0 voters
if you are unfamiliar with the Whisker Menu, please see this post on how to enable and configure.
this is what the two menus look like for reference:
Applications Menu
Whisker Menu
FYI this poll is part of informal research for this issue.
I saw the other thread and gave a try to the Whisker Menu. Honestly, I didnât get what its advantages are. The Applications Menu seems much more compact and you donât have to scroll around to get to the qube you are looking for. Just make sure templates and system qubes are made internal, so they donât show up in the menu. If you like the search feature, then a properly configured dmenu would be much better, IMHO.
I wont be able to run the poll, and in any case am not an Xfce user
but I have many times observed that the best menu, in my opinion, is
a customised one that focuses on tasks and not qubes
When I did use Xfce, I found the menu relatively easy to customise per
user. Itâs straightforward to do this in KDE, and only a little more
difficult in Xfce, and no doubt there are tools to help you do that
with a GUI.
A properly configured WhiskerMenu allows you to pull it up with a shortcut (I map mine to the Win key) and type in your VM/program/task, then quickly start it.
Mileage may vary from person to person, but for me this was a significant increase in the fluidity of my work flowâall for the minor investment in time and effort needed to set things up. Managing your application menu entries under Qubes settings is important here.
WhiskerMenus also synergizes well with other well-known modifications. I make use of âstart this qubeâ (an option when choosing application menu entries) paired with autostart, so starting a qube would start all relevant programs in that qube, and all that is condensed in one entry, conserving space in the âfavoritesâ submenu. The autostart function is a side-effect of installing Tasketâs vm-boot-protect. halt-vm-by-window, a script by the same author which allows you to shut down the VM of the currently selected window with a shortcut, extends the workflow benefit of WhiskerMenu.
This makes sense. Thanks for the explanation. So it can be used like dmenu. Maybe Iâll give it another try.
I am starting my applications with alt+F3 and not using any menu in xfce. I wish I could change the order of applications in the alt+F3 menu.
On laptops especially, alt+F3 can be awkward to press. The Win key is already underutilized, so one might as well map that to either the application finder (what youâre using) or WhiskerMenu. You might like what you find.
Cool! So one can already get the search feature of WhiskerMenu without using it by just pressing Alt+F3.
Commenting further on searching, I donât really like the matches it makes, at least in the standard configuration. For instance, it matches descriptions. When I type âtorâ it finds lots of matches that involve âemulatorâ and I just want to find TorBrowser. Another example, in dmenu (perhaps with additional switches), if you type âdvm firefoxâ, it will separately filter out âdvmâ and âfirefoxâ and it will show you all disposable vms in which you can run firefox.
Yes, itâs a problem. This is why I would like to change the order of results. One can also adjust the search habits a bit (search for ârbrâ?) and reorganize the available apps or their names. After a bit of work it saves a lot of time.
After that, the Whisker menu does not provide anything useful for me, since the search is already there. As mentioned above, the original menu does not require to scroll (if you still need it at some point).
Interestingly, when I am searching with alt+F3 for âfirefoxâ, I get âdebian-10-dvm: Firefox ESRâ as a first result and âfedora-32-dvm: Firefoxâ as the second one. When I am doing the same in the Whisker menu, the results are invertedâŚ
If it learned over time what you select and display things by frequency, this could address this issue to some extent. This wouldnât require you to adjust anything manually.
Another solution would be to use the favorites menu, have it open at keypress (via settings), and navigate using arrows. Arrange favorites by dragging and dropping so that more frequently used items are closer to the starting point.
This would somewhat resemble the Windows menus which move the most used entries to the front - the first configuration that I disable on installing Windows! But it is a matter of tasteâŚ
The âfavoritesâ and the ârecently usedâ menus are different, but there is no âfrequently usedâ menu, AFAIK.
âFavoritesâ is static but can be re-ordered to your liking, and can also be set to be the top of the stack so itâs automatically opened when WhiskerMenu is displayed.
