About 4 years ago I got a 13.3" Thinkpad laptop to replace an old Chromebook for portable development, and installed Arch + i3 on it (btw). After a bit of ricing the configs, it started feeling really homey. I love using workspaces here! They feel perfectly suited for laptop screens which have minimal space, allowing me to keep my browser full-screen and my IDE full-screen while still quickly switching back and forth to reference one or the other.
On the other hand, I don’t really use workspaces when I’m on my desktop PC (I use a 27" monitor). I just installed KDE to get ahead of the Windows 10 EOL, and while I looked into combining i3 and KDE, I haven’t really felt the need for i3’s workspaces or using KDE’s virtual desktops. With a 27" monitor, I feel like there’s enough space to split my browser and IDE half-and-half on screen, and I’m ok using a file browser or terminal window as floating windows. Another consideration is that I’m always using a mouse on my desktop, so switching between workspaces with the keyboard wouldn’t feel as natural.
What about you? Do you use workspaces differently between devices? Does screen size affect your choices at all?
It’s strange, I really loved them when I ran i3. But now I’m forced on Windows I practically never use them. Some combination of the shortcuts not being as intuitive to me and tiled windows not being the default takes it from useful and intuitive to useless for me. At some point I may try again.
I’ve accidentally tried to switch workspaces with the i3 shortcuts when on a windows machine before! that muscle mememory, haha.
when I’m booting Windows on my desktop, I use MS PowerToys to snap windows around which gives me the same feeling of nice organization as tiling but feels more intuitive in the Windows environment for me.
I love me some windows powertoys but I haven’t played around with the snapping tools much, I’ll have to give it a shot.