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 hate these fucking cults with a passion. Another example of gatekeeping is in the Vim club. NO, you don't need to use HJKL on Vim, you can configure arrow keys. If you use your mouse it's a lot better to use the arrows.
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.
It works fine. You can have a overlayed tiling with all your windows being fullscreen and switch to some other layout when needed. You can have a layout for documents like 1/3 2/3 with the main one having a sane aspect ratio and secondary one being some auxiliary windows. You can have overlapping 2/3 2/3 windows for switching between apps. You can have whatever layouts you want and quickly switch between them instead of doing alt-tab, with your windows quickly resizing accordingly
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.
A lot of windows oriented applications "do their own tiling" by having a bunch of side panels and things integrated into their main window. Trying to fit that sort of program in less than the full screen is usually an excercise in frustration, especially if your monitor isn't bigger than FullHD. You'd think with increasing resolutions over the years we would have taken advantage of the extra space, but instead we just made the whitespace bigger. :(
9:19 Definitely rings true despite so many people insisting that you need to use C (the language equivalent of the UK nowadays) + Linux or else you're not a "real programmer".
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.
Your point isn't valid at all cause at least some tilling window managers allow to dynamically set the workspace you're in to tile or float, making it default for every window that is being opened there. I use Android Studio all the time with dwm. The reason for this video is exactly that, many people don't know how to use and the capabilities of twm. A twm, in many cases, is exactly the same as a non twm environment but with twm capabilities.
@@evol777 My experience with that is that the floating environments in these tend to suck, especially if you still want some tiling capabilities. Then it is way better to get a floating WM that has some tiling. So my point still stands.
@@chunye215 then maybe the situation has changed for Android Studio since last time I tested it which admittedly was a couple of years ago. But as I literally pointed out, Android studio was just an example of the kinds of problems I had with tiling and not in any way unique to Android Studio, so just because this one program suddenly got better doesn't invalidate my general experience.
@@tordjarv3802 for example, awesomewm behaves just like any other floating window manager and many people use it as such + tiling capabilities if needed. You're discarding all tilling window managers cause of your (lack of) experience.
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.
I aggree and disaggree. There are other Videos offering GREAT explanations at detailed length. Problem is just, that you don't watch a 1+ hour Video explaining tiling video managers, if you kinda just wanna see what it's all about, right? Well, I'm not, and most people aren't either; those Videos are probably only useful if you wanna dive deeper. Which is why I find this Video great as well. No big fuzz. Just what is a Tiling Manger, how it works, what types there are. All in
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.
But here's the thing, you can have it behave with all the windows fully floating like full desktop environments. you can even have it as a default and just let it tile things when you like with a simple press. It's all up to you and that's the point.
@@ghosthunter0950 Yes. Only problem with mixing floating and tiling application windows is, that the tiled one in the background most likely get overlapped. So either every window on the current group should be tiled or all of them are floating. With the exception of dialogs and such. Qtile supports different layouts for each workspace/group, including floating. One could setup specific groups to be floating by default and run all those applications that needs to at this place.
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...
I feel this on a deep level. I recently started using Enlightenment DE but on tiling mode. This way you get the benefits of kde (well, somewhat), as well as the benefits of tiling WM's. Ive found it to be a good balance. Though, enlightenment does have a vastly different feeling to KDE but, i think it strikes a nice balance myself.
You guys realize you don't have to do a full rice customized polybar kind of setup, right? Just install the XFCE or MATE release of your favorite distro then install i3 on top of that. i3 is just a WM. It can replace the WM for many DE's. But I suppose now I'm showing what I spent every second weekend doing, eh?
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
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.
I tried using a few tiling window managers, but I've always come back to just usong a floating one. I think to me a desktop is exactly that. Just like in real life I'm kind of disordered and have my files and papers and such overlapping. For me a floating windowing system captures that. Most of them feel like using tmux for everything. While that's not the worst I've yet to find a compelling reason to switch.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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
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 always find it fascinating to see people who aren't programmers using Linux and for such a long period of time. Back then things were a lot less settled and for some it was still rather difficult to get it working. I would assume by your ID that you're an author, and if I'm correct in that assumption I'm curious what programs you use to write with? Do you use LaTeX?
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.
Well, for simple tiling and remembering of window placements i just use 2 gnome extensions and am good with that. Idk, i tried tiling WMs before, but remembering all the shortcuts and be truly efficient in using them is a hassle to me (that why i never fully got into modal editing either, my brain is just too dumd to remember every single all of this). Yes, mouse is "usable" in tiling WMs, but much less than in non-WM ones, and I'm not using my mouse a lot per se, but i do use my touchpad for custom gestures and all that very frequently. Idk if those are possible in i3 and friends.
The ability to move windows between screens and workspaces is baked into the vast majority of desktop environments. On my GNOME laptop I use the workspace matrix and a tiling extension , with almost every function disabled on the latter of course. The only reason I have that is to be able to snap my windows on any edge or corner of the screen that I want with the simple press of a few keys. For some reason, GNOME decided to limit that feature to just left and right edges by default. GNOME's activities menu is pretty good to shift focus quickly as well, at least until you start having 10 or more windows open on one screen. Then it just kind of gets tedious. Honestly, I'd love to be able to shift focus relative to my current active window with a modifier+arrow key to just change over to neighboring windows on my display. (If I sound like I'm fanboying over GNOME, I'm really not. It's just the best environment for productivity that I've found for a laptop. I will never use it on my desktop again.)
@@vitluk FWIW, among Unix folks it's common to dislike this "control every app with vi-like keybindings" stuff(and vi itself) for exactly the reasons you state. Perhaps Rob Pike's "brain is just too dumb"?
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.
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.
Bismuth is pretty good, especially when they updated it to have separate keybinds in the shortcuts menu. I switched to an actual TWM due to the limitation of Kwin not handling workspaces per monitor, but instead all monitors switching to the new workspace. Although, this is only something you feel with multi-monitors.
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.
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.
@@vawvaw7084 That seems to be what most people do, but most people also seem to roll with multiple 1080p monitors. When you have a single 32" 4k monitor, you probably have more windows loaded in a workspace.
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.
1 - Moving the head and refocusing is slower than switching layouts or workspaces. Unless you're literally watching all monitors at the same time, like a security guard or something, it's pointless. 2 - moving the mouse to the title is also slow. You should be able to set up some faster shortcuts like pressing an auxiliary mouse button and scrolling while the cursor is anywhere within the window or the window is focused. But generally, shading is inferior to minimizing
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"
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 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 came across this video as i have been experimenting with bspwm for a month, being primarily a Xfce user and unsure if i want to make a switch. the bspwm adventure seems cool in the aspect that when you install and configure it on a barebones distro like Debian, Arch or even EndeavourOS, you have the full control on what's on your system. but it's also a curse - you have to configure everything in order to survive, while in the DE you can just blast a different theme, change panel layout, maybe change a few apps and still call it a day. hell, maybe it's just not for me... but still, it's been much fun
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).
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.
I started using MacOs for my new job and am deeply frustrated with windows management and tiling on Mac. I am coming from Pop_OS! and love the tiling, works spaces and windows management shortcuts on their gnome version.
@@rafaelagd0 Interesting. I find them very similar. Gnome Activities is like Mission Control on Mac, Mac Desktops = Gnome Workspaces, etc. If you haven't already, I recommend familiarizing yourself with Mac OS trackpad gestures and/or keyboard shortcuts. Are you using an external mouse? If so, ideally it's a mouse with "gesture" buttons that you can configure to simulate gestures. It works fairly well, but not as well as the trackpad. Mac also has "hot corners" with which you can trigger certain actions by flinging your mouse curser to a corner of the desktop.
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.
You can have a webpage open and your word document side by side and quickly adjust ratio by switching layouts. You can have a browser and note taking app. Excel in particular resizes perfectly and it's much more convenient to switch sizes with predefined shortcuts instead of juggling the window handles and sizes and positions And you don't have to tile everything. Have some foundation with necessary windows tiled and the rest float on top, no problem
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.
Virtual desktops in i3 are what makes me hate using Windows so much. I like having most of my windows maximized, or maybe having two of them, but in Windows virtual desktops are so useless that I always have to change which windows I want to have on screen and often even search for them. Meanwhile in i3 I have the first desktop always be my browser, sometimes with a little console or something I need to enter stuff I read on the browser into. On the second one I have my terminals, on the third and fourth I have a layout for tasks I am working on at the moment (IDE, photo editor, you name it) and finally 9 is always where my communication takes place with discord etc. I can switch between those layouts super quickly (super+1-0, super being my caps lock key which is disabled for everything ecvept that) and everything is just where I left it. So easy!
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.
I agree. Floating window managers are much more flexible than a pre-determined layout (or even manual tiling, which is so labourous). I rather have my windows stack and just use Alt-Tab to bring the desired window in focus. Way simpler.
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.
Yeah, I fully agree. For me it's mostly that the i3 way of super+1-0 for selecting the exact desktop I want right now is just so superior. Sure I could make this work in other DEs somehow, but in i3 it just works. There's a few more important shortcuts that just keep me on i3, but how virtual desktops work is really the biggest reason.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
You missed the thing that is, in my opinion, the biggest selling point for tiling window managers. The combination of workspaces and window rules. My use of xmonad has very little to do with actually tiling windows and much, much more to do with organizing my work. Common apps are all pinned to start on the same workspaces, and the use of super + [1-9] makes it so easy to switch between workspaces that having almost every app on a different workspace is not an issue. DMW has a feature where you can show two "workspaces", called tags in DWM, on screen at the same time. I do miss that in my use of xmonad, but it's not a big deal since I can throw the desired window to another workspace. In my opinion, the OP of the reddit post you're referencing would do well to assign things to workspaces and take advantage of that instead of having everything on his monitor at the same time. When you figure out how to leverage workspaces in tiling window managers, it's very difficult to go back to "traditional" environments. I find alt-tab to be annoying, for example, because I'm used to knowing exactly what workspace my windows are on and jumping there in a single keybind. Re: mouse avoidance The way I have things set up, using the mouse is often slower than using a hotkey. Sure, sometimes using the mouse is nice, but the number of cases where that's true for me is limited to repeat copy/paste actions across different form fields in a website, and extensive scrolling through any sort of text.
Fun fact, the dwm tags are impossible to implement in xmonad because of how window state is stored, window can be mapped only to one workspace. I remember that one of the core devs said that it's because stackset uses zipper as it's data structure and it was one of the worst decisions, because it makes things inflexible. Now it cannot be changed because it would break everything. Too bad because I miss that tags feature. Maybe when (if) there will be wayland equivalent of xmoand it will be possible.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
Well, never tried tiling managers but I still dont get it. Whats so good about them when you have virtual desktops and window snapping shortcuts on regular desktops
If all you do is use terminal windows, and for some reason you need twelve of them open at the same time, then tiling WMs seems to be working well for those users. I think those users fail to understand that the vast majority of people don't have that sort of workflow.
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 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.
my personal experience is that you just don't get that much extra efficiency from using most applications side by side. I just use all my applications fullscreen and have a keyboard shortcut for switching to the ones I want. if I want to compare things in two applications I might put them side by side, but its really not that common that I feel I need that. cramming two/three applications side by side works okay 90% of that time but the other 10% is more than its worth for me usually.
There are a variety of programs that I never want to be less than half the width and/or height of my screen. So no matter what your window manager, having multiply of these on screen at the same time will not show you everything you want to see. Back when I used floating window managers, I would just maximize/fullscreen these all the time. Managing them is just too much of a hassle. I can very easily see how somebody could try out a tiling window manager, then see there's no way to address this problem, and then lose interest. But the most sensible workaround I've found is tabbing windows. I may have a text file on the left third of my screen, then on the right, I would have a spreadsheet and a web browser tabbed, taking up 2/3rds of the width. This was pretty much my default layout for my laptop using i3 for a number of years. I've been using my multi-monitor desktop more recently, so I often have my vertical monitor stacking applications vertically, while my horizontal monitor is either side by side or tabbed.
I find it funny that someone learning Linux for the first time would expect to *have* to use a tiling manager -- I have used Linux for years, and I've been somewhat mostly satisfied with using KDE. But I have also been using Tmux for years, and have recently come to believe I *ought* to use a tiling manager for that reason -- and because I want more stability with windows and desktop-switching -- and I've wanted to have more flexibility than "Must have window only one or on all of the desktops, no in-between" -- so I've been trying to come to terms with Awesome WM. So far, though, I haven't had the time I need to set up a lot of the stuff (like power management, etc) that come "out of the box" with KDE. Thus, I really appreciate this video: it gives me a better understanding of what to expect with a tiling manager! (Even if I already knew some of this going in -- and even though I probably already *intuitively* knew some of this stuff, via my use of Tmux.)
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).
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.
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
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.
@@pattmayne I haven't tried it myself but I was under the impression that you can. The "cosmic" desktop from Pop OS is essentially just a set of gnome extensions and a theme, and the tiler is one of those extensions.
I used i3 for a while, then decided standalone WMs weren't for me. I used KDE with Krohnkite for a while, then when I discovered the overview effect I lost all interest in using a tiler.
Windows 10 added tiling, and I still haven't gotten used to accidentally holding the Windows key instead of Ctrl when doing some actions with the arrow keys, and it keeps tiling my current window somewhere. It's a mistake I didn't know how often I made until they bound an action to it. Now it's annoying. I'm sure tiling would be more use to me if I didn't have a 43-inch 4K monitor and a 23-inch 1080p monitor besides it, but with my usage I just look for ways to disable that.
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.
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.
With the amount of empty space in a lot of modern programs, I feel like the biggest barrier to adopting a tiling wm for most people has nothing to do with the tiling wm. If I were to switch, most of my windows would be filled by cut-off toolbars, only leaving like a fraction of the space for the actual content.
@@fakecubed That's not actually true, though. Or rather, it is, but only because controls in modern GUI apps are oversized and don't scale well. And in the case of GNOME apps, they have clientside decorations. If most GUI apps used the space they need instead of all the space they have, and stopped blindly assuming the space they have is the entire screen, tiling workflows with graphical apps would be quite viable.
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!
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...
It seems like wms become popular because a lot of linux e-celebs started using them. I can tell you that I started using i3 and later dwm because of Luke Smith. Though I was always too lazy to create a decent config and when things were "good enough" I stopped doing anything with my setup. For example I didn't cared enough to google how to make my laptop keys for volume usable for months because I already knew how to change the volume from the terminal so I was like "eh...". A lot of people talk about being "more productive" but I think thats a lie that poeople tell themselfs. Now I'm using kde and I'm happier than ever.
Linux "e-celebs" tend to be those who use a lot of terminal windows at the same time. Which is not a typical use case for Linux. I'd bet that a majority of all Linux desktop users don't even use a single terminal window in their typical day, including the reddit poster that started this whole discussion.
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.
You obviously prefer dynamic tilers, but I don't think you should portray it as simply the best. For me, a manual or hybrid tiler is much more efficient because I can put windows in any position whenever I want. For example, I might want Firefox in one corner, two terminals side by side in another corner, two file managers side by side in a third corner, and a text editor in the last corner. With a dynamic tiler, while this may be possible, you would need to edit the config files to create your own layout, and even then you wouldn't be able to easily make some small modification to the current layout. I see why you prefer dynamic tilers, but they're not unambiguously the best as you said they were.
I think manual tilers have there place for some people but for the average user who isn't as concerned with window splitting dynamic is just more convenient
Honestly I've been quite happy with the workspace and tile management built into Linux Mint.. I've set my keyboard shortcuts up so that i can navigate my windows and workspaces with just my arrow keys. Yes it's manual, but i don't work with 16 identical terminals, i need more dynamic control over where the tiles go within each workspace.
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 😂🎉❤
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 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.
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.
@@BrodieRobertson Ah. Wow. So there are Desktop Environments that supports having separate workspaces on separate screens. Didn't know that. I have done some research browsing through forums on the topic but haven't yet come across anyone recommending a DE that can do that - at least not out of the box. As I said - the main reason I'm using a tiling WM is because I thought that you couldn't find that feature in DE's.
@@BrodieRobertson I also use a tiling window manager because I've believed that you couldn't get separate workspaces on separate monitors out of the box using any desktop environment. Are you saying that is not the case? Do you know of any desktop environment that provides that as a standard feature?
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 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'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 use a manual tiler (i3), i don't think it's less efficient. Most of the time there is no need to choose a size or direction at all, so i almost never do. Just press the button for the window to come up and that's it. Up to 3 windows just go side by side and 4+ is just clutter anyway, no matter how you arrange it automatically or not. As for the mouse, if you are a programmer it really kills your speed and comfort. Because you type with two hands locked to homerow. Doing some tasks with the mouse is not bad but having to go to the mouse and come back for the keyboard is chore.
I know you use a 27" monitor, but I wonder if tiling is LESS efficient when you have a 43" screen? I often drag what I am currently using directly in front of myself and move other stuff randomly around.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
It's not just the tiling per se. 1. TWMs are usually more keyboard centric. 2. Many tiling WMs offer a lot of customization and extensibility. If you don't like or need those, tiling WMs are prob not for you.
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.
These are all false dichotomies afaiac, but maybe that's just me. When I know I want to be _in the zone_ on a project I'll login to awesomewm. When I'm shooting the breeze or "writing poetry" (aka. python scripting or LaTeX composition) I'll use xfce4 session which has basic tiling capability (Meta-arrow keys, etc.). People should not be taught to hard submit/commit to B&D. Choosing the desktop to suit your mood or current work is like having a meta workspace.
I don't think most people need to tile on their personal rigs also tiling window managers donot seem like a good choice for small screens like 14inc laptops . Also if you want to give your laptop to someone else in your family to send a mail what are they going to do? learn to use computer? that is why i generally prefer de like experience
my issue with tiling window managers is that the "disordered" floating layout, with windows laying over each other, is how I prefer to work. I like just being able to swap tasks without closing out all of my old windows, it lets me pop open discord to open a call and talk with someone without having to save my work in whatever I'm doing, it lets me run a game without having to worry about my text editor being open still, etc. It's just a hell of a lot easier for the things that I want to use to just, be in front of me, and the other stuff sort of just gets replaced. The ONE issue I've had with linux though, honestly, is that I can't use the windows key (super key, metakey, whatever) along with arrow keys to do impromptu tiling. One thing I used to do constantly with windows is just fling windows around my monitors with windows right right up, and boom now it's on my other monitor. The first right tiles it to the right side of my screen, the second right tiles it to the left of my second screen, and the up maximizes it. I can rapidly reposition windows in a way which is generally effective without HAVING to use my mouse. Maybe there is some way to replicate this, but even with me primarily using KDE which is pretty customizable, I haven't found any way to easily configure similar functionality.
Yeah, you just need to find the function you want in the shortcut settings and set a custom shortcut key. If it's already used it'll warn you and you can delete the old or go reconfigure that one too. I've got keys to push apps to whatever desktop I want, and I've got 12 desktops so each one revolves around a function key.
Not really sure why ur saying tiling window managers mean you have to close everything to open another app (in fact isn't this the opposite of a tiling window manager?..). I can open discord whenever I want and have it sent to a pre-specified desktop, or open League in the next empty desktop on my main monitor, saving me the trouble of deleting all my tabs on my current main monitor desktop. This also allows for easy and meaningful organization of windows. Going back to my League example, I often have firefox open on my main monitor, and with League open on the next empty main monitor desktop, switching between the two is virtually the same as that "windows" like experience of alt-tabbing, if not even cleaner since League belongs to a separate desktop. I really recommend checking out bspwm + sxhkd, changed my negative view of tiling managers (from bad experiences with i3). Hopefully this reply doesn't come off as condescending, cause I had a similar mindset to yours previously before I used bspwm and just wanted to share my experience. Of course in the end, it's pretty much all up to preference, so take this with a grain of salt.
@@neilmehra_ sure, I could keep my shit open. Because obviously when I'm trying to watch my friend's screen on discord, I also want to be looking at my fucking browser taking up half the screen.
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
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 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.
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.
That post should be titled "Why I don't like i3"
And this video should be titled something along the lines why some people don't like i3. Though I see why people wouldn't click that title
Because it sound like an intel product
I3 is one of favorite TWMs out there.
I see its click bait
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).
That WM-Club you are talking about, is a balloon overblown with fake elitism XD
I hate these fucking cults with a passion. Another example of gatekeeping is in the Vim club. NO, you don't need to use HJKL on Vim, you can configure arrow keys. If you use your mouse it's a lot better to use the arrows.
which one should I use as a newbie and stick to for life?
@@MASTER-zy2sv i3
@@MASTER-zy2svHyprland
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.
You will never see a video anywhere of somebody using a tiling window manager with any workflow other than a bunch of terminal windows.
It works fine. You can have a overlayed tiling with all your windows being fullscreen and switch to some other layout when needed. You can have a layout for documents like 1/3 2/3 with the main one having a sane aspect ratio and secondary one being some auxiliary windows. You can have overlapping 2/3 2/3 windows for switching between apps. You can have whatever layouts you want and quickly switch between them instead of doing alt-tab, with your windows quickly resizing accordingly
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.
A lot of windows oriented applications "do their own tiling" by having a bunch of side panels and things integrated into their main window. Trying to fit that sort of program in less than the full screen is usually an excercise in frustration, especially if your monitor isn't bigger than FullHD.
You'd think with increasing resolutions over the years we would have taken advantage of the extra space, but instead we just made the whitespace bigger. :(
9:19 Definitely rings true despite so many people insisting that you need to use C (the language equivalent of the UK nowadays) + Linux or else you're not a "real programmer".
@@SimGunther Language equivalent of the UK? What?
@Zaydan Naufal What if we just become EMACS itself? What if this is the next step towards evolution of humans?
@@Schultz3 The "Vim" would like to have a word with you. I
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.
Your point isn't valid at all cause at least some tilling window managers allow to dynamically set the workspace you're in to tile or float, making it default for every window that is being opened there. I use Android Studio all the time with dwm.
The reason for this video is exactly that, many people don't know how to use and the capabilities of twm. A twm, in many cases, is exactly the same as a non twm environment but with twm capabilities.
I use Android studio on i3 and it's fine, popups are floating by default
@@evol777 My experience with that is that the floating environments in these tend to suck, especially if you still want some tiling capabilities. Then it is way better to get a floating WM that has some tiling. So my point still stands.
@@chunye215 then maybe the situation has changed for Android Studio since last time I tested it which admittedly was a couple of years ago. But as I literally pointed out, Android studio was just an example of the kinds of problems I had with tiling and not in any way unique to Android Studio, so just because this one program suddenly got better doesn't invalidate my general experience.
@@tordjarv3802 for example, awesomewm behaves just like any other floating window manager and many people use it as such + tiling capabilities if needed.
You're discarding all tilling window managers cause of your (lack of) experience.
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.
I aggree and disaggree. There are other Videos offering GREAT explanations at detailed length.
Problem is just, that you don't watch a 1+ hour Video explaining tiling video managers, if you kinda just wanna see what it's all about, right? Well, I'm not, and most people aren't either; those Videos are probably only useful if you wanna dive deeper.
Which is why I find this Video great as well. No big fuzz. Just what is a Tiling Manger, how it works, what types there are. All in
who us
@@puncherinokripperino2500 me, i'm us
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.
Qtile is epic
one of the best tiling window managers to date
But here's the thing, you can have it behave with all the windows fully floating like full desktop environments. you can even have it as a default and just let it tile things when you like with a simple press.
It's all up to you and that's the point.
@@ghosthunter0950 Yes. Only problem with mixing floating and tiling application windows is, that the tiled one in the background most likely get overlapped. So either every window on the current group should be tiled or all of them are floating. With the exception of dialogs and such.
Qtile supports different layouts for each workspace/group, including floating. One could setup specific groups to be floating by default and run all those applications that needs to at this place.
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...
I feel this on a deep level. I recently started using Enlightenment DE but on tiling mode. This way you get the benefits of kde (well, somewhat), as well as the benefits of tiling WM's.
Ive found it to be a good balance. Though, enlightenment does have a vastly different feeling to KDE but, i think it strikes a nice balance myself.
Hmm, I know someone who has just replaced kwin with compiz. In fact, we shouldn't forget that wm are not de
You guys realize you don't have to do a full rice customized polybar kind of setup, right?
Just install the XFCE or MATE release of your favorite distro then install i3 on top of that. i3 is just a WM. It can replace the WM for many DE's.
But I suppose now I'm showing what I spent every second weekend doing, eh?
@@techmouse. cool but if i run into a single issue then it'll be annoying so i wont be doing that
@@bruderdasisteinschwerermangel The PC market has always been rife with issues. How did you get this far without ever experiencing any?
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
Exactly. Key words, if your workflow rely entirely in the terminal.
For the terminal tiling without mouse I just use one terminal window with tmux.
Desktop icons, system tray, firefox pop out player working properly
Somehow, somewhere along the way, users of all kinds forgot the part where PC stands for _personal_ computer. -_-
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.
I tried using a few tiling window managers, but I've always come back to just usong a floating one. I think to me a desktop is exactly that. Just like in real life I'm kind of disordered and have my files and papers and such overlapping. For me a floating windowing system captures that. Most of them feel like using tmux for everything. While that's not the worst I've yet to find a compelling reason to switch.
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.
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.
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.
You could always use Pop!_Shell, a GNOME extension that turns it into a tiling WM.
@@linuxsbc i love pop shell, literally the perfect compromise between wm and de
*for me
@@linuxsbc Thanks for the recommendation, will check it out!
There are more tiling extensions for gnome. You can those on gnome extension site.
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.
Yeah, this is the way. It also makes having only a small laptop screen a non-issue
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.
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
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 always find it fascinating to see people who aren't programmers using Linux and for such a long period of time. Back then things were a lot less settled and for some it was still rather difficult to get it working. I would assume by your ID that you're an author, and if I'm correct in that assumption I'm curious what programs you use to write with? Do you use LaTeX?
@@anon_y_mousse LyX
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.
I bwlievw most if not all desktop enviromenta have these, I use them frequently on Plasma and on Windows.
Well, for simple tiling and remembering of window placements i just use 2 gnome extensions and am good with that. Idk, i tried tiling WMs before, but remembering all the shortcuts and be truly efficient in using them is a hassle to me (that why i never fully got into modal editing either, my brain is just too dumd to remember every single all of this). Yes, mouse is "usable" in tiling WMs, but much less than in non-WM ones, and I'm not using my mouse a lot per se, but i do use my touchpad for custom gestures and all that very frequently. Idk if those are possible in i3 and friends.
The ability to move windows between screens and workspaces is baked into the vast majority of desktop environments.
On my GNOME laptop I use the workspace matrix and a tiling extension , with almost every function disabled on the latter of course. The only reason I have that is to be able to snap my windows on any edge or corner of the screen that I want with the simple press of a few keys. For some reason, GNOME decided to limit that feature to just left and right edges by default. GNOME's activities menu is pretty good to shift focus quickly as well, at least until you start having 10 or more windows open on one screen. Then it just kind of gets tedious. Honestly, I'd love to be able to shift focus relative to my current active window with a modifier+arrow key to just change over to neighboring windows on my display.
(If I sound like I'm fanboying over GNOME, I'm really not. It's just the best environment for productivity that I've found for a laptop. I will never use it on my desktop again.)
@@vitluk FWIW, among Unix folks it's common to dislike this "control every app with vi-like keybindings" stuff(and vi itself) for exactly the reasons you state. Perhaps Rob Pike's "brain is just too dumb"?
How dare you be a Linux RUclipsr, while not being a hyper-dogmatic zealot?
Honestly it's refreshing.
Got to spice it up a bit
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.
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.
Bismuth is pretty good, especially when they updated it to have separate keybinds in the shortcuts menu. I switched to an actual TWM due to the limitation of Kwin not handling workspaces per monitor, but instead all monitors switching to the new workspace. Although, this is only something you feel with multi-monitors.
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.
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.
For me it doesn’t really matter since I use different workspaces if I have more than 3 windows.
@@vawvaw7084 That seems to be what most people do, but most people also seem to roll with multiple 1080p monitors. When you have a single 32" 4k monitor, you probably have more windows loaded in a workspace.
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.
People also use multiple workspaces.
1 - Moving the head and refocusing is slower than switching layouts or workspaces. Unless you're literally watching all monitors at the same time, like a security guard or something, it's pointless.
2 - moving the mouse to the title is also slow. You should be able to set up some faster shortcuts like pressing an auxiliary mouse button and scrolling while the cursor is anywhere within the window or the window is focused. But generally, shading is inferior to minimizing
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"
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.
qtile does the same thing, but without the Haskell.
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.
Thanks for talking about autotiling, i try to switch from Awesomewm to Sway and it was quite unconfortable to adapt without dynamic tiling.
i came across this video as i have been experimenting with bspwm for a month, being primarily a Xfce user and unsure if i want to make a switch.
the bspwm adventure seems cool in the aspect that when you install and configure it on a barebones distro like Debian, Arch or even EndeavourOS, you have the full control on what's on your system.
but it's also a curse - you have to configure everything in order to survive, while in the DE you can just blast a different theme, change panel layout, maybe change a few apps and still call it a day.
hell, maybe it's just not for me... but still, it's been much fun
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).
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.
I started using MacOs for my new job and am deeply frustrated with windows management and tiling on Mac. I am coming from Pop_OS! and love the tiling, works spaces and windows management shortcuts on their gnome version.
@@rafaelagd0 Interesting. I find them very similar. Gnome Activities is like Mission Control on Mac, Mac Desktops = Gnome Workspaces, etc.
If you haven't already, I recommend familiarizing yourself with Mac OS trackpad gestures and/or keyboard shortcuts. Are you using an external mouse? If so, ideally it's a mouse with "gesture" buttons that you can configure to simulate gestures. It works fairly well, but not as well as the trackpad. Mac also has "hot corners" with which you can trigger certain actions by flinging your mouse curser to a corner of the desktop.
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.
You can have a webpage open and your word document side by side and quickly adjust ratio by switching layouts. You can have a browser and note taking app. Excel in particular resizes perfectly and it's much more convenient to switch sizes with predefined shortcuts instead of juggling the window handles and sizes and positions
And you don't have to tile everything. Have some foundation with necessary windows tiled and the rest float on top, no problem
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.
Virtual desktops in i3 are what makes me hate using Windows so much. I like having most of my windows maximized, or maybe having two of them, but in Windows virtual desktops are so useless that I always have to change which windows I want to have on screen and often even search for them. Meanwhile in i3 I have the first desktop always be my browser, sometimes with a little console or something I need to enter stuff I read on the browser into. On the second one I have my terminals, on the third and fourth I have a layout for tasks I am working on at the moment (IDE, photo editor, you name it) and finally 9 is always where my communication takes place with discord etc.
I can switch between those layouts super quickly (super+1-0, super being my caps lock key which is disabled for everything ecvept that) and everything is just where I left it. So easy!
This is even more relevant on a small laptop screen of course. I basically have 10 times the screen real estate
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.
I agree. Floating window managers are much more flexible than a pre-determined layout (or even manual tiling, which is so labourous). I rather have my windows stack and just use Alt-Tab to bring the desired window in focus. Way simpler.
@@undernet731 yup and I use multiple desktops if I need to de-clutter stuff. I don't think tiling is bad just not for me.
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.
Yeah, I fully agree. For me it's mostly that the i3 way of super+1-0 for selecting the exact desktop I want right now is just so superior. Sure I could make this work in other DEs somehow, but in i3 it just works. There's a few more important shortcuts that just keep me on i3, but how virtual desktops work is really the biggest reason.
Seriously. It's all ricers trying to convince themselves that they've got a better reason.
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 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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
i wanted to switch to a wayland twm, but i was confused as to which to try
if hyprland is good, i will take a look at iy
You missed the thing that is, in my opinion, the biggest selling point for tiling window managers. The combination of workspaces and window rules. My use of xmonad has very little to do with actually tiling windows and much, much more to do with organizing my work. Common apps are all pinned to start on the same workspaces, and the use of super + [1-9] makes it so easy to switch between workspaces that having almost every app on a different workspace is not an issue. DMW has a feature where you can show two "workspaces", called tags in DWM, on screen at the same time. I do miss that in my use of xmonad, but it's not a big deal since I can throw the desired window to another workspace. In my opinion, the OP of the reddit post you're referencing would do well to assign things to workspaces and take advantage of that instead of having everything on his monitor at the same time. When you figure out how to leverage workspaces in tiling window managers, it's very difficult to go back to "traditional" environments. I find alt-tab to be annoying, for example, because I'm used to knowing exactly what workspace my windows are on and jumping there in a single keybind.
Re: mouse avoidance
The way I have things set up, using the mouse is often slower than using a hotkey. Sure, sometimes using the mouse is nice, but the number of cases where that's true for me is limited to repeat copy/paste actions across different form fields in a website, and extensive scrolling through any sort of text.
Fun fact, the dwm tags are impossible to implement in xmonad because of how window state is stored, window can be mapped only to one workspace. I remember that one of the core devs said that it's because stackset uses zipper as it's data structure and it was one of the worst decisions, because it makes things inflexible. Now it cannot be changed because it would break everything. Too bad because I miss that tags feature. Maybe when (if) there will be wayland equivalent of xmoand it will be possible.
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 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 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.
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.
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.
Definitely interested in checking out a window manager. I prefer KDE plasma over Gnome everytime. Currently on Endeavor OS
Well, never tried tiling managers but I still dont get it. Whats so good about them when you have virtual desktops and window snapping shortcuts on regular desktops
If all you do is use terminal windows, and for some reason you need twelve of them open at the same time, then tiling WMs seems to be working well for those users. I think those users fail to understand that the vast majority of people don't have that sort of workflow.
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 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.
my personal experience is that you just don't get that much extra efficiency from using most applications side by side. I just use all my applications fullscreen and have a keyboard shortcut for switching to the ones I want. if I want to compare things in two applications I might put them side by side, but its really not that common that I feel I need that. cramming two/three applications side by side works okay 90% of that time but the other 10% is more than its worth for me usually.
There are a variety of programs that I never want to be less than half the width and/or height of my screen. So no matter what your window manager, having multiply of these on screen at the same time will not show you everything you want to see.
Back when I used floating window managers, I would just maximize/fullscreen these all the time. Managing them is just too much of a hassle.
I can very easily see how somebody could try out a tiling window manager, then see there's no way to address this problem, and then lose interest.
But the most sensible workaround I've found is tabbing windows. I may have a text file on the left third of my screen, then on the right, I would have a spreadsheet and a web browser tabbed, taking up 2/3rds of the width.
This was pretty much my default layout for my laptop using i3 for a number of years. I've been using my multi-monitor desktop more recently, so I often have my vertical monitor stacking applications vertically, while my horizontal monitor is either side by side or tabbed.
I find it funny that someone learning Linux for the first time would expect to *have* to use a tiling manager -- I have used Linux for years, and I've been somewhat mostly satisfied with using KDE.
But I have also been using Tmux for years, and have recently come to believe I *ought* to use a tiling manager for that reason -- and because I want more stability with windows and desktop-switching -- and I've wanted to have more flexibility than "Must have window only one or on all of the desktops, no in-between" -- so I've been trying to come to terms with Awesome WM. So far, though, I haven't had the time I need to set up a lot of the stuff (like power management, etc) that come "out of the box" with KDE.
Thus, I really appreciate this video: it gives me a better understanding of what to expect with a tiling manager! (Even if I already knew some of this going in -- and even though I probably already *intuitively* knew some of this stuff, via my use of Tmux.)
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).
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.
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
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.
You might like the Pop OS tiler for gnome, its actually a pretty great tiler that you can just tun on/off at will within gnome.
@@nomadtrails Thanks, but I don't like tiling in Gnome. I don't think the two things go well together. I use a Tilix instead just for terminals.
@@nomadtrails Do you need the Pop OS distro in order to run the Pop OS tiler? Or can I install the Pop OS tiler on any system that's using Gnome?
@@pattmayne I haven't tried it myself but I was under the impression that you can. The "cosmic" desktop from Pop OS is essentially just a set of gnome extensions and a theme, and the tiler is one of those extensions.
I used i3 for a while, then decided standalone WMs weren't for me. I used KDE with Krohnkite for a while, then when I discovered the overview effect I lost all interest in using a tiler.
Windows 10 added tiling, and I still haven't gotten used to accidentally holding the Windows key instead of Ctrl when doing some actions with the arrow keys, and it keeps tiling my current window somewhere. It's a mistake I didn't know how often I made until they bound an action to it. Now it's annoying. I'm sure tiling would be more use to me if I didn't have a 43-inch 4K monitor and a 23-inch 1080p monitor besides it, but with my usage I just look for ways to disable that.
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.
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.
With the amount of empty space in a lot of modern programs, I feel like the biggest barrier to adopting a tiling wm for most people has nothing to do with the tiling wm.
If I were to switch, most of my windows would be filled by cut-off toolbars, only leaving like a fraction of the space for the actual content.
Tiling WMs only really make sense for workflows that are heavy on using lots of terminal windows. Which is a niche of a niche.
@@fakecubed That's not actually true, though. Or rather, it is, but only because controls in modern GUI apps are oversized and don't scale well. And in the case of GNOME apps, they have clientside decorations.
If most GUI apps used the space they need instead of all the space they have, and stopped blindly assuming the space they have is the entire screen, tiling workflows with graphical apps would be quite viable.
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've considered playing with tiling window managers, this has been very informative! Thanks dude
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...
It seems like wms become popular because a lot of linux e-celebs started using them. I can tell you that I started using i3 and later dwm because of Luke Smith. Though I was always too lazy to create a decent config and when things were "good enough" I stopped doing anything with my setup. For example I didn't cared enough to google how to make my laptop keys for volume usable for months because I already knew how to change the volume from the terminal so I was like "eh...". A lot of people talk about being "more productive" but I think thats a lie that poeople tell themselfs. Now I'm using kde and I'm happier than ever.
Linux "e-celebs" tend to be those who use a lot of terminal windows at the same time. Which is not a typical use case for Linux. I'd bet that a majority of all Linux desktop users don't even use a single terminal window in their typical day, including the reddit poster that started this whole discussion.
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.
You obviously prefer dynamic tilers, but I don't think you should portray it as simply the best. For me, a manual or hybrid tiler is much more efficient because I can put windows in any position whenever I want. For example, I might want Firefox in one corner, two terminals side by side in another corner, two file managers side by side in a third corner, and a text editor in the last corner. With a dynamic tiler, while this may be possible, you would need to edit the config files to create your own layout, and even then you wouldn't be able to easily make some small modification to the current layout. I see why you prefer dynamic tilers, but they're not unambiguously the best as you said they were.
I think manual tilers have there place for some people but for the average user who isn't as concerned with window splitting dynamic is just more convenient
Honestly I've been quite happy with the workspace and tile management built into Linux Mint.. I've set my keyboard shortcuts up so that i can navigate my windows and workspaces with just my arrow keys.
Yes it's manual, but i don't work with 16 identical terminals, i need more dynamic control over where the tiles go within each workspace.
Brodie: "You're not participating in a cult, you're just using a computer"
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 😂🎉❤
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 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.
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.
That's not specific to tilers but a lot of them do that
@@BrodieRobertson Ah. Wow. So there are Desktop Environments that supports having separate workspaces on separate screens. Didn't know that. I have done some research browsing through forums on the topic but haven't yet come across anyone recommending a DE that can do that - at least not out of the box. As I said - the main reason I'm using a tiling WM is because I thought that you couldn't find that feature in DE's.
@@BrodieRobertson I also use a tiling window manager because I've believed that you couldn't get separate workspaces on separate monitors out of the box using any desktop environment. Are you saying that is not the case? Do you know of any desktop environment that provides that as a standard feature?
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've never tried tiling on an ultrawide but I'd be curious to see how it goes
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'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 use a manual tiler (i3), i don't think it's less efficient.
Most of the time there is no need to choose a size or direction at all, so i almost never do.
Just press the button for the window to come up and that's it.
Up to 3 windows just go side by side and 4+ is just clutter anyway, no matter how you arrange it automatically or not.
As for the mouse, if you are a programmer it really kills your speed and comfort.
Because you type with two hands locked to homerow.
Doing some tasks with the mouse is not bad but having to go to the mouse and come back for the keyboard is chore.
I know you use a 27" monitor, but I wonder if tiling is LESS efficient when you have a 43" screen? I often drag what I am currently using directly in front of myself and move other stuff randomly around.
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
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).
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.
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.
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.
It's not just the tiling per se.
1. TWMs are usually more keyboard centric.
2. Many tiling WMs offer a lot of customization and extensibility.
If you don't like or need those, tiling WMs are prob not for you.
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.
These are all false dichotomies afaiac, but maybe that's just me. When I know I want to be _in the zone_ on a project I'll login to awesomewm. When I'm shooting the breeze or "writing poetry" (aka. python scripting or LaTeX composition) I'll use xfce4 session which has basic tiling capability (Meta-arrow keys, etc.). People should not be taught to hard submit/commit to B&D. Choosing the desktop to suit your mood or current work is like having a meta workspace.
I don't think most people need to tile on their personal rigs
also tiling window managers donot seem like a good choice for small screens like 14inc laptops . Also if you want to give your laptop to someone else in your family to send a mail what are they going to do? learn to use computer? that is why i generally prefer de like experience
I use a tiler so that people don't use my computer
my issue with tiling window managers is that the "disordered" floating layout, with windows laying over each other, is how I prefer to work. I like just being able to swap tasks without closing out all of my old windows, it lets me pop open discord to open a call and talk with someone without having to save my work in whatever I'm doing, it lets me run a game without having to worry about my text editor being open still, etc.
It's just a hell of a lot easier for the things that I want to use to just, be in front of me, and the other stuff sort of just gets replaced. The ONE issue I've had with linux though, honestly, is that I can't use the windows key (super key, metakey, whatever) along with arrow keys to do impromptu tiling. One thing I used to do constantly with windows is just fling windows around my monitors with windows right right up, and boom now it's on my other monitor. The first right tiles it to the right side of my screen, the second right tiles it to the left of my second screen, and the up maximizes it. I can rapidly reposition windows in a way which is generally effective without HAVING to use my mouse. Maybe there is some way to replicate this, but even with me primarily using KDE which is pretty customizable, I haven't found any way to easily configure similar functionality.
Yeah, you just need to find the function you want in the shortcut settings and set a custom shortcut key. If it's already used it'll warn you and you can delete the old or go reconfigure that one too. I've got keys to push apps to whatever desktop I want, and I've got 12 desktops so each one revolves around a function key.
Not really sure why ur saying tiling window managers mean you have to close everything to open another app (in fact isn't this the opposite of a tiling window manager?..). I can open discord whenever I want and have it sent to a pre-specified desktop, or open League in the next empty desktop on my main monitor, saving me the trouble of deleting all my tabs on my current main monitor desktop. This also allows for easy and meaningful organization of windows. Going back to my League example, I often have firefox open on my main monitor, and with League open on the next empty main monitor desktop, switching between the two is virtually the same as that "windows" like experience of alt-tabbing, if not even cleaner since League belongs to a separate desktop. I really recommend checking out bspwm + sxhkd, changed my negative view of tiling managers (from bad experiences with i3). Hopefully this reply doesn't come off as condescending, cause I had a similar mindset to yours previously before I used bspwm and just wanted to share my experience. Of course in the end, it's pretty much all up to preference, so take this with a grain of salt.
sounds like you never used tiling, nor modify keyboard shortcuts in a DE..
@@neilmehra_ sure, I could keep my shit open. Because obviously when I'm trying to watch my friend's screen on discord, I also want to be looking at my fucking browser taking up half the screen.
@@ionut9672 may want to get your ears checked then bud
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
gnome gestures is literally the thing that made me never want to go back to windows there
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.
Good video, thank you, I've been thinking of trying i3 for about a week and this explains better than most out there.
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.
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.