>when you open several windows with the same application (like when you open several LibreOffice documents), the Task Manager will group them together.
This is exactly the opposite of what I want. Why don't the designers of 21st-century desktop environments understand that my 3 PDF files have nothing to do with one another? The same goes for my terminals, my text buffers, my web pages....
Why group things that are involved in unrelated tasks?
It's just one more setting for the already extremely configurable Task Manager. For new users, it changes a default (the option to group is already there, with an extra toggle that activates it only when the task bar is full). I think the "cycle window on click" is a new option.
KDE is all about giving lots of options to users, but at the same time they aren't afraid to experiment and change its defaults to try to appeal to first-time users. In this case, window groups is a nice default that avoids scrolling or too-small buttons.
Before this KDE grouped them by default when task bar is full, it's one of the settings you have to change which take about 2 seconds. It's impossible to make a DE that fit all tastes with default settings, that's why we have settings
Well maybe it's what everyone else wants. Either way it's just the default they're changing, one good thing about grouping in Plasma is it lets you exclude certain applications so you can exclude your PDF viewer. Alot of other environments give an all or nothing approach.
There maybe some people who want this but they are not the marority. A task and an application are unrelated things. A task most likely spans one/several browser tabs + a couple of documents in different apps.
I haven't got into the habit of using them but the original issue we're talking about is arbitrary grouping that does not seem to help how people work in reality.
This is actually the first time I hear a user making this argument. Aaron J. Seigo would love you, as he added Activities in kde 4 for this exact use case.
Because it takes up less real estate and I know what app I’m looking for. I don’t have separate windows for all my Firefox tabs even though you could consider them to belong to 5 or 6 different categories.
Why not let the application decide, like with browser tabs?
I absolutely hate it that the default for Gnome is to group all windows of the same application together under the same icon. When I have multiple terminals open, then they are in no way related. I want a specific one. Like writing code in an editor and a terminal for running the application or compiling, and then another one for some shell access.
> Why not let the application decide, like with browser tabs?
That means you need to wait for each application to add support for it whereas here it is the window manager.
What you want it seems is to group the windows by workflow. You can do what. Use a different desktop per workflow. I have 1 main 2 reference 3 utilities Then set your task bar to only show windows from the current desktop.
Gnome is also incredibly slow to allow one to select a particular window when Alt-Tabbing. It is a one second delay every time you want to change window.
A nice solution is to simply put each icon/task of the same application side by side, so for instance you get 3 firefox icons in a row in the taskbar/dock, that's what I do, there's enough space anyway. That way you can quickly tell what's open and switch to them.
For me mentally, it makes more sense that all windows of the same application are grouped. In your example, when I want to focus the PDF file, I first look for the icon of my PDF viewer and I don't want there to be three icons; I want just one icon and if I (right)click it get a list in which I see the window titles.
It's not what I want either, and it's not what most other Linux users I know want either.
It's copying the behavior of MacOS, plain and simple, and I disagree with them doing that. I don't use MacOS because I don't like MacOS, and the last thing I want is MacOS-like Linux.
> It's copying the behavior of MacOS, plain and simple
And of Windows 7-8-10 (and of Unity). And the opposite is just copying the behavior of Windows 95-2000 (XP would already group taskbar buttons by default although it still couldn't "pin" them and required separate launcher buttons).
And, by the way, MacOS doesn't group all the windows by default, some get a separate icon when launched (at least they did some years ago, I don't know about the recent versions).
> I don't use MacOS because I don't like MacOS, and the last thing I want is MacOS-like Linux.
Fortunately, there are many different WMs/DEs on Linux and you don't have to use KDE (or its default set-up) either. You can either tweak it, or choose a different WM/DE or write your own (I would totally do so if I had more spare time).
> I don't use MacOS because I don't like MacOS, and the last thing I want is MacOS-like Linux.
Same here, but grouping applications when the taskbar is full isn't too unreasonable, is it? It is not even necessarily copied from Mac, it might have been Windows who introduced or at least made it mainstream I think (It wouldn't surprise me at all if it existed on some Linux Desktop environment as an option before that.)
I get you point (it's perfectly valid and I even believe I can feel what you feel) but as for me I want it to be "one app = one icon" (same icon used to launch, minimize and activate any of the windows of the same app) and it drives me crazy no Linux DE other than KDE and good old Unity support this. I wish LXDE (the Raspberry Pi default), LXQt and XFCE didn't insist the Windows95 way of having separate buttons to launch and to minimize/activate a running app (which feels untidy to me) is the only correct way. C'mon, it's been a long since Windows 7 and Ubuntu Unity appeared, why keep emulating Windows 95?
Today, working on a Windows 10 machine at the office, I've actually realized strict "one app = one icon" scheme, with every window of the same app hidden under one button, isn't actually convenient for me either.
It makes switching between different documents (with the mouse) too much hassle: click/hover on the button, wait for the documents list to pop up, click the one you want - that's too much.
Single-click can actually be handier in many cases.
But I still want the same button to launch and to represent a running app.
And an extra button to be added right after the main one when a second window of the same app gets opened.
This is can be achieve on Windows using an easy hack[1], despite there seemingly is no "official" way.
Well, on Windows, you just move the cursor over the group and then you get a detailed list, so you still do the same with the same number of clicks, almost the same amount of motion, and less screen space. I think it's a pretty good UX.
I use xmonad, windows grouped in virtual workspaces by task.
1 - quick browsing
2 - development (editor and browser)
3...7 - if "development" accumulates too many windows (uncomfortable) and I don't want to close them yet, subset I work with pushed to next number (or subset I want to investigate later)
It is what I want. All depends on how you work. If I have several PDFs open at once, they're related. I'm not doing my taxes, reading hardware docs, and filing insurance forms at the same time.
KDE is quite good at customizing this stuff. You can pin documents and windows to Workspace or Activity. It even remembers this config between sessions.
Are you sure KDE is that good at customizing stuff?
I hated the fact that it displays a huge speaker icon in the middle of the screen whenever adjusting volume, I know I adjust volume, I don't need to see it in the middle of the screen every time, this is a productivity computer, not a television.
The only way I found to disable that behavior was to change some javascript code somewhere within KDE. But everytime I update archlinux, it was restored and I had to apply my change again!
There's no normal setting or config file to turn it off...
I'm using Cinnamon now though, that one is much better at just being exactly how it should be (= KDE 3.5-ish) and not changing in annoying ways all the time. Or running undesired, not easy to disable, CPU hogging "nepomuk" and other oddly named things in the background. Or being too integrated with other software like PIM stuff, while all I want is a good window manager.
Release linked here reworked on screen notifications. So that sound problem may be fixed. Otherwise you can change association for volume keys and use your own command.
I don't think he's referring to notifications, but to those visual feedback icons that show up in the middle of the screen whenever you change brightness or volume (or mute sound) via keyboard.
I believe you're meant to be using virtual desktop/workspaces to group tasks (which each have their own task bar), and then within a workspace they get grouped.
This is exactly the opposite of what I want. Why don't the designers of 21st-century desktop environments understand that my 3 PDF files have nothing to do with one another? The same goes for my terminals, my text buffers, my web pages....
Why group things that are involved in unrelated tasks?