Would it be possible to have a dynamic number of desktops (like gnome) in mate ?
I like this feature and I miss it with mate.
Regards,
BT
I have 4 available to me in UM 16.04 ... here's a snip
For Ubuntu 13.04 and higher, you may first enable workspaces from
System Settings -> Appearances -> Behavior tab -> Enable
Workspaces.
You don’t know how immensely useless it is to have dynamic desktops, if you don’t really need them. Two is good enough for most people, but if you are NOT most people, then you can change these options.
If you want to use Compiz, then the number of desktops can be changed in compizconfig-settings-manager (ccsm) under general options.
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I know how to add more desktop. I just don’t want to have a fixed maximum number of desktop. I want to have more when I need it. I like the idea of the window manager adding one unused spare desktop when I use a new desktop.
Just my way of working.
If this is the case, you may want to check out Cinnamon. While really just a fork of GNOME-shell, the Linux Mint team had done a rather good job of making it at least feel good to use.
You may find, that you also encounter less issues with customization in Linux Mint Cinnamon vs. Ubuntu MATE, but this has its own share of pitfalls, such as previews for certain themes not appearing because their thumbnails do not exist. That, and some themes may not work entirely out of the box without some tweaking because of Cinnamon being a GNOME-shell fork, some of Mint team’s design decisions might break some things made specifically for GNOME-shell.
There is no way to create dynamic workspaces in Mate . Maybe a script can be writed to create a new desktop and move the active window to the new desktop .
Hence why I told him to go with Linux Mint Cinnamon. Mint team made Cinnamon first, and it would give him the interface and features he wants while still looking like a traditional desktop.
It should be noted that MATE began life as a GNOME 2 clone of sorts after GNOME team quit supporting it. So as such, if he doesn’t like the non-dynamic desktop now, he would had never liked GNOME 2 / Pre-Unity Ubuntu.
The other alternative, as you said would be scripts to add and remove desktops on a whim. Maybe there could be a third-party workspace switcher that adds in buttons to increment the number of desktops when a window is dragged into it, but that will become more difficult to use unless put off into its own separate widget, or maybe written as a GTK3-style program with a popup bubble that shows all workspaces, but who’ll go through that effort when what we have right now is good enough?
He could create a feature request for compiz-reloaded expo plugin .
Or, just a retooling of the Expo plugin to also manipulate the number of desktops with a special button, but I think those extra features are why Compiz was modified for use with Unity as it is, so backporting might not be a wise idea as things to add buttons and other interactive elements to the window manager might not be possible in Compiz 0.8.