WSL2, power toys and hands down the best window management of any OS, I hate working on my MBP just due to the difficulty of managing different windows and aligning them on the same desktop.
Probably seems weird to you, but I've never got on with the Windows UI. There's too many things that steal focus. I've been XFCE for too many years now, but it doesn't change significantly that I find I have to invest time learning what's changed.
There used to be a 'tile windows' since windows 2.0 or something like that, but it did just that, splatted the windows to take up all the space.
One thing I like about X11 and Windows doesn't do it, is alt-dragging from anywhere in the window, last time I used Windows you couldn't move things around by holding alt and left clicking anywhere, you could only do that from the title bar, which means you can't slide the top of the window off the screen.
The other major thing for me is selection copy, if you highlight text, you can't middle mouse button to paste it, you have to ctrl-c first, which is just more steps.
I rarely get focus stolen on Windows 10. They now make it very difficult for applications to do this (see the allowed conditions here: https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/win32/api/winuser/... ). In contrast, focus stealing is a way of life on XFCE, and I just have to put up with it. The settings they recommend to fix it don't actually help.
Really? There's two programs I know of that will take focus and they're both authentication prompts. The sort of thing that cranks my handle on Windows were mostly from the browser and almost anything else.
With XFCE though, I'm quite happy with the level of focus stealing, things that seem to be justifiable are at the right level, like authentication prompts.
Out of interest, what are the things that take focus for you? Maybe we're running totally different sets of programs which might give me an impression that isn't warranted.
Long time XFCE user here. Steam will absolutely steal focus. I usually start Steam and then move over to something else like the terminal or web browser and multiple times during Steam's startup it will steal focus. I just want it to start up in the background. Aside from that, I agree focus stealing isn't a huge deal in XFCE. (XFCE 4.18, Debian trixie/testing)
Now you mention it, my kid has sometimes had problems with Steam where it has started a game and we can't easily leave the game. I presumed though that was a deliberate design so that your game has focus as that's the thing that's most interactive. Usually a pkill -f <game> is needed.
I've not noticed focus stealing outside of Steam. What is steam made from, it seems very browserish.
This topic is causing some self-reflection and wonder if I am the peculiar one who does different things and just not bumping into it, I mainly work from xterm, screen, mutt, vim and a lot of time in firefox. Perhaps this combination just doesn't start things that request focus, but when in MS Windows I noticed it a lot.
You're right about steam, but now I'm on a path of wondering...
This topic confirms that focus stealing is a thing in XFCE, I have some research to do!
The Office 365 message that it is unable to log into a resource (usually because your VPN has dropped, not unusual for home workers nowadays) doesn't even go into focus when it's supposed to be at this point.
I am baffled as to how that has been allowed to go on so long. It makes Office a trainwreck usability wise.
In case you hadn't come across it yet, there's a third-party piece of software called AltDrag [0] that lets you do it. It's kind of a must have for me whenever I have to use windows. Yes this should just be builtin
you can't slide the top of the window off the screen
You can use "move" in the system menu. Once activated, the arrow keys in the keyboard will move the window outside the desktop window, not sure if you can do it using the mouse somehow.
You can also use Win+Up arrow key to maximize the window, from there you can grab the title bar to drag it somewhere (preferably inside the desktop this time).
FYI -- on my MBP I use a program called Spectacle to snap windows around, and I now have no complaints relative to what you can do on Windows.
Development on Spectacle ceased[1] and it looks like the community may have rallied around an open-source program called Rectangle, which is open source. At least, judging from this single Reddit thread lol:
[1] Although when I search for it now, I see an update from 2023 on softonic? Although the original dev's github repo for it hasn't been updated in years. https://github.com/eczarny/spectacle
I use Rectangle and still have complaints about Mac window management. Rectangle itself is great, but it's discernably a patch over a bad window management paradigm, and the awkwardness underneath pretty regularly shows through.
As just one example—the dock is atrocious for a browser-centric workflow. I only ever have 2 "apps" open at a time, but I have 6 Firefox windows and 2 IDE windows, and remembering where I put a specific window (or even that I already have it open!) is a chronic problem. I know about right-click to show all, but the text that pops up is small (it's a context menu, not a first-class navigation element) and that doesn't help with the discoverability problem.
I'm sure that there are other apps to patch the other aspects of the system that irritate me, but if you have to install 4 third party tools to get something close to how good Windows is out of the box then I'd say OP has a good point.
I think this must be a matter of preference. I absolutely hate Windows’ window management. I waste endless time fussing around getting windows where I want them to be.
This happens every time I unplug my laptop from external monitors, or plug it in to external monitors (even if they’re the exact same model and configuration as other monitors I’ve previously used). It’s aggravating and distracts me from what I’m trying to do.
Whereas I never have any issues on OSX, always find my windows where I expect them to be, and spend a lot less time moving and rearranging them.
The two operating systems do have different approaches to window management and to me it sounds like you simply prefer Windows, whereas I prefer OSX.
At work I have a Windows laptop that I plug into a dock with two additional monitors. Windows correctly returns windows to the screen it was previously using if I unplug and then plug the laptop back into the dock. Is that not the desired behaviour?
*bad window management for you
Believe it or not, some people actually do like to have free moving windows and such.
Also you seem to be ignorant of a lot of features of macOS, like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth. Or swipe down from the trackpad on a Dock icon to show the windows of the app.
Anyway, YMMV as always.
Personally I find the window management atrocious not because of the way it was designed, which definitely works for me (and I hate the Windows’ one), but because of the bugs which they insist on never ever fixing…
> like cmd-tab, focus an app, cmd-up arrow to show the windows of the app, and so forth
It's not that I'm ignorant of these, it's that they're clunky for a browser centric workflow. The abstraction of an "app" is just plain wrong for the way that I and many others use computers these days, because one app (the browser) is home to most of the tasks I'm working on and already has its own second-level navigation in the form of tabs. The "app" layer means on Mac there are three levels of navigation to get to what I'm trying to do, which is too many.
What makes Windows (and most Linux DEs) better for the browser-centric world is that windows themselves are first class citizens—I don't have to pass through Firefox to get to GitHub.
Interesringly the default DE in MOST Linux distros is GNOME which does not do what you describe, instead it follows the MacOS approach of alt-tab going through apps and not windows. I agree it is frustrating though! Have recently moved back to Windows and their alt-tab going through windows was one of the things I liked. However Microsoft has sadly enhanced it to include groups of Windows if you have stacked them side by side. One step forward and one step backward. As is the norm for modern UX.
If you have it already, another alternative is to use BetterTouchTool and set it to override the behavior of the green corner button. For me it works just like Windows where there’s “minimize” on the yellow button and “maximize” on the green. I still use gestures like exposé but never have to worry about switching desktops or getting stuck in full screen.
On the opposite side, would you (or anybody) know of a program to show windows in a cascade/overview style, on windows? So for example have one or 2 “main” windows, and have some/all the other windows in a cascaded view in the background. I would think it would help productivity a lot.
(PowerToys doesn’t do this by itself, you have to select every window in place if I’m not mistaken.)
Out of curiosity, how many window managers have you used on Linux? I found some superior choices there but I do agree that Windows is generally ok with Mac being dead last.
Sorry for being off topic, but just tried powertoys based on your post, and holy cow! What an amazing piece of software. I particularly like the file unlocker feature, and the Windows implementation of Quick Look.
I have a question for you: If you make a Pie Chart with the time you send on each OS: Linux, Windows and Mac, what will be the percentages? Specially while you were young.
Of all the languages I speak, German is the more chaotic language by far. But most native Germans consider it the best/easiest.
For me the Windows management of Windows is horrible, but I spent like 90% of my time in Linux were I was young, even using things like "screen" that uses the command line and shortcuts to be the most efficient thing I have ever used (while requiring learning the shortcuts before becoming productive).
Today I use Mac like 95% of my time, control Linux machines with it and use Windows when the force of circumstance obliges me the 5%.
When I was young I was mostly using Windows. For the last 15 years or so it has been macOS. I made a number of attempts (sometimes lasting months) to use Linux but it never stuck.
My conclusion is that usability is mostly about getting used to how things work and a tiny bit of customisation. There are no significant usability differences between operating systems.
The _only_ thing that I have never gotten used to and that keeps slowing me down is that app switching (Cmd+Tab) in macOS is MRU while switching windows (Cmd+`, Cmd+Shift+`) within apps is circular.
I'm finding it impossible to remember whether I have to go forward or backward to get back to the window I'm looking for within an app.
I can really recommend yabai for window management. I have reached a nearly identical config between my work mac with yabai/xkhd and my i3wm-based linux workstation.
power toys is buggy. It has had this bug that shows on non-US keyboard layouts, and of course it will never be fixed because who cares about non-US keyboard layouts?
Meanwhile on KDE I have an easy option to swap caps lock and ctrl, without having to install some weird .exe file off github.
I have no experience with macOS, or trouble believing that it's even worse than Windows. That said:
I can't use WSL or PowerToys at work for (enforced) dumb policy reasons - this is possible because they're optional bolt-ons as opposed to integral parts of Windows.
PowerToys exists because the the base functionality is poor, and the contemporary PowerToys implementation leaves a lot to be desired.
And last but definitely not least, window management in Windows, with or without PowerToys, sucks donkey balls IMO, especially in heterogenous multi-monitor systems. Aggravated by the knee-capped taskbar. I mean, it's not like window management is great anywhere, but claiming that it's somehow good in Windows is rich.
Two anecdotes: starting Windows Terminal by clicking an icon in the taskbar (W10) creates a window that's not focused. W11 does away with the alt-space keyboard shortcut to open the window operations menu.
Can you clarify what you mean excatly. What you describe is possible in Windows out of the box. I think since Windows 7 or so. Or maybe your description is of a different feature I'm not familiar with.
It's the weekend so I can't confirm this with my work laptop but I'm pretty sure using arrow keys snaps windows in their predefined configurations (half the screen). And then the annoying UI asking what you want to do with the other half pops up. I could snap it to half the screen and then resize the window to it's original size but I shouldn't have to do that.
