[leephillips]

I jumped from Apple to Linux because I had to get work done and the scientific software that I wanted to use was a pain to keep working on Macs. Also, it was impossible to configure MacOS to work the way I wanted it to, unlike Linux.

By the way, I use a tiling window manager (dwm) and I can’t figure out what you mean by “tiling WM having too many windows open”. I also don’t understand why free software such as the Gimp should be expected to support the binary file format of some closed-source program. But I do understand the need to work with other people without making excuses, even if their choice of tools is shortsighted.

[tga]

I've been running a work Linux virtual machine (or a few of them) on a MacBook. Best of both worlds really -- I don't have to worry about running Linux on the hardware or running dev tools on macOS.

As a bonus, a full system backup is a simple folder copy to a USB stick, and with that stick I can instantly continue working on any machine, Mac, Linux or Windows.

[leephillips]

Yeah, I think there is virtue in this approach. If I had figured this out back then (and if it were possible—I don’t know) I might have gone that route.

[trinix912]

> I can’t figure out what you mean by “tiling WM having too many windows open”

Tiling WMs only work for me when I have <5 windows open. Afterwards, they just become a huge mess, unless you have a big screen with a huge resolution.

> I also don’t understand why free software such as the Gimp should be expected to support the binary file format of some closed-source program. But I do understand the need to work with other people without making excuses, even if their choice of tools is shortsighted.

I'm not saying they should be responsible for supporting a random (tho admittedly quite ubiquitous) proprietary format. But on the same topic, where would Open-/LibreOffice be without support for docx/pptx/xlsx? If they never support any proprietary formats then there's no alternative to what everyone else uses.

If you have the privilege of choosing what to work with in all situations then it's of course not a problem. But one can't expect a group of UX designers to completely break their workflow for a project with a strict deadline just because one person holds onto their sacred OS.

[shakow]

> Afterwards, they just become a huge mess, unless you have a big screen with a huge resolution.

Or you can just use several virtual desktops.

[de_Selby]

Or use tabbed/fullscreen/custom views.

The GP comment is so backwards that I wonder if they even used a tiling wm for any period of time longer than a day or two. Tiling window managers are better at managing many windows than having them all scattered randomly over a desktop with a traditional window manager.

[aerique]

Not all tiling window managers are the same and one of the bigger differences is what they do with new windows, so this is really dependent on the tiling WM you've used.

[michaelmrose]

If you plug every single window into the same workspace no matter how many windows you have you are basically using it ineffectively.

Let us propose you have a really tiny 12" screen and you are using 5 windows that each really need your full screen area to be useful. It makes no sense to split it 5 ways so instead each window is its own workspace. This hardly seems to be a situation where a tiling window manager benefits you you could very well arrange the same thing on any graphical environment by switching to each workspace opening each application and maximizing the window.

However what it did do was keep you from dumping all 5 windows in the same workspace because the result would be painful and ensure that instead of alt tabbing an average of 3 times per window switch or taking your hands off the keyboard and clicking on a ui element to select the individual app from the taskbar. Instead when you want to go from app 1 to 5 or app 2 to 4 you go directly to the correct workspace.

It also automated maximizing the windows as they were created.

To put it succinctly it encouraged a certain workflow and automated the window management steps when using that workflow.

This is also true if you have 18 windows and 3 28" monitors. By far the most common arrangements are going to be simple arrangements of 1-3 windows on the same monitor which can be automatically applied as windows are added.

If we consult one of my favorite infographics

https://xkcd.com/1205/

To save 2 seconds 100 times a day (not depicted) we can spend 96 hours learning to use a tiling window manager and come out ahead over 5 years. In reality the time required is probably on the order of 2-4 hours and as it is a low stress, simple activity it can trivially be done during downtime in the time when you would spend on social media as opposed to when you ought to be working.

In effect you are trading a few hours of playtime for 96 hours of more effective work time which if you think about is a pretty good trade.

It's also entirely possible that you don't enjoy this workflow and thusly wouldn't benefit which is OK too.

Insofar as LibreOffice vs Gimp you are entirely correct. On a related note Bloom although not free claims to have great PSD support

>You say Bloom imports PSD files. What specifically does it import and does it support layers? We understand why this question comes up. :) A lot of packages claim to import PSD files, but then either end up importing a single flattened image, or layers stripped of styles, masks, and blending effects. We are proud to have created the best-in-class PSD importer for Bloom, which supports not only layers and groups, but also masks on both of them, all layer blending modes, and even layer blending effects such as drop shadows and glows - even on groups! While we can't guarantee the documents will look pixel-perfect compared to Adobe Photoshop (they are completely different software packages, after all), they are very close in terms of their appearance, and all key information is preserved.

https://thebloomapp.com

I haven't tried it personally but it has a free demo.