled with frustration due to all the magic incantations you have to just know to do things (no right mouse button, so to get a context menu, you gotta know the key combo or how to use the magic mouse pad to create a right click event).

I'm basically the definitive "doesn't like Macs" user. Mac OS X is moderately better than Windows, but only by a smidgen, in my estimation, and it's certainly not a great UNIX. So, take my rants with a grain of salt.

[ssp]

It's not obvious that they are a good idea in general. One pretty bad issue is that if you don't know about work spaces, then hitting Ctrl-Arrow will have the effect that everything vanishes with no obvious way to get it back.

It's also not clear to me that they actually make people more productive even if they are aware of them and understand them. Of course many nerds feel they are being more productive, but that only indicates that if you wish to sell to nerds, you should include them at least as an option.

[cookiecaper]

I know it's anecdotal, but workspaces make me _much_ more productive. I use awesomewm and it's very fast to be able to keep everything up and active and just switch over to a screen dedicated to web, email, IM, or the rest of my screens which usually have different clients' projects up for easy and quick access, and makes switching tasks much easier. It doesn't clutter anything to have all this up at once; no task bar clutter, no window clutter.

If someone knows how to use workspaces and has cause for more than one or two windows over the course of their computer usage, I don't see how they could _not_ make someone more productive.

[SwellJoe]

I'm certain I'm more productive when I'm running Linux, after having spent enough time in Mac OS X and Windows to have confidence in that result (my 3G modem doesn't work in Linux, and until I got a router for it, I had to boot into Windows or Mac OS X to work online, so I spent a couple of months on the other side). But, workspaces are definitely not the only factor. The biggest is actually having a really good shell (bash with the bash_completion package) that is comfortably integrated into the OS and has tabs. I'm horribly unproductive in the Windows shell, and the Mac OS X shell is just weird, though better than Windows. I'm not even sure why the Mac OS X terminal is so uncomfortable to me...it's bash, but it feels really clunky compared to the Gnome Terminal.

Anyway, workspaces are definitely something I really, really, miss when I use Windows. I regularly have a couple dozen windows open, often several of the same app but in use for different tasks, and it's kind of a nightmare to keep up with what's where.

[rubashov]

I find windows almost unusable without virtuawin. It very successfully adds virtual desktops to windows.