That post should be titled "Why I don't like i3"

lol.. I liked the quote "you're not participating in a cult, you're just using a computer", more people should realize this. Coming from the Windows world myself, i will fully admit i'm more used to the floating paradigm but i'll also admit maybe i haven't spent enough time in tiling WMs to fully appreciate the idea. I also use mostly graphical applications and have heard other creators(e.g. Wolfgang) saying it's not worth it then.

I think it is kinda important to communicate to newbies the fact, that rejecting the usage of the mouse is not a necessity to be in the WM-Club. For me it was a welcoming challenge at first, but after a few months I got frustrated and forced my own workflow to my computer. And this, not the absent of the mouse, was what sold me to the whole "Tiling WM are efficient and worth the work" thing. Using my system the way I wanted. Screw what others are saying. I'm the one in charge. I can do whatever the hell I want. Everybody is saying, that Linux is all about choice. This argument weights the heaviest when it comes to workflows (imho).

I agree with most of what you said, except for these two points: a manual tiler like i3 is neither unproductive nor inefficient. It is the user who is productive/efficient. Furthermore, efficiency is how much work you get done, not how fast you can move windows. You can be incredibly inefficient with an auto-tiler, and you can be incredibly efficient using a floating window environment. It all depends on the user. Personally, I find it more convenient to choose the layout every time, which is why I use i3. I doubt the fraction of a second it takes to make that decision is making me less productive. Just my 2 cents.

I used to use tiling window managers for years. However, I found that there are a large number of programs, that I need, that expects a floating environment and will behave horrible in a tiling environment. For example, I started to do some Android development a couple of years ago and at the time at least I had the problem that every popup and every special UI element in Android studio where treated as their own windowses with unique window id:s that where not always associated with the program. Each of these windows where tiled in completely strange ways. Setting up window rules for each one was not an option since there where so many of them. I want to point out that this was just one example of the types of problems I had and where not unique to Android studio. So I decided that it was more of a waste of time using a tiling window manager given that there where several programs I needed that simple didn't work well in them.

Thanks for giving us one of the best explanations of what a Titling Manager does and showing it to us. No one has done this as well as you. Lot of us are new to Linux and just learning. It's good that you give us overviews, because it helps us gain some experience and lowers the level of intimidation for new things in Linux.

my biggest grief with tiling WMs is that they often don't give you the option of customization, they force you to. Like that's the biggest reason I'm still on KDE: I don't wanna customize things that don't matter much. Why the hell would I go out of my way and invest time in writing a custom small network or audio volume widget for the task bar? I want a usable system that organizes my windows in tiles, not another hobby to invest every second weekend into...

It also depends on the applications. If you never worked with a tiling window manager before, then you didn't choose applications that work well with it. Some programs just don't well with tiling for various reasons, because they require minimum size or look bad when suddenly tiling. You can also write exceptions and such. And Qtile in example can have different tiling modes or even fullscreen mode depending on what group/workspace you are. I in example use different tiling logics and switch between them. And my workspace 9 is always fullscreen, for in example games.

Fantastic video. Your delivery on everything you said was incredibly solid and well done. I use the typical SXHKD+BSPWM setup but lately I've just kept every app in fullscreen monocle and I just have a bind to go to every app I could need to use (and a rofi bind to find really rarely used things). I figure that the only purpose of seeing a window you're not currently interacting with is to use it as a reference, and I figure I should just do a better job at remembering the thing I was looking at 8 seconds ago 🧠.

This is *the* video that I needed. I've been using XFCE for years and I'm thinking about migrating to a tiling window manager. You just answered many interrogations I had. Thank you very much!

I've been using dwm for about two years now. I love it. But you need to have a DIY attitude. You basically have to build your own "desktop environment". Or at least emulate some of the functionality through scripts. That's not for everyone. But if most of your work can be done in a terminal, it's the best thing ever. There is nothing more satisfying than navigating 4+ terminal programs on my 34 inch ultra wide without ever touching the mouse

Note that most/all your windows are filled with text based content. It doesn’t work if you are using a visually oriented app - MS Office, Photoshop, video editors, etc. often each with multiple documents that require more screen real estate. And switching between them using alt-tab or a zoom out view.

I've considered playing with tiling window managers, this has been very informative! Thanks dude

I have come to really love tiling WMs because it is so easy to get around and move around quickly. Running three monitors for me is the killer use case for a tiler. Moving windows between screens a matter of super,shift, screen #, No dragging things all over the place which feel like a mile of mouse travel. Same for focus change, etc.

Interesting information - thanks. I use Windows and a three monitor setup and effectively 'tile' by full-screening an application to each monitor. It's inefficient but I'm old (I've been programming for over 4 decades) and set in my ways. This video reminds me that I should consider alternatives.

Thanks for talking about autotiling, i try to switch from Awesomewm to Sway and it was quite unconfortable to adapt without dynamic tiling.

I struggled with tiling WMs for a long time. I liked them in concept, but their unnecessary and stubborn reliance on keyboard shortcuts just knocked me off them every time. Then I learned about the gnome extension "pop-shell" an extension maintained by the pop-os team, but it'll run anywhere with gnome. Basically gives you a button that turns gnome into a tiling window manager on click. no mandatory keyboard shortcuts, no screwing around with config files. It even does things that I haven't seen in other tiling window managers, like letting you layer windows on top of each other and tab between them. Then when the work is done and productivity isn't as necessary, you can click the button to go back to floating windows.

For someone who just wanted to work, setting up a wm from scratch is a super headache

Good video, thank you, I've been thinking of trying i3 for about a week and this explains better than most out there.

I've been using the autotiling in Pop OS on a 14' laptop for more than a year now. It is indeed a massive productivity boost, but at first I had the same reaction as that person. The thing is, people don't actually use floating windows in the chaotic way you showed -- they keep almost all the windows maximized, with a few exceptions (like calculator or text editor), and they switch between the maximized programs. To me the usefulness of autotiling clicked when I realized you're supposed to use it in conjunction with workspaces. Before that, I thought workspaces were also kind of useless, because when you switch between maximized programs you can just keep all of them on the same workspace.

The attraction for tiling WMs for me is that (1) customizing it is _really_ easy. You just edit a text file! and (2) the time spent on customizing it is a one time thing. I spent one weekend ~6 years ago getting i3 to my exact liking (all of the hotkeys, i3blocks, i3lock, background, transparency... the whole works). I copied that config file to a usb that hangs off my keychain and now if I ever need to install a linux distro on a new laptop, I have the exact settings that I like. In 6 years, that config has not changed at all besides changing the background. I got a new desktop through work a few weeks ago. Setting up sway was so fast that I was at nearly peak productivity with a brand new computer in a few seconds. That's basically not possible with a DM (at least, I have not been able to both customize and migrate said mods as easily). EDIT: I've tried manual and dynamic, and I'm equally productive on both. YMMV

I thought about this a bit...and my preferences are exactly opposite. I don't want absolutely everything on the same screen. Even if I am logged in remotely to something, I still like to use "screen". I like to spread my open programs across several workspaces, moving from one to another as I move along my workflow process. It keeps things uncluttered. I could see the utility of a tiling WM if I was limited to only one workspace but I'm not. So I'm with the redditor you cited on this one.

I've tried a tiling window manager sometime ago, it was a pretty refreshing experience but still went with the GNOME desktop environment in the end. I got so used to trackpad gestures and it's hard for me to go without that. That said, I do often have multiple workspaces with one window in full screen, I do like the distraction free aspect of that a lot. In the end, it's comes down to what you're used to.

I think there are some small ways where using a tiler on a laptop is more work. Things like figuring out how to set up hotkeys for the backlight and managing power states without the utilities that a DE would give you. It's still not that big of a deal though. edit: getting a WM to properly handle a dynamic monitor setup can also be a pain.

I sometimes float windows in my tiling window manager and there is also an advantage to doing this in a tiling window manager over a regular stacking window manager and that is the fact that the floating windows are always on top. Everytime I need a floating window its when I want to a small window (terminal) that I write in and switch between the window and another window. This is faster to do when it's always on top instead of having to alt tab until you get the correct window or pressing on a taskbar. I also need to be able to see both windows at the same time when I need to look at the terminal output while interacting with the other window. I also use my mouse regularly with dwm. I dont feel ashamed to do so.

KDE plasma has a tiling extension, somewhat buggy but it has potential. My attempt at a tiling window manager was DWM. After three days of not getting anywhere, I went back to KDE. Desktop Environments are just more suitable for me, plus KDE has both desktops and activities so one could have a work activity, a computer admin activity and a gaming activity and and multiple seperated desktops on that. Also KDE is really easy to rice.

When I started with a tiling window manager, what I didn't understand is the concept of "workspace", because most Windows users don't use workspace. After understanding and using workspaces tiling makes sense because I was like, "why do they spawn so many windows in one workspace"

Your words resonate with me, I tried i3 first and hated it, went back to cinnamon. Then tried DWM, never looked back. I keep a floating WM on the system because some things just don’t work well in a tiler (some games in particular).

KDE got me into tiling window managers. I was using its tiling shortcuts so regularly, that I thought "Maybe I should just use a tiling window manager." I also like the prospect of eliminating the mouse, as sometimes I just want to stick to the keyboard.

I would add that although you’re right about being flexible, immersion can be a good way to learn something quickly or fully. If one has the luxury of not needing to be as efficient for a time. And doesn’t mind mild discomfort :-)

I like floating windows, but I've got some shortcut keys to tile things if I feel like it. Sometimes I just put something in a tiny window and right in the middle of the screen. If I've got prying eyes I may stack two apps on top of each other so I can still swap desktops and they won't see anything suspicious even on the desktop where I'm trying to hide something. Although that probably sounds weird.

Definitely interested in checking out a window manager. I prefer KDE plasma over Gnome everytime. Currently on Endeavor OS

The thing i think applies to everyone new , changing your work flow. Im trying to adopt going from gnome to tiling window manager. I use vmware to load my kali linux for pen testing and being able to copy and paste from my notes into the vm and documentation. I guess in time i will get use to it.

Used openbox (a floating windows manager) for years & loved it. It is versatile enough to use most of the tiling functions you are likely to come across. Have also tried (if not lived in) Spectre wm, BSPWM (like an old fashioned pre-selector gearbox) DWM (a pig to configure, but once yvvou're there you're there).It took he arrival of Wayland to prod me into using sway, which I have found surprisingly comfortable to live in. If you want an introduction to tiling and Wayland, I found taking the plunge with Sway fairly painless- it feels pretty stable.

I kept waiting for you to address what the person was saying in their reddit post about their actual uses for the computer. Very telling that every time I see somebody using a tiling window manager it's to show off a bunch of terminals on the screen and at most maybe a webpage. Most people, believe it or not, do not need to have lots of terminal windows open. Most don't even have one open most of the time.

I think the fact of the matter is that the only big benefit of tiling is switching between windows on the screen quickly. Defending on your workflow you may only need to switch between two apps so this would be unnecessary as alt tab works fine for that. There are some visual benefits of small WMs in general such as being more configurable, tiling gap so deemphasize inconsistencies, etc. That being said, KDE has configurable colors on default window decorations. I use sway on my home laptop. This is actually because KDE and GNOME had some bugs on wayland, and I have a mixed DPI environment so I can't just use X. On my school laptop I run a DE.

My answer to clutter is two things. 1) three monitors. 2) mouse hover on widow title, then mouse wheel to shade and unshade. Easy, quick, no tiling fuzz.

I used to flick back and forth between several different desktops and wms, depending what I felt like using. Now that I have 2 monitors, I've almost entirely settled on tiling window managers due to the workspace per screen paradigm. Not being able to independently switch workspaces per screen has become a deal breaker, I just can't deal with the loss of that functionality for long and if logged into a wm or desktop without it I have to switch back after a while.

When it comes to tripple monitor setups I have found nothing more efficient than the way xmonad and it's clones swap workspaces with different monitors when you switch to them. If you have a decent memory you can manage your workspaces with your eyes closed.

I've been using a tiling WM (I3) since around January/February honestly best thing I've ever done. It forces me to use virtual desktops to keep clutter down and that's great I always struggled with screen real estate and a tiling WM is a god send for that. in terms of productivity it hasn't really made me faster or efficient, I do still use my mouse a lot.

I was using xfce for a year or so before moving over to i3 and then to my current wm, bspwm. I love the TWM experience especially with my heavy keyboard centric workflow using my 40% Planck olkb. As you said, using the mouse is totally an option and really still a necessity in some cases even when using a twm (although I still prefer to use vim hot keys everywhere, Vimium is a god send for the browser). It sounds to me that that Reddit poster didn’t take enough time reading the i3 docs and perhaps didn’t spend enough time living with it after getting things the way he wanted (or at least as close to their original workflow with a fwm).

i3 is a great starting point (infact it should be the defacto starting window manager). Once you wrap your head around twm's (tiliing widow manager), you then consider making the jump to dynamic managers as that is where the power of the window manager starts to shine.

I am now using sway as I want to experiment with some stuff when I switch to a new system. It has been an okay experience for me but I missed some of the previous workflow that I hope I can get back switching to XMonad which I am still setting up. The stacking window experience in sway is quite horrible to me, the devs only intended it for niche cases, but I am used to being able to float windows over another, and the ability to hide a window by covering it with another window. Accessing them is just a matter of using alt-tab if I am on the keyboard, or just hovering over with a mouse. I am also used to contextually separating "Virtual Desktops/Workspaces", I have my main desktop on col1, entertainment stuff in col2, school, research, and code on col3; 2 rows for each. Now there is a mental overhead for knowing where I need to be. There is also the issue of wofi window switching not working out of the box, but I am too sick of other wayland/sway/wlroot instability issues that I don't even want to bother tinkering with it.

I used a "tiling manager" in the form of the Brief editor on DOS, which effectively was a multiple window tiling manager driven by keys. I still miss that, so might be persuaded into trying a tiling window manager. However, my ideal would be a regular floating window manager that would do tiling via keys.

Been using KDE with Bismuth at work for about 6 months now. I'd say it's even simpler to set up than i3 since it's integrated into the system settings. The tiler in PopOS is also pretty decent, although less integrated.

I have been using computers since 1990 (that's 32 years as of 2022), and I have NEVER liked having windows tiled next to each other. There is no scenario in which I want to split my screen into multiple chunks and force each app into one chunk. I don't even like having two physically separate screens next to each other. Maybe if I were actually running 6 different terminal windows like this video shows, but that's unrealistic. I've never needed more than 3 terminal windows at once, and I've never needed to be able to see them all simultaneously.

Thoughts on I3 vs AwesomeWM? I used to use AWM from a friends config, but that fell to the wayside of management, and I figure I should set up my own.

In addition to all the great points made here, most people fail to leverage other areas of the window manager to improve usability and efficiency. In other words, if you have more than 1 console open for any reason, you're doing it wrong. You should be using sessions with tmux. The point being is that using tilers efficiently is all about leaning into the potential to reduce which means looking at things beyond simply the management of "windows" alone.

Wouldn't say manual tilers are "horribly" inefficient. I use i3 and situations where you would need to do this are very rare. I would either have 1 window on workspace, 2 splitted horizontally (the default layout), or multiple windows in a tabbed mode. Flooding your workspaces with windows is horribly inefficient in any case, leave this for unixporn.

I was happy with xmonad making master wider than others, but i soon realized I was just mostly using workspaces in the tiling manager instead, xmonad was nice in managing workspaces across multiple displays. Mission control on the mac side feels much more intuitive now that I have switched

I use awesome wm too, but as I told Linux Experiment in a comment earlier today: I use a "hybrid" version where I tile the windows but layer them so that I can see my entire browser window, for example. I like that better because I'm not particularly interested in ricing it to impress Reddit; I care more about usability and practicality.

I personally struggle with space when using a tiling window manager on a small screen (laptop undocked), but on a large screen it's fine. On a small screen it pretty much means most of the time I just full screen everything and use workspaces, but at that point may as well use floating. As a software developer, I don't personally notice a magic productivity boost by changing between window managers or text editors etc, because I spend longer thinking than typing as fast as possible. I like how tiling window managers look tidy, but don't really have a strong preference either way.

Most of my work is reading and writing. I never have something fullscreen unless its a video. Usually what I'm working on takes up the middle half to two-thirds. Anything more gets hard to read and I don't want my margin all the way to the left of the monitor. It also allows me to put quick reference or things to check on the outside edges. I use virtual spaces to keep things uncluttered - browser/editor/mail/calendar. I used tiling scripts for KDE but didn't find the very useful, especially because they seemed all or nothing and didn't obey virt space rules.

Since my primary interaction with my computer is via the keyboard and I use tmux for software development projects, my use of the mouse has almost been reduced to only the web browser running in a separate window/tile. Although the majority of my time is at a desk with a wide-screen monitor, I found any time that I switched to the notebook's built-in monitor it is easier and more productive to have tmux running full screen in one window / workspace and any GUI applications running on one or more other windows /workspaces. If I don't intend to run any GUI applications while using my notebook away from the desk, then I can start tmux from the default TTY and be as productive as at the desk. Switching between a 38-inch monitor and a 13-inch monitor (screen) is jarring especially to my eyes; therefore, using tmux as a pseudo-wm seems to be the optimal option for me away from my desk. On a large monitor a window manager is a blessing, whereas on a small monitor whether to use a window manager is determined by what applications I want to use and how long I will be away from my desk and the large monitor. This kind of flexibility is what sets GNU/Linux apart from the two commercially-available operating systems and from total reliance on a desktop environment on GNU/Linux too.

I would recommend Hyprland, its easily configurable, has tools, a lot of eye candy and it runs in wayland, and ofc its dynamic with a dwindle and master layout.

Been using dwm for a couple years, and have tried qtile and bspwm. All are great, imho. Will probably use bspwm on my next laptop. Just haven't settled on a bar.

My workflow is mostly apps at fullscreen separated into workspaces by category with the ocasional floating file browser or terminal. For example I have three different instances of firefox on the same workspace and toggle between them with alt+tab, while on the next I have my IDE and on the next communication software like slack, mail, etc. I don't see any benefit or drawback of any of the two styles of WM, but floating have nicer defaults for when I use something that I don't want fullscreen.

wanting to use a tiler was one of the main things that drew me to lniux. but aftrer using it, i found that it's not really that great of a thing. i generally want full screen apps with the occasional 80/20 split for browser + terminal or browser + text editor. however, i still like to use the tilers for their superior workspace handling ability. also, some of the TLMs have very nice full screen app cycling support, which lets me optimize my workspace usage to 2, one for full screen apps and one for the 80/20 split. so initial workspace setup is a lot quicker than it is on windows, and after that, jumping from app to app is a bit faster than using the windows method. if anyone's wondering, qtile is the one that i've found to have the best full screen support. though i also like some of the things herbsluftwm does.

I started on i3 and could never get used to dynamic tilers. I don't have anything against them, but I find it interesting that people think the "master-stack" is a killer feature. I find that it's really hard to work with on my 4k screen (since I like to have 3 columns) and just prefer a manual tiler for the extra flexibility.

I use a tiler (Awesome on X and River on Wayland). But Plan 9's rio is based on a study that said that a mouse is better in most cases. Furthermore, it sounds like the OP wants a Master/Stack layout offered in DWM, Xmonad, Awesome, and other dynamic tilers.

Coming from a floating wm, I spend most of my time switching between different full screen windows, and keep one or two fixed on additional displays, overview+click/type is already so efficient and I just haven't had time to learn how to customize that in a tiling wm. I just find no matter how I remove window decorations the windows are just not big enough without it taking up most or all of a screen, especially with modern IDEs

regarding the desktop vs laptop thingy personally gnome works wonders to me because of i wanna tile manually i can do that with the keyboard but having a lot of talks be doable with smooth trackpad gestures is a big plus

I love my tiling window manager, it also extra fun as I contribute heavily to it so I get to learn new things and get to work with such a friendly community (is use leftwm)

For some of us it is the "muscle memory" that gets in the way. I've used Linux exclusively for 15+ years and Arch for the last ten. I use KDE, but started with Gnome, then Cinnamon and XFCE. As I'm not a developer, having a bunch of typical tiler-apps (terminals and such) was never an issue, and so I never even bothered other than to futz about. I HAVE played with a few, but again, the muscle memory has really become an obstacle. (NOT for everyone, but in a lot of cases, such as my own, it is.) It has just never felt as comfortable to what I've become accustomed to. What I DO like is the ability to 'tile' within KDE/Gnome/etc. It does feel more organized, and yet the base is still what has worked for me since the days of Win 3.1 and OS/2. Now as I reach the age of "decrepit" (I've got arthritis in my hands and wrists), the mouse is just easier than keyboarding a lot of stuff. What is nice is CHOICE. Choice is why I dumped windows. A tiler or a floating manager are nice choices to have. Keep up the good work! 🙂 p.s. when I want "tiling" for stuff, Guake is the go-to. heh heh.

I recently started using pop shell on gnome. I'd never use an actual tiling window manager because I love certain things about gnome like its workspaces, gestures, etc.

I usually have one or two windows open at a time, and the second one can go onto the second monitor on my two monitor setup. If I really need to, current window managers allow snapping to the left/right even if they aren't tiling window managers. I usually single task on my PC, I don't multi-task very often - so I don't really feel the need to have enough windows open to justify running a tiling window manager. That said - I do like to tinker sometimes, so I might try one out when I get a chance.

OK, here is my use case and my challenge with tiling window managers... Like your example in the video, I have been a long time WIndows user and have been exclusively Linux (Fedora) for the last 6-9 months... Today I am using KDE as my desktop environment My biggest issue is that I use a 49" ultrawide monitor on my desktop... I do not want windows going full screen, at best I want a window to go 1/3 screen and be able to control where the windows are... Today I am using a KWin script 'Exquisite' to move open windows to a specific location on the desktop... I have been reading a bit about tiling window managers and like the idea of a simple desktop but I have yet to do enough research to understand if I can make my workflow work with a tiling window manager... Thanks for your video, you have inspired me to finish researching and figure out a window manager that will do what I need it to do...

i really liked the idea of a tiling window manager in the beginning, and in fact it still is one of my preferred ways of using linux. i find the examples shown here to be pretty absurd though (the master stack layout or the golden ratio), as I cannot imagine those having a real-use case for actually doing any productive work (aesthetics sure, not much else). nowadays, I find the best use-case is keeping everything in the monocle layout, multiple related apps per workspace and switching between them and to the other workspaces with a couple keybinds, but at that point one starts to wonder how is such an experience different from a DE or even windows for that matter, where you can alt-tab to different fullscreen apps and switch between workspaces with ctrl-super-left/right. i agree it might be more efficient in terms of processing power required, but functionality wise I do not see much difference for the described use-case.

It's fascinating that you spoke about the reasons for using a tiling window manager for almost 13 minutes and never once mentioning the only important reason why I use a tiling WM. I do a lot of lecturing and it's crucial for me to be able to swap between workspaces on my laptop while showing the same workspace for the audience on the projector screen.

I just started on i3, and while I love it and it suits my workflow, I do believe tilers will always be a niche. Just yesterday, I installed Xfce4 on a VM to see if I can get a similar experience, and I find that I mostly can, so people on DEs don't really miss out. This said, I do find the tiling manager great fun to customize and tinker, and its so minimalist that I know that my system runs pretty smoothly without excess bloat. People who love this kind of stuff will probably enjoy a vm, but again, this is probably incredibly niche.

In principle, stacking/floating window managers do seem silly: manual window resizing, empty screen real estate, windows hidden behind other windows, etc.--it all seems so unsophisticated. Like, why are we trying to replicate a physical "desktop" with things stacked on top of things? However, I've just gotten use to the Mac OS/Gnome Shell paradigm of using "Mission Control" to switch between windows. With a trackpad gesture or click of a mouse, I can see all open windows at once and then click the one I want to focus on. It takes just 1-2 seconds. In Windows, the taskbar and snapping windows to various positions also gets the job done. I think a large part of it depends on the apps you use and the way you like to work. If you use a lot of terminal apps or like to have app windows maximized, then tiling WMs probably make sense. But if you live in GUI apps that open a lot of floating dialogs, tiling WMs might not perform optimally without some preemptive configuration.

Great balance between a regular desktop and a WM is Gnome with Material Awesome shell. Nice WM with all the benefits of a full desktop in the background. I don't like Gnome, but with this setup, you'll never see Gnome.

I run tilers like Enlightenment or Sway because I work with a single screen laptop. I find the tiling layout combined with desktop switching to be more efficient and logically intuitive for me, so I wave stuck with it for the past 10 yrs.

Coming from Windows, and having used Ubuntu and Debian for years, I always used floating window setups because they allowed me to set the window sizes and positions myself. However, this is day 1 of me using Plumb for Windows which uses auto-tiling, and I'm pretty impressed by it, despite some hiccups. If I tell a program to go fullscreen with the button, it respects that. If it finds that I have a set of programs up on the screen, then it'll load a mini-configuration putting the windows where I had them at the time as I dragged them around to my liking. Tiling + mouse usage is my go to now. If I need to stop tiling, I can just close Plumb, and open it again when I'm back to tiling.

I'll probably never try Tiling WMs because I like having just one window per gnome/chromeos workspace with parts of wallpaper visible on all sides. I also have Super+J/K/L keybinds to jump workspaces (& caps lock as Super). Feels much cleaner, efficient, & more aesthetic than the alternatives.

I mostly like using a tiling window manager because its kind of a pain using my trackpad on a laptop so keybinds are really nice

I use a tiling wm (bspwm rn) on my laptop, because I hate multi tasking with a single screen. I've always been someone used to 2+ monitors, at some point even 4 (although 2 of them weren't even 16:9), and thus, it's really annoying for me to see windows side by side on a single screen. To circumvent this, I just have different workspaces with the things, and I can just easily layout my windows properly and manually resize them to make use of the small space available as efficient as possible

Over the last year and a half, every couple of months or so I decide "ok, I see all these guys talking about Tiling Window Managers, I am going to finally make the switch!"...and after a few days, I hate it and switch back. Watch more videos, see some cool things, think "ok, really this time, I am going to make it work!". Then after pulling out some more of what is left of my hair I run back to Gnome or KDE. Finally, I jumped on Archcraft with Openbox and love it, for my workflow its the perfect hybrid.

I love tilers on small laptop screens, I don't use them as much on my desktop mainly for the fact I can't always get games to cooperate with them.

Spectrwm is a dynamic tiler that's pretty simple and noob-friendly with a plain text config file. A good i3 alternative. I used to use TWMs for a long time but now that I've used Gnome for a while I don't think I can go back. I'm just too used to the convenience a proper DE like Gnome provides. And Gnome can be very keyboard-centric too without locking you into that paradigm.

its rare that you want every app that is open to be displayed, so stacking lets you have multiple apps in the same space and switch between them in an instant, but with a tiling window manager its all open or you have to minimize an app if you don't want it to be on screen, where as with stacking you just drag another app over it and then when you click on the window behind it it just goes on top. And most tiling window users don't even minimize anything, if you have 10 apps open do you have each app take up a tenth of the screen? and I know there are different workspaces/desktops but that's more annoying than just having all the apps in one, sometimes apps I used are just open in the background until I wanna use them again and I don't bother closing them at all

I'm looking for a full desktop environment with tiling windows instead of floating windows. I love i3 but I wish it was a full DE. I love XFCE but I wish the windows would automatically tile. I don't feel like painstakingly combining the two. I usually use i3 but I keep XFCE installed so I can switch in to access settings in GUI. Also there's software that acts weird if you don't have the top bar on the window you're using. For example, I'm developing GUIs in swing in Eclipse (Java), but when I use it in i3, every time I run the window class, when I close the generated window the whole application crashes and I have to restart the computer. So now I only use Eclipse in XFCE because the crash doesn't happen. So should I just switch to gnome and use gTile? What can I do to get the functionality of a TWM within a DE like XFCE or gnome?

sometimes i just wanna spawn a window on an empty tag and it not take up the whole screen, maybe even snap the window around left and right and then toggle it back to tiling mode if desired. i get where he's coming from

I use both dynamic/tiling window managers, and normal experiences like Gnome. I work on linux mostly - and I prefer dynamic window managers, because for my work, I do much of the same stuff, and thus I can prepare the experience for my use. I also love the easy of navigating and opening closing windows. The dexterity I feel when using it for work is just wonderful. For work I also tried using a MacOS machine.. and the way mac does it simply doesn't fit with me. I have tried alternatives on MacOS, like Amethyst and others - but MacOS is simply too closed box for the developers to be able to hook into the OS in the right way. Now for regular experience I have absolutely now problem just logging out, and switching to Gnome or whatever, and use the machine that way. But rarely find that I need to. Even on Windows I prefer to use Windows Powertoys which is a decent "window manager" along with a bunch of other neat gadgets and gizmos. Important thing to remember is that everyone is different. Not everybody touch types, and won't ever learn, so pushing a homerow-based configuration to a person like that will fail. Remember WHY you want to use a dynamic and or tiling window manager. Don't do it because you think it makes you look talented, or special. Because if you don't get it, and don't want to, you're going to have a baaaaad time. Do what feels right to you -- and if you are up for trying something that might improve your productivity, also expect that it takes time to get there. But it might increase your general productivity for the rest of your life.

What I keep looking for is a tiler that will only affect certain app windows that I specifically designate, leaving everything else floating. Full tiling of all apps would only ever make sense to me on a giant monitor where each tile would still have plenty of space not to make things feel claustrophobic. But even tiling extensions are all too aggressive at wanting to tile everything. Just doesn’t work for me.

I love bismuth on kde, i think it's the best combination of both tiling and floating

I initially switched over to I3 just to see what the fuss was about. It was a fun distraction, and I learned a good bit, but then I asked myself if I really needed a tiling window manager? I couldn't answer the question, so I dropped back into GNOME. That was a mistake. I forgot how to manage floating windows. In the past I didn't have too many problems with losing windows (until my 38" 4K monitor came along,) but now I couldn't manage a floating window to save my life. I'd forget where they were, or they would end up stacked a few layers deep. Tiling window managers (I still use I3 just because I am used to it) force you to change your workflow, but it's not a bad change. Full screen windows across a few workspaces are far more easy to deal with then five floating windows all sitting on one workspace. It's far more efficent to hit a quick shortcut to get to an app then it is to find that app and bring it forward. A side benefit is you utilize a massive monitor far better with a tiling window manager than you would if you just used floating windows.

I use 'poor man's tiling' with shortcuts to tile active window to either side or quarter of both displays, and that's more than enough for me

For my workflows in web development on a laptop, I rarely turn on tiling in Pop OS. Instead I prefer workspaces with similarly grouped applications all fullscreen switching with keyboard shortcuts usually and super + mouse occasionally - ide/browser/terminal all fullscreen in first workspace - slack, pm boards, designs, etc in workspace 2 also all fullscreen - then music, notes, system monitor or whatever in workspace 3 where fullscreen isn't important. If I'm not doing mobile-specific development I just can't have any split-screen workflow (except WITHIN the ide, eg css in one pane and template in another). IF I am doing mobile specific development, I can easily snap browser and ide to a side-by-side and adjust width 80/20 or so. If I plug into a large monitor, or especially dual-monitor setup, the whole premise changes and I immediately go for full auto-tiling and control with hotkeys mostly but when using the browser, where my hand is often on the mouse (not so much in coding flows). It all boils down to 1920x1080 is rarely being big enough for two tasks that I actually want to do at the same time, unless they're super specific, so I instead focus on the most efficient use of workspaces and cycling between fullscreen windows. I focus on what I am doing when/where I am doing it and that's pretty damn productive for me. Side note, after 7 years "digital nomad"ing, I almost still feel more productive when I'm NOT plugged into the big monitor setup... I guess my brain just works in full screen. Cheers. Loved the line about not joining a cult btw, nailed it!

I was originally on KDE with a tiling script but now I'm on awesome it is great.

Going to switch to a tiling wm to reduce ram usage and hopefully help with battery life. 🤔 after all tht videos I've watched over not seen anyone address this about switch from a DE(desktop environment) to a WM(window manager) dynamic or otherwise.

Is there a tilling Windows Manager that can handle multiple colums. I have a 3440x1440 monitor and I like one centered main working window and on both sides additional content, perhaps vertikaly tiled/staked. I havn't found something that works fine for this szenario.

Maybe that's why we have virtual screen combined with floating window manager. Just arrange your apps across screens and not on just one.

My main issue with all the tiling wms is the same as with vim. I love them, but it's tiring to have to configure absolutely everything yourself, and even more so to get a polished experience. There is no "just works" wm. I use Gnome right now because it looks good out and is polished out of the box. There's always stuff missing that you just get with other wms that you first have to set up yourself and then heavily configure to not look totally out of place (and yes I tried all the Gnome tiling extensions and I hate all of them, I'd rather setup Hyprland again).

Bspwm user over here… I can really recommend Bspwm over any other, (having used about 10 different WMs) I recommend take a look at preselecting where the next node/tile will spawn and combine that with transplanting windows onto a preselecting. It will honestly only take you a few days to get used to these hotkeys, but once you get it you will no longer want anything else. Bspwm is also a big reason I’m staying on Xorg the coming years, sway on wayland just ain’t cutting it. I mean it’s a nice and smooth WM, but compared to Bspwm it sucksss 😂🎉❤

ive been using linux for several years but just jumped into a tiling wm some months ago, with awesome on my laptop, and i love it, its very comfy, i made it mine and i feel it makes more sense in a laptop for me since i really hate trackpads, i still use it, it makes sense in a graphical ui, but having more control with the keyboard is great for me in this case.

people should just use what they think is best or what works for them. I like both for different things. I tend to feel like tilers work well on large desktop monitors and not as efficient on 13" laptops. Just try things and find what you like, its really as simple as that. There isn't really a need to think too hard about it.

I use i3, and i3-ressurect together. I prefer saving an entire layout and invoking it when I want. I like control. I'm not constantly deciding where I want a program to open, it's already in the perfect spot already once I restore a layout. WM's are great for tinkerers... that's why linux dorks love it! It's like a side hobby in itself. If you're not into tinkering, then it's not for you imo, and there's nothing wrong with that. Another handy thing to add to i3 is setting hotkeys that open as a floating window. For example, control+meta will open a floating terminal, meta key will open tiled.

To me floating windows feels like you are looking through papers at your desk, you can naturally move them around how you wish. Tiling WM feel like you are opperating a machine. Being able to relax and just use your mouse with floating windows is more intuitive. Also I would never want a window smaller than a 1/4 of the screen so KDE tiling is good enough for me.

Arcolinux allows you to easily install more than ten different tiling wm's (i3wm, bspwm, qtile, leftwm, xmonad, awesome, dusk, hebsluftwm, spectrwm, dwm, wmderland), some of the wayland ones (sway, wayfire) can be installed with scripts, you son not need to spend hours configuring, maybe just some autostart apps and some keybinds, when you use a tiling wm extensiveley you won't go back to gnome or plasma anymore.