Two years ago, I transitioned to a minimalist tiling window manager (WM) despite my initial reservations about them. This change was prompted by my desire to experiment with high-end hardware and a 4K multi-monitor setup in a tiled environment. Surprisingly, the switch turned out to be a game-changer, boosting my productivity significantly, with around 90% of my tasks now occurring in the terminal. Traditional criticisms of terminals, such as memorization challenges and lack of guidance, no longer apply, thanks to modern features like auto-completion, interactive history, suggestions, and plugins like Git integration. Unfortunately, the reluctance to embrace this minimalist, terminal-centric approach may hinder power users from unlocking its full potential due to long-standing biases and a fear of change.
With all due respect, I can never take these self-made claims at face value. You definitely feel that you are more productive, but that may or may not be the actual case and it is easy to lie to ourselves.
I've been on a similar quest but my purpose was to eliminate distraction, and becoming more productive was just a side-effect.
i3 (actually sway) helps me with focusing only at those windows that belong to a specific task, and often in full-screen. if I must use a GUI browser which has tabs and constant distraction then I can do so, but the context switch isn't "just mental" but I have to change over to another virtal desktop. this sounds hardly revolutionary (virtual desktops are also in KDE and Gnome). But it is a lot more "painful" than having everything in front of me at all times using 3 monitors. It also makes me actively aware (!!) that a context switch is happening, and so I end up allowing it less, and force myself to finish what I'm doing before attending to some interruption. there is no taskbar no dbus-popups.
I even use my device for undistracted reading of books multiple hours at the time, without snacking on HN content inbetween. (although for this I've started using another cheap old laptop that does not have network and is only running a few things (zathura for reading PDF's and calibre for converting from different formats). -> hardware compartmentalization FTW
generally leaving fullscreen and reconnecting the network and switching to another desktop is just too many steps and i now only break my concentration with a total awareness of it happening.
It honestly changed my life, made me more focused, less anxious, and more in control. Def not going back to the illusion of being productive just because I'm juggling everything at once ...
I more or less do the same, but using gnome and only one monitor. Most people criticize gnome without actually giving a chance to use it the way it was designed to be used. Coupled with the use of workspaces, it has significantly increased my focus (or rather, decreased my distractions)
That's true of virtually every comment making a claim on HN. Unless you've done a scientific experiment and collected data, you want know for sure.
In any case I'll add another anecdote for someone that has nearly the identical setup to the GP and will say it also significantly increased my productivity. Don't really care if anyone believes me.
But how? What were you doing that involved window placement or positioning that "makes you more productive"? I just don't see how these activities, in the context of doing day-to-day work, could shave off more than a few minutes a day.
"Significantly" implies to me some double-digit percentage increase in the ability to accomplish tasks, and I just can't see how a window manager could possibly be responsible for such a thing.
There is a trap when talking about productivity, that everything can be reduced to time. But quality of work is a factor of productivity too.
What is rarely taken into account is that offloading mental energy can lead to better solutions.
For example, I make two paintings. Both take me ten hours, but for the second one I was sitting in a more comfortable chair, in a calm room, and the resulting painting is significantly better.
Less friction might not manifest as a big numerical statistic that you can look at and nod your head in approval, but it might do wonder for the internal levels of stress one feels in interacting with devices. And ultimately, that's what matters most.
I have a Mac and a Linux box for work. I have been using my Macbook for some AI work I'm doing, but my workflow has been a mess. I had 4 desktops going, 2 projects opened w/debugging, many browser tabs opened to various docs, MS Teams, Outlook, etc. I don't even run Apple music anymore because it makes my laptop too hot.
On my mac the desktops constantly change position for unknown reasons. Managing windows is a huge pain on each desktop because it's very easy to obscure them... there is also a ton of wasted space with so much gui noise. CMD tabbing through apps is tedious and inflexible.
I posted some screenshots of my Linux setup in a different comment. My Linux workflow is night and day. All of my projects are streamlined on their own workspace, I can jump between tasks with no mental effort, everything is at my fingertips, I make less mistakes (working in the wrong terminal or editor), everything is done with vi bindings, etc. I have custom shortcuts set for things I need and I have multiple browsers that I can overlay on any workspace if I need to.
I can't quantify my productivity increase, but I know it's there. I also know I'm much happier when I'm working now because I'm much more organized and focused. I'm also not dealing with a Laptop (Macbook) that sounds like a rocket about to take off. My Linux box operates under 1% CPU load all the time. My point is not to say my setup is better (I'm not an evangelist on these things), but that I found a huge productivity boost for my needs with a minimal setup. I was very skeptical when I started out and it was a combination of being out of my comfort zone and being incredulous to a radically different way of using a computer.
2. The third party app “alt-tab” provides an alt tab experience that is much better than the native one, and is likely more similar to the behavior you expect from Linux. See: https://alt-tab-macos.netlify.app
I also personally like to use Rectangle for window positioning using keyboard shortcuts, tried the various auto tiling solutions like yabai and amethyst in the past but I think the flexibility of Rectangle is worth having to remember and use a few keyboard shortcuts.
I think it’s unfortunate that so many third party apps are required, but with a bit of babysitting MacOS can be pretty decent to work with.
Mainly the cognitively load and time spent launching apps, finding the window for an already launched app, cleaning up and laying out windows, and moving the mouse around to control the windows. It's just one keystroke to my most use apps now. I'm 100% sure I'm faster now.
Think of a cluttered workbench in a garage versus a clean and organized one. I don't need a scientific study to tell me which one is more efficient.
When I pair with other developers the difference is obvious. Being able to work efficiently in a complex environment is a skill that not many have unfortunately.
I use Kitty for my terminal, i3 for my window manager, vifm for my file manager, vim/neovim for my editor and Firefox. All of my virtual desktops handle different things, like watching movies, doing AI projects, web work, game development, graphics work, etc.
You can do all of this stuff in Windows or on a Mac, but I'm using minimal resources with a highly streamlined workflow. Everything that I can script, I script. I also use Zsh with quite a few plugins so the terminal itself isn't so important. I use Kitty because it's fast, can render graphics, is well documented and has a ton of features.
I believe most of the things OP mentioned have to do with the shell and not the terminal. At the very least, most of the things thus mentioned can be configured in zsh (I don't know how, as I haven't looked into it really)
