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.

    • Shareni
      2·
      7 months ago

      It’s still pretty good for some things. Any recommendations besides ddg (I find it horrible for tech research)?

        • Shareni
          1·
          7 months ago

          Thanks, looks cool. Any instance recommendations? searx.be seems to be the most up to date and isn’t located in the USA.

            • Shareni
              1·
              7 months ago

              Def better, but they could include some check so you don’t have to repeat the search 5 times to go through all of the broken/rate-limited instance

            • Shareni
              3·
              7 months ago

              But you’ll have to switch instances occasionally due to rate limits.

              Let’s hope that doesn’t become too annoying.

              Too bad the “It” category is broken so I can’t search for “how to kill children” and get the correct results. If ddg had that feature I wouldn’t have stopped using it.