Are Tiling Window Managers Just a Waste of Time?
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- Опубликовано: 26 июл 2024
- Are tiling window managers making you more productive or are you just wasting time endlessly configuring dotfiles? Let's find out and see if tiling window managers are really worth the trouble or not...
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![Young Nudy - John Wayne (feat. Metro Boomin) [Official Video]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/NY8HnYYo2fo/mqdefault.jpg)
"if you're watching this video you probably waste lots of time playing video games, watching videos, browsing social media"
And I took that personally.
You also can port that WM to multiple distribution. You can save the config to a cloud and literally install from nothing to a complete environment in minutes. Save what packages to install, copy over the config and walla you're done. Not to mention you can make it work the way you want! I never consider these things a waste. Guess you could look at it like a wood worker, once you learn the basics you can build everything you can imagine. Knowledge is NEVER a waste of time.!!
> from nothing to a complete environment in minutes
you mean, from nothing to a PRODUCTIVE WORKING environment in HOURS, right? right?
> I never consider these things a waste
would be a huge waste if you HAVE to ALWAYS try another twms just to STAY RELEVANT as koolkids around unixpron basement dwellers :)
bottom line is, tinkering in front of your monitor 24/7 is JUST a hobby, not even a productive goal everyone should try or learn.
@@NickDyers Sure. If I have a VM (VMWare, KVM, Virtual box) that I run in a WM I can easily attach to that VM directory and start being productive without issue. I am talking about all your window settings, configs etc. I never said that I didn't have a Windows VM or other productive tools. In fact, I'm not JUST a linux geek. I use Apple, WIndows and Linux to be productive. Window managers conserve resources for more useful tasks, also HOT Keys can be very useful for moving about. I can have 3 VM's running Windows, Mac OS and Linux servers and in different wokspaces switching about easily.
Computers are a Hobby for me and I also make my living with them. With Windows being my biggest income because of the issues it has most the time. I have been playing/working on computers probably before you were born. So I'm past the hobby only stage, and I will continue to use whatever tools and OS's that make things fun and PRODUCTIVE.
@@ravenstone01 your story truly makes my eyes watery 😢
still doesnt covered the fact though:
twms need HOURS to ready from nothing to a PRODUCTIVE WORKING environment.
A story from 1% nerd of total computer users demographic won't make twms worth people's valuable time to WASTE for :)
@@NickDyers days*
i3 so far as i know is the least waste of time. you can even install a panel such as lxpanel to make it even easier to use. what i really like about tiling wms is their convenient shortcuts such as just pressing Win Key + mouse drag to resize a window instead of putting your cursor to the border edge of the window (which gets frustrating a lot of time).
i spent several hours configuring dwm adding features such as systray, gaps, etc. only to have it be unstable (crashes sometimes) but it was fun lmao.
I kept hearing about how great tiling window managers are so I gave Arco AwesomeWM a try. It was excellent for a distro with Awesome, but what a nightmare. I've used KDE Plasma for years. I do not do "work" on my computers, they are a beloved and passionate hobby so I could not care less about "maximizing productivity". I view the desktop as an art form. Plasma is a work DaVinci would love. Tiling window managers would be in a George Orwell movie.
I should add there are some prebuilt set ups you can copy from. For example opensuse has a config for sway which I copied the volume and brightness keys from.
I actually use sway because I need wayland for mixed dpi, gnome doesn't have server side decorations, and KDE had some crashing issues.
And honestly the fact that you can just float windows means that tiling wm is basically always better unless you want desktop icons, but that can just be solved by opening file manager to desktop on a workspace.
I have been using tiling window managers for a year. Complete waste of time.
long time no see. so which window manager do you use at the very moment?
Thanks! Will definitely be uploading more frequently now. I use bspwm, and haven't seen much reason to change yet. I might try out some other ones but I'm pretty happy with my current setup.
Honestly the only reason I have ever used a tiling WM is just to learn about it for fun. I just don't get the whole tiling thing, both KDE and GNOME are easily useable just with a keyboard and their in-built tiling features are simple and effective.
The customization is an another thing, which is a problem especially for GNOME but I think that you can still do a lot with KDE and even then If any time in the future I were to decide that I want a bare bones WM to build my own DE upon I would choose a stacking WM like Openbox.
I really think that most of the tiling WM apologists just can't use a DE. I see it everytime some Linux youtuber who uses a tiling WM as his main uses a distro with a DE in a VM or something and starts clicking around application menus searching for the application they want like they are using Windows 98. All DEs I used have a great searching system where you just press the Super key and search like you would with Dmenu but it's even better since they can even search through the settings and 99.9% of the time I find what I'm looking for fast and easy.
I respect that many people have a better experience with tiling WMs but I just don't get it.
I feel the same, im just curios and will test some out but this idea that it is "superior" is supremely subjective and not a universal truth. For work I have windows which there is no option to change which is fine. At home I run linux and its for gaming and media, so from that end a TWM does nothing for me except make me add extra steps.
I like the idea because its a thing to learn, break, fix and understand but for everyday use, it wouldn't do anything for me and the one argument I see that is hyperbole is this idea that the mouse is just so sluggish and ineffective in comparison. This makes me think of the horrible infomercials where the person fucks up a simple task and the voice chimes in "Don't you wish there was a better way". I don't know who these people are but its not that difficult....if that's the preference then yup I understand that's why it's a preference but to act as if everyone should just ditch there DE for a TWM is just nonsense. And as we know many Linux users love speaking in absolutes and stating X,y,z is the definitive "best"
I really like TWMs since i am fairly new but I plan on sticking with bspwm and dwm. I agree that it is an investment set things up then learn the shortcuts and after things will go smoothly(that's the plan atleast).
That's basically what's happened for me, so sounds like a good plan!
I'm one of the people who can't see anyway going back to a normal floating DE. It's probably because I can set my system nearly exactly the way I want it including the key bindings. For me, because I can do a lot with keyboard keys the way I think they should be instead of some other developer's idea of how it should be.
If:
1. You're on windows
2. You love vim and hate using mouse
Use workspacer.
Arco Linux has preconfigured ISOs for all the WM.
After using dwm I don’t know how I’d go back.
i liked the perspective ..
Yes
- Xah Lee
A tiling Window Manager makes working on multiple programs at the same time easier, because windows are put side by side. Instead of using your mouse to go tho the window you need and click on it to give it focus, you use a few keybindings and your window has focus.
To the persons who think that it sounds horrible to them I want to say that setting up your window manager (WM) is like setting up your car to be able to have a smooth ride. You have to check oil, put in gas, check tire pressure, adjust your seat, do maintenance etc, etc. You have to do all these things to have a car that is productive for you. The same goes for WM's. You have to set up to be able to be productive.
Almost all my windows are maximized on GNOME, and I switch between them with alt tab. I know through muscle memory how many times I have to press tab so I can switch between 3 or 4 applications seamlessly and just as fast without wasting space or wasting my time tinkering with my WM.
I didn't need to set up anything to be productive. I was already productive while you were "setting up" your tools.
Buying spaghetti sauce is never as good as what you make yourself.
I never found them productive. The lack of TWMs having a proper settings menu completely eradicates the argument that they save time. Now you have to type all kinds of xorg noodle commands just to change your mouse speed. You have to spend a lot of time learning commands to move around Windows but then have to use the mouse to interact with the things you open. So you waste a ton of time learning stuff that's just easy in any other desktop for barely any gain.
It's a much better investment to just use Gnome or KDE, then learn actually valuable skills like Python or JavaScript. Unless you wanna run Linux on a potato then TWMs serve no real purpose.
How often do you really have to change the settings though, I maybe change settings once a month or so and doing it inside a terminal really takes no time at all once you get used to it
> You have to spend a lot of time learning commands to move around windows but then have to use the mouse to interact with the things you open.
Most TWM users use either TUI/CLI apps or very keyboard centric apps.
I personally use POPos and its tiling feature which serves my purpose. But Qtile is written in python and setting it up and hacking on it would actually be great way to learn python.
I use a twm because it's fun to me
Based
Tiling mangers only make if you are using multiple monitors. Most of the points you raise can be done with a floating windows manager.
save them configs to git repo :D
I really don't like GNOME or KDE
Neither do I to be honest
So basically you put a lot of effort for even having a Bluetooth toggle button or a wifi network chooser or setting up multiple monitors while at the same time marginalizing yourself by ruining normal, stacking desktop environments for you whenever you need to use another machine and making yourself a tiny 0.2% of the already small
i3wm all the way for me
the productivity that you think you gain from a wm is all an illusion. Real productivity comes from actually sitting in your chair and just doing the work. No amount of snaping and having the windows positioned the way you want will really increase that fact. Computers have come a long way to the point that moving and resizing windows don't have annoying stupid bugs and will cause you issues. Majority of people work on one program and maybe two at the most. Just open the program and do the work, simple!
Tiling window managers and "minimalist" computing in general is a massive waste of time. Anything that promotes tinkering instead of getting things done (emacs, vim, linux, I'm looking at you) is a massive waste of time. When you buy a computer, it comes with everything you need to do the things you need to do. If you turn your computer or your phone into a lifestyle, you are wasting your time. And that's that. Do your job. Move on with your life (which should take place OUTSIDE the computer screen).