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Getting the Most out of Ubuntu Workspaces

Having used Ubuntu as a daily driver for close to 4 years I've become accustomed to using workspaces as part of my core workflow. Workspaces are groupings of windows on your desktop. You can have multiple workspaces and each is a new virtual desktop. The main advantages I've found are:

  1. Quick switching between virtual desktops using hotkeys (ALT+1 for workspace 1, ALT+2 for workspace 2, ALT+n for workspace n…)
  2. Using the ALT+ESC hotkey to switch between windows specific to the current virtual desktop
  3. Neatly sorting the "Activities" menu (macOS's App Exposé counterpart)

If you didn't already know this about point #2, ALT+TAB has two siblings: ALT+ESC and ALT+`, both of which are incredibly useful variants of the original and both work alongside workspaces to add layers of organization to your workflow.

Workspaces are essential for arranging workflow GUI elements into organized categories. However, they come with some limitations out of the box.

Limitation #1: Workspaces are Auto Generated

Workspaces in Ubuntu are auto-generated by default, which means you only have two to start with, and more are added whenever you fill up existing desktops. In my workflow, I like to have GIMP and Libre Office open on workspace 4 and 5 respectively, but to do this with default settings I'd have to fill up all available desktops in workspaces 1 through 3.

The existing Ubuntu Settings panel doesn't have a way to change this default behavior.

The Solution

Using gnome-tweak-tool it's possible to change this default behavior and set up static workspaces.

apt install gnome-tweak-tool

You can start this tool by searching Activities for "tweak"…

…or running gnome-tweaks in the terminal.

Next, navigate to "Workspaces" on the menu on the left, and check "Static Workspaces".

You can also select the number of workspaces you'd like to have on this menu.

Limitation #2: Too Few Keyboard Shortcuts

Now that we have multiple static workspaces enabled, we should be able to assign a hotkey for each of them, right? Wrong. The default configuration options for workspaces in Ubuntu's Settings under Keyboard Shortcuts are limited to just the first four workspaces.

The good news is that this is not a limitation of workspaces themselves, but rather, a limitation of the Keyboard Shorcuts GUI menu.

The Solution

There is a graphical editor for Ubuntu's advanced configuration options called dconf-editor which can be installed using:

apt-get install dconf-editor

After installing you can either run it from the Activities menu…

…or launch dconf-editor from the terminal.

Navigate to /org/gnome/desktop/wm/keybindings/ and scroll down a bit to find the options for switch-to-workspace. The first four will be populated with the original values you set in Keyboard Shortcuts. Change the others by toggling "Use default value" off and entering their new custom value.

The menu should now look like this…

…and the new keyboard shortcuts should be functional.

Getting More from Your Ubuntu Machine

Ubuntu is an incredible free tool that's available to everyone and has a lot to offer, both in its default state, and with a little bit of extra configuration. Here we've covered gnome-tweak-tool as well as dconf-editor which are useful for workspaces as well as other changes like mapping capslock to escape and changing the default location bar behavior for the nautilus file browser.

If you found this article helpful then please don't hesitate to follow me on twitter or subscribe to my hackmd for more.

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Bitcoin script's reverse polish ancestry

The history of bitcoin script's technical origin sometimes eludes even the most knowledgable on the subject. This is one instance where a strong understanding of computer science theory and ancient graybeard computing history makes contemporary complex subjects easier to understand. After all, bitcoin script is responsible for a growing portion of real commerce and trade, which ostensibly places importance on how that actually works under-the-hood. I think it's often overlooked. As an undergraduate student I was forced to write programs in forth for a week to better understand the concept of a stack. Forth makes use of a stack with commands written in reverse polish notation or postfix notation. I would learn years later that Bitcoin script is exactly the same. This made understanding the blockchain a lot easier for me, so I'd like to share some resources that will make it easy for everybody else, too. Anyone interested in the subject should already be reading Andreas M. Antonopoulos's book Mastering Bitcoin and they will eventually come across the chapter on Advanced Transactions and Scripting. However, without a good understanding of a stack or why postfix notation is advantageous for a compact scripting language, it might be difficult to make sense of how or why this method was chosen for bitcoin's scripting language. With a device that plays video and an hour to kill this whiteboard presentation can go a long way to demystify some of it. Anyone that's a programmer can also follow along with my golang guide on forth with a helpful cli/repl here: https://github.com/metacoin/forth-stuff I created this repo to help programmers better understand how forth works and ultimately grasp the concept of bitcoin script more easily. It should be used as an interactive supplimental guide for any other tutorial involving bitcoin script or its origins in forth.

Jun 20, 2020
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