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{ 2008 11 11 }

Workspaces

I’m a big advocate of virtual desktops, sometimes referred to as “workspaces”. I’m curious how many workspaces you use, and what, if any, each workspace is assigned to. I use 6 workspaces, and have them organized into two rows of three columns as follows:

  1. Email
  2. Messaging
  3. Web
  4. Virtual Machines
  5. Miscellaneous
  6. Development
Posted by Aaron on Tuesday, November 11, 2008, at 5:26 pm. Filed under Linux. Follow any responses to this post with its comments RSS feed. You can post a comment or trackback from your blog.

{ 7 } Comments

  1. Will Smith using Firefox 3.0.3 Firefox 3.0.3 on Ubuntu Ubuntu | November 11, 2008 at 5:44 pm | Permalink

    I have four, two rows two columns. One for messaging, one for web browsing, one for work, and a spare.

  2. Tobias using Firefox 3.0.3 Firefox 3.0.3 on Gentoo Gentoo | November 11, 2008 at 6:53 pm | Permalink

    You should try xmonad with DynamicWorkspaces. It allows dynamic creation and removal of workspaces with meaningful names. So you have no static set of workspaces. It changes depending on what you’re working on and allows you to manage a lot more workspaces, than you’re used to. Perhaps someone will implement something similar for gnome or kde sometime in the future. At the moment I have ‘web’, five workspaces named after different projects I work on, ‘music’, ‘gentoo’, ‘learn’, ‘mysql’, ‘communication’, ‘remote’

  3. Matt using Firefox 3.0.3 Firefox 3.0.3 on Ubuntu Ubuntu | November 11, 2008 at 8:13 pm | Permalink

    I also use two rows and three columns. But from left to right are Geany (and maybe glade-3), Terminator, Firefox, Xchat, Banshee, and then anything else, especially Thunar if I’m using it.

  4. Jeff using Firefox 3.0.3 Firefox 3.0.3 on Ubuntu Ubuntu | November 12, 2008 at 7:37 am | Permalink

    One row of four workspaces. If I’m not doing much, some of these will be combined:

    1. Primary activity, e.g. coding, uni work
    2. Secondary activity, e.g. IM, reading news
    3. Music
    4. Misc overflow, e.g. long-running compilation/render, virtual machines

  5. toobuntu using Firefox 3.0 Firefox 3.0 on GNU/Linux GNU/Linux | November 12, 2008 at 8:25 am | Permalink

    1. Office productivity, news, web browsing, media (quick audio)
    2. Email & personal web browsing, media (video)
    3. Windows admin via rdesktop, virtual machine admin, home banking, media (playlist audio)
    4. Linux admin via cssh

  6. Kai using Firefox 3.0.3 Firefox 3.0.3 on Ubuntu Ubuntu | November 12, 2008 at 10:18 am | Permalink

    At work:

    1 = Mail, Web, OpenOffice (fullscreen apps)
    2 = Eclipse + terminals with running app and log
    3 = Terminals for compiling, version control, other development-related things
    4 – 7 = More terminals for various purposes, on demand
    8 = VMware
    9 = Local admin stuff (Update Manager) and private things.

    I prefer a specific arrangement of terminals, so I usually put few of them in the same workspace. Nevertheless, I very seldom use all workspaces. But I don’t feel that a spare workspace costs anything, so why not keep them around…

  7. Phil using Mozilla Compatible 5.0 Mozilla Compatible 5.0 on GNU/Linux GNU/Linux | November 12, 2008 at 9:51 pm | Permalink

    Emacs (eshell), Emacs (gnus), Emacs (ruby-mode), Emacs (magit), Emacs (rcirc/jabber.el), and Conkeror.

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