Linux Mint Forums

No matter how many times I try to adapt to all these "modern" new interfaces, I always find myself reverting to the traditional Gnome two-panel layout with the launchers and statusicons at the top and the window list, show desktop button and workspace switcher at the bottom. It's the ultimate king of productivity and functionality IMO. Who else feels this way?

Does it matter? Depends who you are. For me two panels take up too much space and make for an unattractive and cluttered desktop. If you've gotten used to launching things from the keyboard all those icons and bits and bobs on the desktop and in the panels are just in the way.

I don't know what the FTW is, but I like two panel file managers; unfortunately something like gnome-commander hangs on large searches and sometimes crashes: if it worked 100% well it would be great.

For other choices I like LMDE with an xfce (old standard Linux menu, not a Suse slab type), and a minimally cluttered desktop with only a few icons, no fancy theme, screen save or wallpaper, and no animation or even activity/busy application launches, if it doesn't in the time I expect, I give up and start it again; as using an application informs me as to its normal startup(load) time..
https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Slab

If i really had to be that productive, fast application switching, I would probably use one of the multi-screen (window )applications to jump around open apps
--of course I would then need lots of RAM and a goodly amount of hard drive storage
http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
--possibly something like that, not GUI (a terminal shell), it would have to manage the GUI applications launches, but it wouldn't be weighing down the system with a GUI-based multi-windows management controller: with plenty of RAM, I wouldn't care and would lil;ey just use the windows switcher and probably add more than the default of 4 windows..

I remember that Beos offered 32 windows (sessions), but it is not ready for prime time and since being orphaned, hasn't had much in the way of driver support (Haiku..)

The two panel layout is pretty far from optimal on a widescreen monitor, especially a low resolution one such as a 720p laptop display.

i am back at two panel window. desktop pc with a large screen.
on laptops it's not optimal, though.

now i need to find a way to add applets to bottom window, and all will be well. cinnamon 1.6

In old gnome, I had two panels, but I had them both at the top. This was optimum for me, but doesn't seem possible with latest cinnamon / mint 14