I only tried a tiling WM for a few days several years ago. I am ok using the terminal but not everything can be done easily there. In the screenshots of people setups, there are always fancy terminals. Are tiling WM good also for other GUI a part from terminals?
- a big feature of tiling window managers is the auto-placement / auto-adjustment / auto-sizing of windows to fit available space
- their main focus is always having everything visible (nothing hidden behind overlaps)
- and most of them take advantage of having a good set of keybinds so everything can be keyboard driven rather than half-and-half with a mouse
- before jumping feet first into tiling window managers, get an easy introduction with
- Pop Shell – an extension that adds tiling features to Gnome
- PaperWM adds linear tiling to Gnome
- Material Shell – focusing on a more grid based workspace model
- DistroTube argued that the killer feature of tiling window managers is the workspaces, not the tiling
- check through the hotkeys of your current window manager – you won’t get the full dynamic features of a tiling window manager, but most of them have keys for snapping windows to top-half, bottom-half, left-half, right-half (as well as sometimes offering by quarter as well)
what’s so special about workspaces in tiling wms compared to other options?
DistroTube argued that the killer feature of tiling window managers is the workspaces, not the tiling
non-tiling window managers can also have different workspaces, or even DEs such as KDE Plasma. IIRC even Windows has those (although with inconvenient keybindings imo)
I think they’re talking about the tandem of tiling and workspaces, as usually you can customize your tiling per-workspace. Some TWMs have tags instead of workspaces, making it even better.
- a big feature of tiling window managers is the auto-placement / auto-adjustment / auto-sizing of windows to fit available space
I use a tiling WM for everything. Libreoffice, games, Firefox/Chromium, file managers, etc. It all works and it is a great way to handle multiple monitors.
I don’t have extensive experience, but I have been using the tiling in pop os consistently for a year and have really found it to improve my productivity and oganization on tasks I need many windows open for. Its not perfect and I’m starting to consider looking for options that give me more layout control, but was an excellent first option. It has a toggle right in the task bar to switch between windows or tiling, but once I spent an hour learning the keyboard shortcuts for the filing, the windows mode just feels so slow to set up good layouts in.
I like to use qutebrowser for web browsimg, it allows to browse the web without leaving the keyboard
It can be used for other stuff. I use dwm and find that on occasion some programs aren’t nice in dwm or don’t work well. So, i suggest having both a tiling and a floating.
dwm has a tiling layout in any case, and most TWMs do too, so there’s no real reason to leave your TWM, even if you need/want foating windows.
Yes, I’m using swaywm right now and I’m typing this comment on Firefox.
Although most (if not all) tiling window managers are configured with a text editor, not a settings program.
Yes. It’s a window manager, not tmux.
Not at all. I use a tiling WM, and most of my time is spent in text editors or a browser. I just like having everything visible and spaced out automatically for me.
I think tiling WMs just have a lot of overlap with the terminal-heavy crowd. They tend to require some manual set up, and they tend to be very keyboard shortcut heavy. Both things also popular with people that tend to like using terminals.
Also keep in mind most screenshots advertising someone’s set up are to show off, not their regular workflow. It’s like looking at someone’s professional head-shots and wondering if they usually dress like that.