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Desktop Window Managers

I enjoy using multiple operating systems. I love Linux for performance but I have to say most of the window managers are nowhere near Windows or OS X in terms of control and keyboard shortcut operations. This is very rant filled of an opinion, as I do quite a bot of text editing work and am a huge user of Ctrl+Tab and Ctrl+Shift+Tab to navigate between multiple open windows. If may seem minor, but when editing multiple bash scripts, having to select your other window with the mouse instead of jumping tabs by keyboard… is clunky.

I guess the burden of choice also leads to an inconsistent UX in Linux distros. I would say we should step back and know that this is a limiting factor to having people fully switch from Windows or Mac OS. That stuff really matters over time on your day-to-day computer usage. Personally, I tend to manage my Linux installs over SSH from a Windows box, or occasionally a Mac as well. Hopefully this comes to become a little cleaner an operation on some Nix ditros, but as I mentioned, it’s difficult to get everyone to agree. One person’s issue is another person’s workflow to it working as intended.

This rant came up encoding videos, where my bash scripts were not simply a Ctrl+Tab, followed by a Ctrl+R to replace strings for the next output. When you are grinding out the repetitious stuff, shortcuts are helpful and can lead to better automation too. Depends on what you are up to, but the emphasis on a clean UX, is what gets people to invest (mentally and emotionally) to your platform.