macOS is my favourite operating system. Finder in column view with arrow keys to navigate, combined with space for file preview, is incredibly fast and intuitive. Trackpad integration also results in less hand movement. I’m building a Linux (Bazzite) desktop, though, and I’ve set my sights on the stars.
nnn looks to be an incredible file manager, and was a great recommendation. It looks even more capable than Finder, albeit without scrolling/zooming previews, thanks to macOS having unmatched trackpad functionality. Not to mention Spotlight, which makes opening apps trivial–especially with Alfred available as well. I want to go beyond mere file management, though.
File managenent, browsing, gaming, everything. Just how much can you configure a Linux system to eliminate mouse usage? Shortcut guides welcome (I already know the major ones). I also have a keen interest in tiling window managers, but I’ve not delved that deep yet. I don’t know how to set one up.
Guess I’m forced to learn Emacs/Vim/similar.
Lot of great recommendations so far, but I will mention some of my favourites in case they were missed in the other comments: hyprland for a Wayland compositor / window manager, so you can easily set up keybinds for whatever you want, rofi for launching programs (and much more, I even made rofi-games so I can launch all my games from one place), and yazi for the file manager (use a lot of TUIs in general though).
You CAN go more extreme with the no mouse journey by using something like qutebrowser as your browser but I just use Firefox/librewolf with vimium c and find that’s good enough for me.
You can launch steam games from terminal pretty easily.
Browsing can be done with Vimium on Firefox.
Just tackle the times you touch your mouse one issue at a time and you could try putting the mouse in a different room to create a small barrier between you and using it.
Completely, if you look at tiling window managers.
If you’re a gnome user check out PaperWM as well as Search Light (which is like Spotlight or whatever its called on Mac).
And Vim really is that good. I started using it a few years back and I can’t imagine using anything else. There’s a bunch of Vim alternatives, like Helix or NeoVim if you want to explore.
Way back when we didn’t have X we just lived in the CLI console, text mode, no bitmap buffer. Then, when X came up you used the rodent to point at xterm windows. If you’re used to OS X, wait, MacOS, you’re going to try recreating equivalent functionality on Linux, which seems a lot of work. Have you looked into adding a trackpad?
You can go a long way with a touchscreen, but the most annoying thing for me is that in Terminal, using touchscreen selects text instead of scrolling. Other than that, mouse is hardly necessary.
