this post was submitted on 04 Jan 2024
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Using the right WinKey+Arrows to rearrange windows with one hand was the one most important thing I liked Windows for more than my current DE. It felt so natural, just like middle-mouse navigation I'm still struggling not having on Linux. If they'd replace exactly that button, it'd be a big L in my eyes. Feels like Win10 would be my last Windows.
KDE plasma has the same win+arrows keymap.
Hm, good to know as a contender to mu setup. Have they invented the same for the middle mouse button?
What exactly is middle mouse navigation?
I've tried to achieve this middle-mouse behavior in various DEs, systems. Like. you press MM, you move mouse up and down, left and right, and the window moves accordingly. I've seen some suggestions, but none of them works like they work on W10.
This works in most linux DEs with combination of either alt or super/meta/win key + left mouse button.
Edit: meaning it could be probably remapped to just middle mouse in plasma, because plasma is so configurable.
I explained it better in a reply to another person: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/7118875
I'm yet to use Plasma. I'd see if I'd have an easy way to try it out.
You should be able to set up shortcuts for rearranging windows like that (often referred to as "manual window tiling") in most DEs. What DE do you use?
I don't know what you refer to by "middle-mouse navigation". 🙃
Xfce for now.
I've found how to use these shortcuts to drop windows to the left\right half of the screen with super+left\right AND make them fullscreen or hide them with super+up\down. But with that I'm yet to find how to achieve a placement in a quarter of a screen with e.g. super+left and super+up for a left-top quarter. Or to move window to another screen with 2x super+left. It implies that the shortcut reacts differently based on where the window's now. And the basic tool to set them obviously couldn't make condition-based shortcuts. There may be a way to add them, but I don't know of it yet.
I usually use 3-4 new windows at a time, so it was cool I can stack them like that on a whim with a couple of shortcuts.
For the middle-mouse thing: it's elastic auto-scrolling in any direction. Like on a wepbage, you press it and drag in any direction, and the more you move your mouse from the place you started pressing, the more speed this scrolling have. And this didn't mess with middle-clicks on links to open a page in a new tab etc, so it had some dead zone before starting to act I guess.
I've found some rebinding guides for a comparable behavior, but it felt a little off. For what I remember, the built-in feature to bind that got recomended wasn't auto-scrolling. It was like... How to explain it? Like holding a scrollbar and dragging it up or down, and very sensitive. And with that I usually missed the links I wanted to press with a middle button as there were no delay before starting that behavior.
It seems like to achieve the behavior I want I need to find a way to write some listening macro myself. I'm yet to come to that.
Hope I explained it right. These are little things that got written into my muscle memory by years on Win. I'm new to Linux, so maybe I don't see something obvious.
Ah, you're looking for quite specifically the workflow in Windows. That isn't quite as commonly possible and yeah, I don't think, Xfce can do it. If I remember correctly, it had separate shortcuts which you could bind specifically for the diagonal tilings. But your analysis that it needs conditional logic is correct and Xfce in general tends to err on the side of simplicity there (usually allowing for greater modularity and customizability within those simpler bounds).
Personally, I'm on KDE and I think, it essentially works the same as on Windows.
One difference is that Super+Up/Down actually tiles the window to the top half and bottom half of the screen. But if you press Super+Left and then quickly Super+Up, then it will end up in the top-left corner.
I imagine, the Cinnamon DE would also replicate this behavior, possibly even more faithful to Windows. That's kind of their thing, that they mimic the workflow from Windows closely.
For the middle-mouse scrolling, Firefox has an option to turn that on, called "Use autoscrolling".
Other than that, though, yeah, I'm not aware of that being generally available on any DE. KDE has nothing.
The middle-mouse button is traditionally used on Linux to paste from a separate clipboard which is filled whenever you select text. Kind of a weird workflow artifact, too, but lots of folks have muscle memory for that, so it stays around...
You are right at all points.
It's a little cringe to, how it's said in my language, to bring your own sacred book into another monastery. It's cringe to want the same workflow coming from Windows.
Yet I find these little things being so useful they should've been borrowed. I don't know how tho. I have some experience with writing macros, but it's all so unnative.
I mean, I started out like that, too. Looking back, I do now think that I could have just learned it proper right away, but I also remember being completely overwhelmed at the start, constantly learning new things. So, yeah, I'm not sure, it's possible. And even if you don't end up using those macros, you'll learn quite a few things about Linux, so I don't think, it's wasted time in the end.
I wasted no time. In the end, I'm not coming back. And I'm delighted how good Linux gaming is right now. My only grief is Adobe bitching, but I'm slowly adapting to either emulate their products or to find alternatives and making them just a memory.
It's all for the better.