Vertical taskbars on MATE

Liam Proven lproven at gmail.com
Thu Aug 30 21:48:52 UTC 2018


On Mon, 27 Aug 2018 at 00:04, Peter Flynn <peter at silmaril.ie> wrote:

> Quite possibly but not from this side of the planet at that time.

>From your email, you're in Ireland. I'm only 800km away in Czechia.

> I tried logging in with my Google ID but now it wants me to create a
> username and every one I pick it rejects. I have tried a dozen,
> including some random strings and it still rejects them.

Baffling. I just used my existing login.

> As I have only used Windows a couple of times, I'm not sure what it is:
> do you mean the bar at the bottom which contains an icon for each
> program that is running?

Yes.

> I always thought that was because Windows only
> provides one screen and you click on the icons to flip between
> applications.

Win10 includes virtual desktops.

> On a Mac it does it in the dock by lighting up a small dot
> beside or under the application.

I'm aware. I'm typing on one. :-)

> In Enlightenment it used to do the same
> but now it lights up an underline below the application icon in the dock
> which is much more usable.

I don't see a huge difference myself, TBH.

>  I haven't used KDE or KFC or xfce or any of
> the other window managers for ages so I'm not familiar with their layout
> but if they don't have a way to show what programs are running, it's an
> omission that needs to be rectified.

They all have taskbars. Even GNOME 3 has a dock-like thing. Almost all
modern desktops are Windows-like. The ones that aren't can be counted
on 1 hand:
 - GNOME 3
 - Unity
 - Elementary OS
 - Budgie
 - perhaps, arguably, Deepin

The problem is getting a Windows-style taskbar that is _vertically_
oriented at the left or right edge of the screen, not the top or the
bottom.

As I've been saying in this thread, Windows defaults to the bottom,
but ever since the first version of Explorer in Win95, you can
reposition it on any edge.

This is how it looked in Vista:

https://superuser.com/questions/972492/how-can-i-change-opened-windows-list-placement-to-vertical-in-gnome

Most of the Linux copies of the Win95 desktop fail to replicate this
functionality.

MATE can't, Cinnamon can't, KDE can but very poorly with many compromises.

LXDE/LXQt can and XFCE can and that's it.

The 5th image here shows it under XFCE about 3 versions ago:

http://www.knetfeder.de/linux/index.php?id=148

-- 
Liam Proven - Profile: https://about.me/liamproven
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