If you don’t want vanilla Gnome there’s an autotiling extension

You can use a combination of shift, meta, pgup/pgdown and arrow keys to move between workspaces and to move applications between workspaces, and you can alt-tab to switch window focus within a workspace. window management and manipulation can be entirely keyboard-driven

edit: i just pulled out my laptop to find out how you do it. i only know from muscle memory.

super(windows) + pgup/pgdown to move between workspaces

shift + super + pgup/pgdown to move focused window between workspaces

and of course

super + left/right to tile

super + up to maximize

super + down to un-maximize

super + h to minimize

super + number to launch from the dash

1. To launch apps: Super key, type in name of app, hit enter. That’s it.

2. Window Management: good writeup from that team: https://blogs.gnome.org/tbernard/2023/07/26/rethinking-window-management/ Quick cheat sheet for relevant keys there as well: https://thedroidguy.com/gnome-desktop-keyboard-shortcuts-for-efficient-workflow-and-navigation-1263904

I don’t think there’s an official “way”, but here’s mine (which I love):

On start-up I open all the apps I usually use, one per designated workspace:

1. Slack/Teams/Mattermost, whatever my work requires.
2. Thunderbird
3. Kitty
4. PyCharm/RustRover, whatever the job requires
5. Firefox

Workspaces 6-9 are left empty, ready for whatever app I need in the moment, but only ever one app per workspace.

With this setup, I’ve mapped Ctrl+Fx to each workspace, so Ctrl+F4 takes me to PyCharm where I write the code, and Ctrl+F5 followed by another F5 takes me to Firefox and reloads the page. Ctrl+F3 is always the terminal, etc., so you quickly start building these shortcuts to mean Fwhatever is $APP_NAME.

I almost never use the mouse, unless what I’m doing is necessarily mouse-driven: browsing or drawing charts etc. Everything else is keyboard-driven.

Meta+arrow keys to manage windows: left or right to get a split, up to maximize.

Meta+pgup/pgdn to switch workspaces. Add shift to move the current window with you.

Those are the main ones I use all the time, but there’s a full list (some that aren’t bound by default) in the settings. I would probably remap pgup and pgdn to something closer to my fingers on a regular keyboard, but I use an ergo split 60% so I already have those keys on my home row.

Tbh GNOME feels best with a combo of mouse and keyboard, like Meta+mousewheel scrolling lets you switch workspaces very smoothly. And I think I had to map this myself, but I use right click drag + Meta to resize windows dynamically. But the above keys let me do 90% of what I want to with windows.

If you really want a fully keyboard-driven window management scheme you should probably check out a standalone window manager. I love sway personally.

I hit the super-key, type terminal, hit enter

I harbor nostalgia for the old Windows 3 desktop icon grid, so I open a file manager window pointing to ~/Desktop and display the *.desktop shortcuts there as icons. This is done automatically when gdm starts. My file manager is PCManFM, which is a rip-off of nautilus. Double-clicking on an icon opens the shortcut — be it to a terminal or a graphical application. I have to alt-tab to the PCManFM window of course, so I need the keyboard. Then I have to double-click with the mouse. It’s keeping both hemispheres of the brain active: subject/verb, left/right.

then I have a terminal which does not start maximized on workspace 1

I run devilspie in the background to catch windows of certain applications such as terminal and maximize them on the fly. For this reason, I must disable wayland.

Does the vanilla Gnome workflow expect you to use mouse and keyboard?

Yes, both, apparently.

It just seems like a lot of work/clicks/keys to achieve something simple.

Well, that’s what you get for downplaying the role of icon grids.

If you have apps in your dock you can also use “Super + 1-9” to start those apps. For example i have the browser on the first position and the terminal on the second so i switch between them with Super+1 and Super+2. It’s also the same on Windows with apps in the task bar by the way. I am fine with it so far but I have thought about switching to a distro with a tiling window manager but the distro I currently use just doesn’t support those and I don’t want to leave right now.

There’s hotkeys for workspace navigation, I use them all the time: Super+Alt+Left/Right will navigate to the next/previous workspace (Super+PageDown/Up also works). If you go in Settings -> Keyboard shortcuts -> Navigation you’ll find more, notably to move windows between workspaces.

As for the fullscreen by default, there’s extensions for that I guess, though personally it doesn’t bother me since after the window is maximized once it should restore its maximized state the next time it’s opened. With Super+Arrow keys to position the window, I personally barely use the mouse for window management.

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