Add Gaps to Your Linux Workspace
First of all, let’s answer the most important question, “Why”?.. It’s for aesthetic purposes. I find it nice to have the wallpaper -partially- visible on my workspace. Here’s my current desktop with workspace gaps on the top, right and the bottom of the screen.
Known Solutions
There are extensions that trying to provide this feature. For example, there is Useless Gaps for GNOME Shell and Maximized Window Gap for KDE Plasma which is I’m currently maintaining that.
However, from what I’ve seen, dealing with Window Managers brings with it some issues, such as.
- Affects WM’s performance
- Sometimes not work as intended
- Customizations limited by extensions' features
So, I needed a desktop-agnostic, more lightweight solution. This is where tint2
comes into play.
Using “tint2” as a Workspace Spacer
tint2 is a simple, light panel for GNU/Linux desktop. Apart from its purpose, it’s suitable for adding gaps to a workspace.
Let’s start to install and configure it.
- Install
tint2
via your package manager. - Clone the GitHub repository that contains configuration files
- Copy
.tint2rc
files into your~/.config/tint2/
- Launch panels with custom configuration files
$ tint2 -c ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc-gap-vertical-left.tint2rc
$ tint2 -c ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc-gap-vertical-right.tint2rc
$ tint2 -c ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc-gap-horizontal-top.tint2rc
$ tint2 -c ~/.config/tint2/tint2rc-gap-horizontal-bottom.tint2rc
I’m using a simple BASH script to launch tint2
panels when I logged in my desktop environment.
Tweaks & Quirks
- Gap width/height can be changed with
panel_size
property. - Panels may not visible if
panel_shrink
set to 1 or 0 depending on your desktop environment. - If you are not using a compositing Window Manager, try to change
1
to0
ofpanel_size
property or else there will be 1px lines around the screen edges.
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