For me, part of it was a touch of OCD about getting windows positioned just right. Especially terminal windows, I had to line them up, get them the same size, e

For me, part of it was a touch of OCD about getting windows positioned just right. Especially terminal windows, I had to line them up, get them the same size, etc. I would spend a lot of time trying to get windows as large as possible, but not overlap, in order to use ALL the space of my monitor(s). I tried out i3 for a while and generally liked it, but was never wizard-like with manipulating my tile stack. I could split horizontally and vertically, and swap around to a degree. Enough to get by and most importantly, line it all up and use all the space. ;) These days, all the systems I use support the 98% use case I had for i3: either full screen, or vertical split (by dragging all the way right or left). I further discovered tmux so I can split a terminal window extra as needed. So, I haven't used i3 in a few years. You mentioned you prefer lots of windows open? I'm 100% the opposite. I only want to see two at a time. At work I have two monitors and one is editor, the other is tmux'ed terminal, both maximized. Browser, maximized on one monitor. Document of some kind (pdf, etc.)? Maximized on the other monitor. At any time I'm selecting which two to see. Chat apps for group communication? I hide those because they are hugely distracting. (I check them now and then when I take a short break). At home I do something similar using virtual desktops, since I only have one monitor: browser in one virtual desktop, ebook or document in another, etc.