#workspa

Since I switched to Ubuntu this week, I’ve been playing around with customizing my desktop experience.

Unity is a variant of the GNOME desktop environment. It seems like they’ve replaced the GNOME Shell with a different one. Some applications like GNOME Terminal may have been patched as well. 

One immediate consequence is that customizing stuff on the Unity launcher requires the use of different techniques.  Here are the steps to Unity workspaces joy:

1. Turn on Workspaces

First off, by default, Unity does not enable Workspaces: a critical productivity feature for a pixel hog like me.  Enabling workspaces is relatively straight forward. Just go to Settings -> Appearance -> Behavior (tab) and click Enable workspaces. All illustrated very beautifully in this StackOverfllow post: How do I turn on workspaces?

2. Setup the number & layout of Workspaces

Next up you may want to organize your workspaces in a manner more convenient to you than the default 4x4 layout you get. To do this after you’ve setup your desktop requires you install the unity-tweak-tool. All explained in this equally informative StackOverflow post: How can I reduce or increase the number of workspaces in Unity?