[Aardwolf]

The open windows don't even have visible taskbar buttons in the fancy presentation it shows at the top

I have no idea how you can productively work that way

The reason for getting 4K monitors is not to have less stuff that can make you productive visible

KDE 3.5 was the top of OSS desktops, in my opinion

[Delk]

This might be just a matter of what I've gotten used to, but I have the "Activities" view (which shows previews of open windows, as well as the dock-like thing for launching applications) bound to the super/windows key which is nearly always very easily accessible.

If I'm switching windows and I'm not alt-tabbing, I usually just hit the super key and select the window from the thumbnails/previews.

I don't find that to be unproductive, but then, I haven't really been even trying to change the basics of my desktop or experimenting much in a while, so it might be that I've just settled for it to some extent.

If I had to first move the mouse to one location in order to get a list of windows, and then again to another location to select the window I want, I don't think that would work at all. But with a very easily accessible keyboard shortcut for the first part it does.

[christophilus]

I guess that's why we have options. I like Gnome. It's by far my favorite DE. I don't want my screen cluttered up with stuff. I know what I've got running, and finding anything is really easy: Super + type whatever I'm thinking, and presto, it's there.

[tasuki]

> Super + type whatever I'm thinking, and presto, it's there.

I often have several windows of the same application open at the same time (particularly browser and terminal). When I want to switch from say the IDE to the _right_ browser window, how do I do that in Gnome? (I use Workspace Matrix[0] as I'm a visual type, and that works for me, but perhaps there's a better way?)

[abenga]

Alt+` (key above tab on most keyboards) should allow you to switch between windows of the same application. So you do alt+tab till you get to your browser, then alt+` to pick the right browser window.

[alessivs]

Alt+Tab is usually bound to "Switch applications", which means all of the target application's windows come to the front, possibly sending every other application window out of view.

Sometimes a more direct approach is to use the action "Switch windows" by assigning it a shortcut Keyboard settings.

[JorgeGT]

I think I'm missing something... Where is the taskbar? Do you need that "overview" animation each time you want to bring an application to focus? And where are the menus of the focused application?

[Aardwolf]

No, that's not at all what I mean. I prefer no animations and no hidden things at all!

I prefer a taskbar at the bottom with one button per window in it, so that I can have an overview of which windows are open, which document each has, and quickly switch to it with mouse (when not using alt+tab to switch between recent windows).

What I do not want is to have to activate something, or have some animation, first, before seeing what I want to navigate to.

[JorgeGT]

Sorry if it wasn't clear (not a native speaker), I agree completely with all your points. I also don't want hidden things or animations each time I want to focus on another app. It was an open question, I'm wondering if anyone using Gnome 40 can answer? Also, just hovering over the Unity taskbar and scrolling with the mousewheel to cycle between windows is fantastic, I miss that a lot on Windows!

[Aardwolf]

Oh, understood now, the question was to Gnome :)

[pmontra]

The menus should be in the hamburger menu on the top right of each window. A time waster and a recent fad coming from small screen devices.

I can't answer your other questions. Not only I don't have GNOME 40 but I greatly tweaked Ubuntu 20' GNOME to disable all animations, remove the launcher, move the top bar to the bottom, use those very same horizontal virtual desktops they introduced in 40 (hurrah) and add an old Windows like taskbar. It feels much more productive than the default settings.

[beowulfey]

Any reason why you did all that vs. trying something like KDE?

I like Gnome default, but KDE does most of what you described by default too.

[pmontra]

I gave a try to KDE for a couple of months in 2014 and didn't like it. I felt I was clicking twice as much as in GNOME to accomplish the same thing. Furthermore I liked the look of GNOME more than KDE's.

I kept using GNOME fallback (or flashback?) until 2018 because it worked as I like. I knew there were GNOME shell extensions to suit my needs by then so I switched to GNOME shell with Ubuntu 18.04.

I never researched KDE so I don't know what became of it. A total change of DE is a big thing and could take a lot of time.

[ufo]

If you have an app that is hidden under other windows, you have to use the overview or alt+tab to bring it to the front.

However, often we don't need to do that because GNOME encourages us to spread our windows over several workspaces. The animation for switching workspaces is practically instantaneous.