I, like many others, have been getting worn down by Microsoft’s awful changes to Windows over the years, and I finally said enough is enough and moved to Linux.

I had a little linux experience beforehand due to my work, but this is my first time using it as my main OS. I am still very much a noob when it comes to linux.

So far it’s been great though. I am running Linux mint.

I am having 2 issues I can’t seem to solve, though. The taskbar (or I guess as Linux is calling it, the Panel) was only on one monitor rather than both. I managed to put a second one on my other monitor, and I enabled the “show windows from all workspaces” option on both panels. But it isn’t behaving like I have come to expect using the Windows one.

For example, both panels have the icon for Firefox. If I have Firefox open on my main monitor, and click the firefox icon on my second monitor’s panel, it just opens a new window instead of bringing the existing firefox window into focus.

An example of why this annoys me that sometimes I am playing a game that is full screen, and the flow i have over a decade of experience with is that i could click that firefox logo on the second monitor to bring up the window i already have open.

Is it possible to just have 2 identical panels that function the way the taskbar does on windows?

I am willing to switch from cinnamon to a different DE if thats what it takes. I tried installing xfce, but it seems like the issue is exactly the same there too. Not sure if switching to a different DE will help.

Or is the solution to just use a different applet than the default one in the panel?

Sorry if this is the wrong place to post this, this is the only linux forum I am aware of.

EDIT: Strangely, it seems like this issue is only occurring on the second monitor. If an application is open on the second monitor, but I click the icon on the first monitor’s panel, the behavior I want happens, it just puts the existing window in focus. Not sure why that is, the applets on both panels are identical as far as I can tell.

    • emzili@programming.dev
      2·
      7 months ago

      Says who? There’s nothing wrong with having multiple DEs installed, and any decent desktop manager (like sddm) trivializes launching into any of them.

        • Shareni@programming.dev
          3·
          7 months ago

          citation very much needed

          The only thing it does is use up more storage if you for example have only GTK, but install a DE that uses QT.

          • TheGrandNagus@lemmy.worldEnglish
            3·
            7 months ago

            Desktop Environments alter plenty of config files, like the ones in .config and .local

            They can interfere with one another. I’m not really sure how you could say they don’t. E.g. change some settings relating to gtk in one DE and it can change them in another.

            Plus there’s the clutter aspect of it. Searching for settings and seeing four settings apps.

            E: oops, the ~ character caused some formatting issues. Removed.

            • Shareni@programming.dev
              2·
              7 months ago

              They can alter some shared config files like the keyboard layouts and network settings. Since I’ve never had an issue with that, I’m guessing they’re not overwriting everything without a care. Or I might’ve just gotten lucky when trying out different DE’s

              • youmaynotknow
                2·
                7 months ago

                In my personal experience, it does seem like you’ve been lucky. Sure, most things will work when you install a second DE, but things have invariably broken within the hour after doing so.

    • boredsquirrel@slrpnk.net
      1·
      7 months ago

      For sure, but you could.

      As others said, Mint is just desnapped Ubuntu LTS at that point. So I would rebase to Kubuntu. Oh, forgot that was not a thing on the traditional desktops.

      Really, try Fedora atomic KDE, it is awesome.