How I use virtual desktops

I am one of the people that never uses them, and I think I finally realized why: ADHD.

I usually turn them off, and if there's a part of the GUI dedicated to them, I disable that too. I thought it was to save screen space, but honestly I think it's more so that I won't lose windows to virtual desktops I forgot existed.

I think the tendency to forget things and to occasionally space out and forget what I'm doing has led me to value persistent visual artifacts of whatever I'm doing. That means a visible taskbar with the clock, system tray icons, and application icons, plus terminal windows even if they are idle. Somehow, scanning back and forth across 4 monitors -- even if virtual desktop people reading this can do it much faster their way -- just works better for me.

This touches on something that's actually much deeper that I have been doing for myself:

Sometimes if you do things in a way that plays nicely with your personal neurospice cocktail rather than the more efficient way you "know" that you "should" be doing them, it just makes your life better and that is the whole damn point for why we are working on the computer in the first place.

I can absolutely see myself buzzing around virtual desktops with keyboard commands. I have experimented with desktop setups in the past. I remember for a while in college I was running some kind of 3D desktop program where I had a virtual space where I could move windows and icons around. You could hang images floating in the air like paintings. And this is on 25 year old hardware! I think my GPU was a Geforce 2 GTS. Giga-texel shader baby!

I keep forgetting that virtual desktops are a thing that exists.

Why use a virtual desktop when you can simply buy more monitors?
- Facts. Or bigger monitors.
because at least on windows, they just don't work well
shit always opens on the wrong desktop, they're slow and glitchy. it's just a pain
I just have four monitors
very infrequently I use virtual desktops for particular things, but too often I need to see the secondary shit while doing the primary and also have a meeting or tertiary info up while accessing chat
- Similarly on mac, there's an animation that it has to finish before releasing controls back to the user. Ubuntu has snappy ones

They're great for work from home, especially when sharing screens. My background and task panel changes when I change desktops, and a script controls which Firefox profile is the default.
So one VD is work, another is play.
- Yep, really only use them at home
  -Native desktop is for random shit
  -"Fun" is for games, and... Fun stuff
  -"Work Shit" is work shit
  -"Bidness" is for home stuff that's not necessarily mindless entertainment. Banking, home projects, etc
  "Schoo" is for college
  Bidness desktop is the only one that's a giant beast. So many windows and tabs, each FF instance is relating to a home project with a ton of tabs, can be car shit, electronics, networking, whatever. So much shit. It's like having too many tabs open but exponentially bad.
I tried using them but in the end it becomes too much of a hassle. I tried doing a work-out work kind of setup with my laptop but it's more cumbersome to maintain than just closing it all

How I use virtual desktops:

I don't. Everything fits on one screen, if it doesn't I close tasks and leave a note to get back to it.

I have 3 screens:

Main screen for whatever i'm doing incl Browser
Gaming screen wiith Steam and Heroic Launcher
Comms - Signal, emaiil, discord, everything KDE Connect
random shit not fitting anywere
Piracy town: qbittorent, jdownloader, Browser with MANY sources

The second one has many many status widgets, Dolphin, fSearch and a Firefox window that's my media player, always in the background without any title bars or borders running the deezer webpage as WPA

The third one is connected with a 10m HDMI cable and is not running often, is just used to watch movies :-)

This post made me look into virtual desktops on my laptop and I can easily double the current amount of desktops from 2-4 under settings.

Biggest problem with that is that I almost never use more than my first virtual desktop unless I'm working on multiple things and need to switch to not get caught working on one of them over the other.

Reminds me of compiz in the old school days. The desktop cube was the (impractical) shit!
Can't tell from the screenshot (need moar pixels), but that reminds me of the old software that would give Windows XP, 6 workspaces... It was so amazing but would utterly kill my old PIII with 192MB of RAM.

Let me fix that for you

I don't "get" virtual desktops. I mean I've tried them out and don't care for them. I'm curious if those who do are using single monitors or low resolution?

I've got triple monitors and 8-10 virtual desktops full at any given moment. Lots of multitasking. Lots of context switching where I don't necessarily want to close out any windows. Tilling WM.
Kind of thinking about adding more virtual desktops...
- Scrolling wm?
Even with multiple monitors, they are still useful. I use them to separate different tasks so I can switch back and forth with a keyboard shortcut.
I can't stand virtual desktops. I have 4 monitors specifically so I can have as many things visible at once at possible without switching. I work from home so this is my machine I use for everything. 1 monitor for main task or games, 1 for side tasks, 1 for media or even more side tasks, and 1 exclusively for work and personal chat. My top monitor is very large so I often have 2 or 4 different things going on at once side by side on that one. I disable virtual desktops and tiling windows on every operating system I've used.
If my GPU had more outputs, I would have more monitors. I also have a 2nd computer with a single 1080p monitor to the right (I have an L desk) for home network stuff, usually keep my security camera feed on that one.
I respect anyone who does use virtual desktops because I acknowledge that if you master the workflow, it can be more efficient if you have more than like 5 or 6 tasks going at once (vs 4 monitors), however I will die on the hill of never ever using them.
I use them to both maximize desktop space for multitasking (my monitor splits evenly into two 4:3 windows side by side) and keep my tasks organized, as I tend to let my brain wander of distracted. Been using i3 for like a decade now.
yeah I've got two laptops for 80% of my computer usage and one has 10" 1920x1080, other has 13" 1366x768. It's impossible to read text or do any serious work when having more than two windows visible at the same time, and virtual desktop with hotkeys make it much more tolerable.
I don't like stacked windows.
Stuff that needs to run in the background moves to another desktop, like a console window logging output.
When layouting with ECAD I also like to have schematic and layout maximised. So wiki tickets and datasheets need to go somewhere.
It's easier to handle with a tiling window manager. Sadly at work I'm stuck with windows.
- It's easier to handle with a tiling window manager. Sadly at work I'm stuck with windows.
  I'm pretty sure that there are tiling windowing environments for Windows, though it's gonna be kinda less of a first-class citizen than on Linux.
  kagis
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager
  AquaSnap - made by Nurgo Software. Freeware, with an optional "Professional" license.
  Amethyst for windows - dynamic tiling window manager along the lines of amethyst for MacOS.
  bug.n – open source, configurable tiling window manager built as an AutoHotKey script and licensed under the GNU GPL.[9]
  MaxTo — customizable grid, global hotkeys. Works with elevated applications, 32-bit and 64-bit applications, and multiple monitors.[10]
  WS Grid+ – move and/or resize window's using a grid selection system combining benefits of floating, stacking, and tiling. It provides keyboard/mouse shortcuts to instantly move and resize a window.
  Stack – customizable grid (XAML), global hotkeys and/or middle mouse button. Supports HiDPI and multiple monitors.[11][12]
  Plumb — lightweight tiling manager with support for multiple versions of Windows. Supports HiDPI monitors, keyboard hotkeys, and customization of hotkeys (XAML).[13]
  workspacer — an MIT-licensed tiling window manager for Windows 10 that aims to be fast and compatible. Written and configurable using C#.[14]
  dwm-win32 — port of dwm's general functionality to win32. Is MIT-licensed and is configured by editing a config header in the same style as dwm.[15]
  GlazeWM — a tiling window manager for Windows inspired by i3 and Polybar.
  Komorebi — a window manager for Microsoft Windows SO written in Rust. Like bspwm it does not handle key-binding on its own, so users have to use AHK or WHKD to manage the shortcuts. Komorebi also has a GUI User Friendly version called Komorebi UI.
  Whim -- dynamic window manager that is built using WinUI 3 and the .NET framework.
I’ve tried them, but my workflow makes them less useful. I prefer maximized windows, so each program behaves like their own virtual desktop.
I rather much prefer dual monitors with rules so each program always starts maximized on a specific monitor.
- Sounds like you'd love a tiling window manager (if you aren't already using one). What you describe is a big part of the philosophy of tiling WMs. I like Sway, might be worth checking out, though I wouldn't be surprised if you've already tried tiling WMs. I only suggest it, as I'm convinced all tiling WM users compulsively mention it...
  I use hyprland btw.
Benefits:
Fast context switch (browsing, editing, documentation, etc).
Fast grouping(again browsing and all).
Automatic grouping (one can set rules were opens were)
It is even more useful on single monitors, the little space one has means that usually on can split the screen no more than 2 times, this means that swtiching quickly between groups of windows save you a load of time.
On the long run one gets used to the workflow and the cognitive effort of moving around windows becomes super low.
Cons:
Might take some cognitive effort getting used to the workflow/keybinds. (usually worth it in the long run)
Moving around windows or workspaces can be difficult if not setup up correctly.
One step further
Tags (as opposed of workspaces/virtual-desktops) are a system used by the likes of dwm, dwl, river, mangowc to choose what windows get displayed on the screen. This would allow you to toggle and view different groups of windows on the same screen(like viewing multiple virtual-desktops at the same time). This would allow one to do that super fast context switching at a more complex level if needed. For instance you could toggle the "tag 2" while viewing "tag 1" effectively merging the two tags into the same screen instead of switching back and forth with workspaces. This method requires a little of more focus and remembering the state of the windows/tags.
Quick mention of my Window Managers if anyone is interested in the topic.
I never used them when i was still using a DE, but now as a tiling window manager user i use them all the time, since the point of those is that windows are placed in a layout and don't overlap, so after opening like 3 windows max, it gets too cramped for my taste and i move to a different workspace.
What OS are you on? Virtual desktops on Mac and windows are just terrible. On Linux I’ve been using virtual desktops on Linux since the 90s and when I see my colleagues on Mac using a single desktop with 20 windows trying desperately to switch between windows I just shake my head.
I use dynamic virtual desktops and have a separate desktop for every task. That keeps me focused on that task, but also lets me easily jump to something different. I couldn’t imagine trying to be productive any other way.
- Yabai+sketchybar make tiling+virtual desktops...at least usable on mac.
  Of course, I'd take i3 any day of the week.
- CachyOS lately.
I’m curious if those who do are using single monitors or low resolution?
I use a single monitor.
Why use virtual desktops versus a single desktop? Because I generally want to have a fullscreen window making use of all of the pixels on my monitor. I don't have a visible taskbar unless I have the Super key down. I don't have anything onscreen other than the application that I'm using.
Why use virtual desktops versus some sort of huge monitor? You have a relatively-small portion of your visual arc that you can actually read --- even on a small monitor. A laptop at a reasonable distance already covers that. I did, at one point, use a netbook as a bit of a challenge. I stuck that on a stand near my face, used an external keyboard. It took up more of my visual arc than did a typical very large monitor.
Why use virtual desktops versus multiple physical monitors?
If your workflow needs a multiple physical monitors, you're limited when you can't lug those around (or at least, you're required to lug around a lot more physical hardware). I can pop open a laptop wherever and work as readily as if I'm at my desktop. Same sort of issue applies with a very large monitor. For the same reason, I do everything possible to keep my workflow in the terminal. Using graphical systems remotely over anything but the fastest, lowest-latency networks is disappointing. But because my workflow is heavily terminal-based, I can use a system remotely about as comfortably as if I'm sitting in front of it.
I think that a lot of problem that people using multiple physical monitors are trying to work around is software using screen space inefficiently, putting stuff like toolbars, panes and tabs onscreen where people aren't actually using the information, because their software isn't using that screen space efficiently or don't have functionality to efficiently switch. Like, let's say that you have Visual Studio open. grabs a random screenshot off GitHub
Ignore the red outlines. Like, you're looking at the actual core stuff there through a little tiny portal there. Most of the stuff onscreen there is material that isn't being used, just tying up pixels. I don't have "tabs" in emacs. I can have a hundred buffers open, and it doesn't use up more screen space. Every "tab" is eating up pixels without providing much utility. Yeah, I have software packages in emacs to rapidly switch to other files in a project --- but they don't consume screen space other than when I'm actually actively using them. I don't have a toolbar showing a bunch of buttons that I'm not clicking on. I don't have a list of open (and maybe closed) files always onscreen. I don't even have a menubar.
I can switch virtual desktops more-quickly than I can move my eyes and recenter on a different desktop, though that's really a secondary issue.
I suppose that it's cheaper and more power-efficient, but that's not really my main concern.
EDIT: Note that I'm not specifically trying to beat up on Visual Studio. It may be that in 2025, there's some way to strip down what screen space it uses --- I haven't used it for many moons, so I'm long out of date on it. Just using it as an example of a software package that I often see screenshots of with a lot of "mostly-dead space" consumed onscreen.
Depends on your workflow. I'm usually using a i3wm or sway environment so I can put windows side by side, but on my ultrawide monitor it usually is best to limit that to two windows (usually a couple of browser windows or a browser and a terminal). I also often have a text editor open as well, so it helps if I can open that on another desktop, and quickly switch to it as needed. My main goal isn't to really minimize anything, just switch desktops because I find it easier to just switch around. In windows I generally don't use desktops as I find their goal is more to have you minimize stuff which I find kinda annoying because I have to resize the window or something when reopening them.
One 4k, two 1440p physical monitors with 4 virtual desktops at work
I use a lot of virtual desktops and yeah, I genuinely disable other monitors, if I sit at a workplace where I'd have two.
i used them a lot when i had 1 monitor and did more than one thing at a given time, then never needed more than 1 again after getting a second monitor
I mostly only use them on macOS because each display has its own set of virtual desktops and I can just leave everything open and move between desktops instead of dealing with minimizing and reopening windows on individual displays instead of all displays switching desktops at once
(as far as I know, there aren’t any Linux DEs that have virtual desktops that work like that but I would love to be wrong about this because I love how this works on macOS)
I rarely use them on Linux (KDE in my case) though, it feels clunky and I usually just forget I had things open on another desktop lol
I don’t like them on any OS besides macOS. For me it just makes visual sense.
They were all the rage in the CRT years.
i tried them for awhile years ago, but determined fairly quickly that one is enough for me.
one of my first configurations on a new installs (ones with a DE) is setting number-of-desktops to '1' and hiding the default switcher on the panel. even with a ui designed around multiple desktops (like the gnome implementation on my endless desktop at home) i just use one.
- I'm on one 99% of the time. I very much appreciate being able to use them that 1% of the time I need more.

Does anyone else never use them ever?

Multi-monitor setups make more sense to me, but I don't even use that anymore after switching to a 65" 4K gaming OLED as my primary monitor. Its like having four 32" 1080p monitors arranged in a grid, except without any bezels. Plenty of screen real estate for anything I need to do.

Does anyone else never use them ever?
Indispensable on laptop computers!
I took long train rides for a few years, where I'd work with a laptop, so my entire workflow is now single-monitor. I frequently sit down at workplaces at $DAYJOB where I would have two monitors and then I disable one of them, because it's just genuinely not useful to me.
And if that didn't terrify you, I also prefer touchpads now. 🙃
- And if that didn't terrify you, I also prefer touchpads now. 🙃
For more than a decade I developed a 3x3 grid with intuitive shortcuts with one monitor, a very visual space distribution, and I do not change it for anything (even when docking my laptop I use only the main monitor, I find it much more mentally efficient, since desktop swaping is faster than moving my head)
Never used them in my life and I've been machine computing over 25 years. Always one monitor, one desktop. I close shit I dont need regularly, I click on icons on the tab bar to get to the app I need. The tab bar is wide enough to hold like 30+ of them. Why do I need more than one desktop? Windows go over another, the tab bar shows everything I have open. Why switch? I never got it.
- Tiling WMs are just faster. So much faster. They remove so much annoyance it's really hard to put it to words. Binding programs to workspaces is what finally sealed the deal for me.
- If I have more apps open on at same desktop I can switch to other apps without disturbing the setup. So for example I have a terminal with build output, my app in a browser and inspector open at the same time. I can switch to all the other apps without moving any of it. I just jump back to this workspace and everything is still in the same place. With single desktop if I switch to Firefox I have to bright all 3 windows to the top separately.
  With two monitors I can have documentation open in a browser right next to my IDE, both fullscreen. Or have the IDE and my app open. Or a website and it's logs. Or IDE and Postman. I have multiple firefox windows and terminals open at the same time. This doesn't work well with single monitor/single desktop because it's hard to keep track which window is which. If you only use one app at a time (like you only switch between firefox, steam and spotify) one desktop is perfectly fine. When you do bunch of stuff at the same time it gets messy real quick.
- Alt+tab (and alt+shift+tab) is all you need imo.
  Ctrl+tab for paging through browser tabs is helpful too.
TIL þere exist people who don't use virtual desktops.
How do you even?
Never once used them. My spouse has them on her mac book, which I know because she'll randomly just lose whatever she's doing and have some video playing that she can't find again for another few minutes. So other than a minute of entertainment once every few months, not sure why they even exist.
How far do you even have to be to use a 65" screen? Doesn't seem practical at all for desktop use.
I use both
Quad monitors + GNOME workspaces are awesome
I'm thinking of trying them, but hard for me to find a usecase. I have two monitors and it's often useful for me to have different combos of apps open at the sane time, so not sure how to properly use it.

Desktop 1: The things I'm supposed to be doing

Desktop 2: The things I'm supposed to be doing but I forgot I'm not on desktop 1

Desktop 3: The secondary things I'm supposed to be doing but I forgot these windows were already open on desktop 1

Desktop 1: with random shit I'm not supposed to be doing but it's more interesting to my ADHD brain than the other shit right now.
Desktop 2: Some random GitHub link and another instance of VScode so I can keyboard shortcut to that if someone comes to talk to me.

I have mine as

Fronted
Backend
Database
Browser
Music
Project management
Messaging/Email

All bound to Meta+h/j/k/l/y/u/i and have a bash function to run and configured to go to the right places. KDE is good

This but with other order and Gnome. Fucking love workspaces.
Ah I've found my people, I'm doing 9 atm to complete a 3x3 square in the overview. Only on my laptop though, using the trackpad guestures to switch or overview.
1: Terminal 2: Editor 3: Git
\ 4: Terminal 5: Browser 6: Browser
\ 7: Terminal 8: Any GUI 9: Rest
What's the bash function doing? Moving windows to the right desktops when they're open? Do you have them open on system startup?
- Moving windows to the right desktops when they’re open?
  You can do that with Window Rules in KDE.
- Nah, I don't like running stuff on startup because I use the laptop for personal stuff also. Not going to open slack/email when I'm off. I don't move them manually, I use window rules for them to open in a specific activity.
  
  custart() { nohup slack --enable-features=WebRTCPipeWireCapturer & echo "Slack started" nohup spotify & echo "Spotify started" nohup datagrip & echo "Datagrip started" nohup birdtray & echo "Thunderbird started" nohup surfshark & echo "Surfshark started" nohup flatpak run --branch=stable --arch=x86_64 --command=teams-for-linux --file-forwarding com.github.IsmaelMartinez.teams_for_linux @@u %U @@ & echo "MS Teams started" }

Desktop 1 for regular stuff.

Desktop 2 for porn.

Desktop 1 for porn
Desktop 2 for porn also
- Four monitors, all with porn on it.
  Desktop one for straight porn, desktop two for gay porn, desktop three for lesbian porn, desktop four for yiff.
- Desktop 1 for guro
  Desktop 2 for hand holding
- This person porns
- desktop 3? porn.
  4? also porn

Tabs for nerds

I have attention dilly dally, so virtual desktops are a huge help to stay on one task at a time.

Desktop 7 needs to pull themselves by the bootstraps and get a job. Useless.

Awesome WM so independent "workspaces" per monitor.

Central monitor:

browser for searches, gitlab, articles, lemmy
IDE
maybe another IDE
some other term...
signal
spotify ... goes up to 8

Side monitor:

browser with email/communicators/discord/docs
runtime so cargo, node, actual app running
additional term
additional term... ... goes up to 8

Laptop: Just one workspace with terminal

I'd really like independent workspaces per display. I haven't explored how to set it up in my current environments (I use primarily KDE, sometimes Gnome, and still occasionally XFCE). I'm not sure it's even possible. I understand there's quite a bit of customization of workspaces coming with Cosmic, but I haven't checked it out.
I do have some resistance to tiling window managers. Primarily because my wife occasionally uses my computer, and I can already see her rolling her eyes in frustration at me. How's the learning curve for awesome?
- I tried KDE and it's really great but independent workspaces are still work in progress. For me that's a deal breaker. When those are done I will definitely consider it. With gnome I was able to setup workspaces on one monitor and have a single workspace on the others which is better then what KDE is doing. I don't think you can make them fully independent.
  I don't think you should be that worried about tiling. In awesome you can switch between tiling and floating windows (per workspace), you can set rules for specific windows or just make floating the default. You can make some apps always go fullscreen. It's not really that confusing.
  Learning curve for awesome is pretty much the learning curve for Lua. All configuration is just Lua scripts. The great part is that you can change pretty much everything. The not so great part is that to change anything you have to dig in Lua. When I switched I did a really deep dive and pretty much spend all of my free time writing scripts for couple of weeks. So yeah, it's work but the level to which you can customize everything is simply amazing. "I want this widget to display a popup on hover instead of click." 30 seconds and it's done. Custom widgets are super easy. Custom bars, different bars per monitor, different bars for different number of displays (think laptop with and without external screens); all super easy.

desktop 1 for what i should do, desktop 2 for the rest. when the door opens switch to desktop 1 lightning fast

I got a 3x3 grid and now I swim accross them so naturally, visually and intuitively that I cannot stand anything else, 1 for spotify/system properties, 2 for firefox, 3 for thunderbird, the rest thematic for ocassional folder and dedicated programs, any one (two for diagonals) shortcut away from any other (win_key+arrows, with ctrl and shift combinations for window movement/fitting)... I will never comply back to anything else

I use Super Key + A and S instead of the arrow keys to be able to do it with one hand.
I have this set up and recently transitioned to using the numpad to jump to desktops so it's always one move

Desktop 1: The things I need to do (applying for jobs) Desktop 2: The other things I should do (building relevant career skills) Desktop 3: The things I actually do (random hobbies & volunteer work) Desktop 4: I have no fucking clue, maybe reddit?

Is it just me who has the multiple shame workspaces of totally not abandoned personal projects?

Yeah, every so often, I'll accidentally switch over and think to myself that I should do something on that.
But I've kind of gotten messy with them and they're more just wallpaper colors and rough topics now, which makes it easier to silently start re-using workspaces for new, exciting projects.

I don't even remember them. And KDE also has this activity whatever thingy that I don't know what the hell it does.

Activities let you change the desktop layout, panels, wallpapers, etc.
Virtual desktops keep the desktop settings
- Thank you, but why? Why do I do that? It sounds like a whole separate desktop session then?

I never got into these at all. My coworker thought it was crazy that I never did. I just get a bigger monitor to fit all my stuff, lol. Right now, it's a 49" ultrawide and have no issues.

You only use four virtual desktops‽

😬

I mean I don't really use a tiler like Hyprland or Sway but four is enough for what I do usually.

Desktop 1 - terminals Desktop 2 - browser Desktop 3 - files Desktop 4+ whatever programs I'm using

Desktop 1: the shit I’m meant to be doing Desktop 2: the shit I’m actually doing

1 games 2 fedi (lemmy and masto clirnt) 3 mail 4 emacs 5 browser 6 chats 7 steam 8 music 9 jellyfin

Desktop 1: Browser

Desktop 2: Discord

Right monitor (set to show on all desktops): Youtube/Steam

For me it's:

Workstuff
Games
Main browser for mail, etc.
All the messenger apps

Music player lives in yakuake dropdown terminal.

I miss Qtile's hackability. I basically rewrote the entire GroupBox widget, the master/stack layout algorithm, and the behaviour of workspaces to mimic AwesomeWM's tagging functionality.

ehm.. i have a grid of 20.. per monitor, and 3 monitors.

yes i usually fill more than half of them. yes most of the opened apps could be closed after a while.

but is really convinient because i have mouse and keyboard shortcuts to move around and move windows around.

i use a tiling vm btw*

*not a real tiling vm, kde with a tiling plugin

May I know what plugin you use in KDE? Sounds like it's something I'd like to check out.
Quick searches show me Bismuth and kwin-tiling, and bismuth seems to be archived.
- Krohnkite, and for mouse gestures a Logitech mx master and logiops.
- Personally, I'm on Krohnkite (the version for Plasma 6 (which should be the only version you can find from within the System Settings on Plasma 6)).

I sometimes use virtual desktops if I have a lot of stuff going on at once. Though, with a duel monitor set up, I hardly need it. My commands are a simple Ctrl+Alt+Left/Right Arrow Keys

At work I tend to have like 3 workspaces just for stuff I need to be doing. Different projects. My second monitor tends to be reserved for the documentation etc that I need for that project. Then there are multiple workspaces with terminals for ssh, screenshares, and other terminal hackeroni. And one for messages etc.

I prefer to use i3 or away for this but unfortunately not every workplace lets you have that

where I put all the shit I'm currently working on and totally forget about it.

friendship ended with workspaces/virtual-deskltops, now tags are my best friend

what's that
- In a broad sense tags are like workspaces but one can toggle to view multiple of those at the same time. One can do much more but that is the gist of it.

Lordy.

I've always used virtual desktops, but my life changed when I realized I could chain tags in herbstluftwm. Now I have music player, visualize, & todos always on monitor 1. Then I have Meta-[1-5] bound to switch monitors 2 & 3 in sync between virtual workspaces:

1: programming, web on 2, editor on 3 2: remote, terminals into VPSes and LAN computers, and gotop 3: communications, IM chats on 2, email, Matrix, irc, discourse, SMS bridge on 3 4; random, Factorio or movie on 3, and often Vial on 2, because. 5: more random, usually Darktable, Gimp, Inkscape or some combination depending.

I don't have 6-9 bound, because 4 or 5 are usually free for whatever.

Browser, other main stuff
Games, games never leaves 2
Terminal, ide, file manager
Blender, libre office, teams, cad, lmms, davenci resolve
Virtual box, vmware, virtmanager
Moonlight, parsec, vnc, rdp.
7-9 when I run out of space in my other desktops
Music player, obs, uget, qbittorrent, xclicker, discord

This is the way

Tier 1: Linux virtual consoles. Switch among these with Alt-F1 through Alt-F8. Control-Alt instead of Alt if in Wayland. I have seven with a text terminal and Wayland on the eighth. This tier supports showing only one virtual console at once.

Tier 2: Inside the Wayland virtual terminal, Sway managing virtual desktops. I use nonstandard keybindings here: Super-1 and -2 to cycle left and right, and Super-Q n to go to the n-th desktop. Beyond the first ten desktops, I can use Super-R to rename a desktop to a "named" desktop. For cycling purposes, these come after the first ten. This tier supports showing only one desktop at once.

Tier 3: Inside a Sway virtual desktop, windows managed by Sway. This tier supports splitting, showing multiple windows at once. I use nonstandard emacs-style keybindings, Super-F/B/N/P to move among those. These are often running a virtual terminal program, foot. I don't use a multiplexing terminal with multiple "tabs", because I favor a more minimalist setup with fewer tiers.

Tier 4: Inside a Sway-managed window, mosh. This tier isn't always present; I only use this tier if I'm using a remote system. Mosh has its own concept of sessions. These can be used in conjunction with Tmux's sessions --- mosh's system is designed to smooth over connectivity issues. Lose network connectivity and mosh will display a message. Hibernate a laptop for a month with a mosh connection open to another machine, open the lid, and mosh will transparently re-establish its connections as if there had been no interruption. I mostly use mosh to reduce perceived latency, but the connectivity stuff is neat. Not much interaction with this tier, short of force-exiting with Control- . and this tier only supports showing one session in a terminal at once.

Tier 5: Inside a mosh session, tmux sessions. Tmux has its own set of sessions, which one can attach to with tmux attach. This tier only supports showing one session at once.

Tier 6: Inside a tmux session, tmux windows. I use a nonstandard prefix key for tmux (and GNU screen) to reduce friction with emacs --- Control-O. I use emacs-style keybindings to cycle among windows --- Control-O Control-N/Control-P. This tier does support splitting to show multiple tmux windows at once, though I don't use that functionality.

Tier 7: Inside a tmux window, I run a bash shell process. Bash supports job control. Control-Z to suspend the current job and return to bash, jobs to list jobs, fg %n to activate the nth job.

Tier 8: Inside a bash job, I might be running emacs, and that has emacs frames. If you're using graphical emacs, each frame corresponds to a window in your windowing environment. In terminal emacs, each is basically another invisible layer that you can switch among. C-x 5 2 to create a new frame, C-x 5 o to cycle, C-x 5 0 to destroy. This tier does not support showing multiple frames at once.

Tier 9: Emacs buffers. Each "buffer" might be a text file, a email client with mu4e, an LLM chat session with ellama, a "spreadsheet" with an org-mode table, whatever. One can show multiple emacs windows and assign a buffer to each emacs window (emacs has its own concept of windows, which kinda correspond to "panes" in most programs). Emacs has many systems for switching among these, but I mostly use one of two fairly vanilla add-on packages, either C-x b for ido-switch-buffer to switch among buffers using tab-completing names, or C-x C-b to use ibuffer, which provides menu-based selection.

Tier 10: Usually not something I use in conjunction with emacs, but if one is running a bash instance in an emacs shell-mode buffer (M-x shell), then bash's job control comes into the picture. Emacs shell-mode requires one to prefix each bash control key sequence with C-c, so C-c C-z to suspend the current job, and return to shell, jobs to list current jobs, and fg %n to activate the n-th job. Can only show one job at once.

EDIT: You could maybe make an argument that there's another tier between Tier 7 and Tier 8, because I use an emacs feature called desktop.el that persists an emacs session, including its frames and windows and open buffers and all across invocations of emacs for a given project. But I rarely use this, so it's not normally in the stack. If it's there, you can only have one active at once, no "split desktop.el" functionality.

EDIT2: I take it back. I had workspace renaming set up in i3, but never pulled that configuration over when I switched to sway. So just the basic 10 workspaces.

Crank that knob up to 11: Using multiple computers simultaneously to manage all your shit—with some having special hardware dedicated to the task!

If you swap one and four, That's how I use the monitors on my desktop

You sick! Media players go on workspace 10!

Nah, music players get minimised to the status panel.
- Can't minimize soma.fm

The thing I'm supposed to be doing is on workspace 3...

not sure if a virtual desktop is the same thing as workspaces in Gnome, but what I do is I only really open one window in one workspace. The first window I open since system startup goes into the first workspace, etc. Usually the first one is the browser (Librewolf).

i use wm so workspaces. I have them as:

WEB: to spawn all web browsers. Clicking a link in a terminal or a pdf will open a tab or a new browser here.
TERM: to spawn all terminal applications and processes: Htop, ssh, vim windows to edit stuff...etc.
CODE: for GUI code editors like CodeBlocks, VSCode, Emacs. Yes I do use Vim but I prefer the full functions from these.
FILE: any file managers, e.g. pcmanfm, thunar, ranger...etc. I mostly use only one (pcmanfm) and use this workspace when I need to view complicate folder structures.
PDF: I read a lot of papers so usually qpdfview owns this worlspace. I used to have Mendeley here as well.
MEDIA: so any VLC, mplayer will spawn here
TODO: usually some notes I put down on a text editor will show here.
OTHER: the rest.

I used to be a virtual desktop user just like you, but then I plugged a second monitor into the pc

I have two monitors and still use virtual desktops. Get on my level.
- I have 3 monitors and 9 virtual desktops 😆

Desktop 1 is for my music, browser, socials, maybe a yt video.

Desktop 2 is my work windows VM with spreadsheets and stuff

And if it's long standing then throw stuff from 4 on 10.