I started using Linux at university, and my first distro at home was SuSE in 1997, because my father got the CDs at work. Then I ran RedHat for a while, because that’s what my friends were running, then Mandrake, then Knoppix, then Debian. Loved Debian and AfterStep.
About 10 years ago I moved to Ubuntu because I had a hardware issue that was solved in Ubuntu but was a pain to fix in Debian. I liked that as well.
But this year I bought a second-hand ThinkPad T490, and it was randomly locking up (mouse still moves but nothing else responds). Googling and trying to troubleshoot by looking through logs wasn’t working, and I’m pretty sure it’s not a pure hardware issue, because I’ve got it as a dual boot system because my girlfriend’s son uses windows on it, and hasn’t had any issues.
So yesterday, I decided to back up my home directory and install Debian Forky. It feels like coming home. And so far, no lock-ups…
One thing I really miss about AfterStep was that they had a widget that showed you your virtual desktops next to each other, with rectangles for all the windows. You could even drag them around from there.
Both gnome and plasma have that feature. Plasma even lets you move the windows, I think in gnome you can only drag them from one workspace to another.
Where do I get that?
In plasma you just add the Pager widget to your panel. In gnome you enable the “Workspace indicator” extension, which should be installed by default.