Improving Gnome Desktop as a 'Where's Waldo' Game

[Jason]

I thought you were bluffing on having found a solution to do it in Gnome. You mentioned that you had found a "usable substitute" for Gnome. Are you saying you have found a way to do it without a substitute?

[fox]

Nope. I can do it with one window. Open one window, drag it to the right of the display as I noted earlier, and that window will occupy half of the display. Unless you meant something else by "split screen"?

[buster]

I see my honour is being impugned again! A sad day for innocent gentlemen. An assault on proper societal intercourse.

THE SPLIT VIEW SUBSTITUTE FOR GNOME SOLUTION

This is much simpler than the instructions sound. And you can do everything almost as easily as in Plasma. Be sure to read carefully Mike.

Open the file folder and navigate to a place you wish to move a file to.

Go to the top of the folder, right click 'Home' and click 'open in new tab'.

Navigate to the place you wish to move the file from in the new tab.

Drag the file to the destiny tab.

Note 1: You can have 3 or 4 tabs open if you have a lot of moving in a big reorganization project.
Note 2: Sorry Mike if I wasn't clear, but we are not talking desktop, but rather split view or screen within the file folder.
Note 3: After using it for awhile it becomes second nature, and is close to how plasma works. The 3 or 4 tabs is nice.

[fox]

Now I see that you meant "split view" and not "split screen", though it is really neither, but rather a single screen with tabs) to make it easier to move a file to a different place. Assuming that all you want to accomplish is to move files around, let me suggest something else:
- navigate to your file (or files) and select
- right-click and choose "Move to ..."
- this brings up a folder window where you can easily select a move destination
- navigate to your destination and click on "Select" box at the top of that folder

I apologize if I misunderstood.

[buster]

Your method certainly works Mike. Personally, and I think all Plasma users would agree, the split view in Plasma is quicker and easier. Drag and drop is instant. And the navigation is visual. The tabs in Gnome I see as second best. And I would use your method if necessary.

[buster]

As well of course if you don't care where the file goes in music or videos, you can drag the file to the list on the left and sort later. Often enough for an album for example.

[fox]

I assume you're talking about music or video files. You can add frequently used folders to the favourites list on the left side of the Files menu in Gnome. My list is quite different from the default.

[fox]

Your method certainly works Mike. Personally, and I think all Plasma users would agree, the split view in Plasma is quicker and easier. Drag and drop is instant. And the navigation is visual. ....

I also like a true split window for moving around files, but I don't know that it's any faster. You have to set up your split (or your tabs) before you can use it. With my right-click method, nothing has to be set up first other than getting to file first. I think that this takes more time than actually moving the file. For this reason, I like the Mac solution better, where one can right-click on a folder and drill to any enclosed folder without opening additional windows.

[Jason]

For this reason, I like the Mac solution better, where one can right-click on a folder and drill to any enclosed folder without opening additional windows.

It's not a right-click, but if you're in the Details view mode, you can drill down to enclosed folders within Dolphin. And if you right-click on the the title that says Places, and choose Folders in the drop down list, you can drill down on the left, too. Does Gnome do this, too?

[fox]

I don't think Gnome Files has any of these features, at least I can't find them on my Ubuntu installation. One could, of course, install Dolphin in Gnome, though I suspect it would bring in many Plasma/Qt dependencies with it. I think one can also install Midnight Commander to get the split screen and drilling. None of these are quite like the Mac version, however. To do what I used to do in it requires a utility (free), but one can right-click on the desktop and just move through the folders, which open to the right of the parent folder. I used that all the time and I miss it. You can set which folders appear with the right-click on the desktop, move from there and even open a file that way.

[Jason]

Installed Dolphin in Ubuntu 18.10 guest and it does work.

I used the default software manager so I don't know if other dependencies came but that's probably likely as it took longer than I expected to install. After a minute, I got bored of waiting when it looked like it was stuck at 78% and did something else for a few minutes. When I came back it was successfully installed.

Everything is there except the ability to do previews though it looks different, and I mean other than the different looking icons/colors which are a result of the specific theme. Below you see me comparing Dolphin in Ubuntu 18.10 guest to Dolphin running in my Kubuntu 18.10 host. The other thing is that it is stuck on double-click to open folders/files even if Gnome is set to single-click. May not be a problem for many since this is the Gnome default anyway. Also seems to open just as quick as Files in Gnome.

[buster]

"The other thing is that it is stuck on double-click to open folders/files even if Gnome is set to single-click."

Odd. Gain split view, lose single click. Hmmm.

[buster]

So I also installed Dolphin, hoping I could find a way to say, "Hey Jason! Here's how you get single click." Then gloat a while and grin. But, alas, he seems to be 100% correct.

The Ubuntu is  good, and we would all use it, except for the existence of Plasma, xfce, deepin, and other distros that can give us, in my opinion, more. 5 or 10 years ago it would be the obvious choice. 

Sorry Mike, but I think Ubuntu may disappear on my system. But I can understand how those raised on Apple would love it. Linux is all about choice.

[fox]

To each his or her own, and one of the best things about Linux is that you get choice. I know that we have several Plasma fans in the club, and I have tried it on several occasions. Even now, I have openSUSE Leap 15 as a second distro on my home iMac, and I have installed Plasma on Ubuntu on a Mac mini. I have also tried KDE Neon. Plasma is very flexible; I recognize that. I want to like it and it's OK, but I like Gnome better. Some of it is because of design choices, some of it is because of the associated applications. I could probably modify Plasma enough to make it look just like Gnome, but why do that when I'm happy with Gnome. In fact, Ubuntu 18.10 with Gnome is the first distro where I haven't modified anything at all; I even like the default desktop and the default Yaru theme. But I can appreciate Plasma and with you being a Windows user, I can understand why it appeals to you.

Incidentally, there are lots of Mac themes out there for both Gnome and Plasma, and I never install them. If I wanted my system to look like a Mac I would just use the Mac OS. For the same reason, I have no interest in Elementary, although I have tried it.

[Jason]

That's cool that you prefer Gnome but just want to make it clear that it's not just the look that we like though, we've pointed out that Dolphin, for example, has more features than Files in Ubuntu.

Plasma has more features for configuration pretty much in every instance over Gnome. I'm not speaking of the additional apps like Kmail, for example, but the core itself. I used to find that it was so configurable that there were too many options but since Plasma has come out, I find they've streamlined these options so it's not as confusing.

It's also not really a Windows attraction necessarily because, and without adding any additional themes, you can use a layout that is very close to Gnome. The Netrunner distro has Plasma set up to do this by default, the whole icons fill the screen "feature" of running programs. Windows wasn't the first to come up with the concept of having menus and I'd almost argue with the tiles since Windows 8 that it has almost as much in common with Gnome.

I think Gnome is great if you like simplicity. Pantheon is even more simplified. Plasma is better if you want more control and options. But I think they all serve their purposes - just wanted to put it out there that this thread was started by pointing out some features that Gnome either doesn't have that Plasma does or where the defaults are better. But it's kind of what Buster was pointing out in the beginning - I guess if you use a desktop long enough you tend to like what it has and not notice what it doesn't and appreciate things that might have bothered you once.

Thinking on that last point, I initially didn't like the default single-click of Plasma. But I tried it for a few weeks and now I pretty much expect it, so much so that when I booted into Windows 10 and realized it didn't use double-click by default, I was annoyed. But it's easy enough to turn on.