5 ms·

I'm going to get flak for this but I'll say it anyway: tiling window managers are awful and broken, everybody who uses them on Linux knows it and either doesn't

by md8z 5y ago

I'm going to get flak for this but I'll say it anyway: tiling window managers are awful and broken, everybody who uses them on Linux knows it and either doesn't want to admit it or knows it and doesn't care. I get why they are appealing to programmers, it's alluring to think that you can use a desktop without ever taking your hands off the keyboard, and it's fun to write little scripts to control things. But honestly, everything that can be done with a tiling window manager can be done better with other tools. Yes, they are that broken. They get used because they're a fun little tool for programmers to play with and break and waste time, and not because they have any practical purpose. There are plenty of better computing skills to teach children than this. And before someone accuses me of being a KDE fanboy or GNOME fanboy or something, I used tiling window managers for many years. I've spent countless hours playing around with them and hacking on them. It was a frustrating experience the whole way through and when I look back at the whole thing there was really nothing positive about it. I'm completely serious here, I don't think I would have made this comment back when the article was written but that's all I can say after 9 years of messing around with it. I suppose they are great if you want to introduce your child early on to the classic experience of Linux where everything is controlled entirely through arcane and badly document config files and keyboard shortcuts, and lots of things just randomly don't work. If you are a person who works on these things or wants to teach them to children, in my opinion your time would be better spent elsewhere.

aneutron 5y ago
I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken". 1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken". 2nd of all, I've used i3 plenty, and the amount of power it gives me when I'm working is immense. I no longer need to alt+tab 7 times to get to the terminal for the monitoring servers, I always know they're on screen 4. I need my web browser ? I know it's in screen 2. Heck, I can pin apps, and even screens to specific monitors. When I'm working on an incident, my throughput is basically multiplied by 3 as a result of how streamlined my work environment is. That is simply not possible with other environment where the mouse is the main device. Yes you have virtual desktops, but try having 15 open terminals without having them pinned in some form. Just a simple swipe to the corner and your GPU will heat-up from the 3D acceleration required to show all the windows :D All-in-all, I genuinely believe that tiling wms are an amazing godsend, but for my use case. And I cannot emphasize this enough. It's a personal preference. Yes it's a bit of a pain to set up (although I literally used a two-part youtube video to set up i3, and never touched it again, not even need the Arch wiki), but if you don't have to tinker in your configuration are you really running linux :D
- laumars 5y ago
  > I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken". 1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken". People in IT love to declare their subjective experience as objective scientific fact. I don’t know if it’s because they’re taught that the industry is a science (albeit computer science) or if it’s just their inability to disable their analytical part of the brain but you see the same bullshit posts all the time from programming language debates, $SHELL preferences, desktop environments, operating systems, etc. IT engineers arguing other mundane preferences are as old as vi and emacs.
  - md8z 5y ago
    I am not talking about this as a preference, I think they are actually a fundamentally flawed design. This is my experience from using it for a long period of time and talking to hundreds of people about this and reading probably in the thousands of github issues and comments where the various bugs pop up. Is there some other better way you know of to identify issues like this? If so I would like to know. Otherwise it is somewhat specious to say that I don't know what I'm talking about. How long to I have to deal with bugs in this stuff before my opinions don't get handwaved away as bullshit?
    - jeromenerf 5y ago
      1. There is no single design for “tiling window manager”. Some uses lists, trees, manual tiling… All can be inadequate. 2. The “tiling” part is no longer the only feature, most have floating modes, automation interfaces, … 3. Bugs happen everywhere.
      - md8z 5y ago
        For 1, all of them are inadequate in the same way, because tiling is just not adequate for most use cases. Most desktop apps are not designed for tiling, and the few that work well with it, also work just fine with another system. For 2, if you have to use all those other features, I think that defeats the purpose of it. I can't count the number of configurations I've seen that float the majority of windows. What is the point? I ask people about this and they know it's bad but they just keep on going with it, it's like nobody wants to actually admit it's a problem. I'm sorry if I'm getting worked up about this but it's really frustrating to keep having this same type of conversation over and over again where nobody actually wants to fix any problems. For 3, See above, there are specific bugs here that don't need to exist and could actually be fixed, quite easily I might add, but are purposefully being ignored because people expect it to be that way as part of the design. To me, that's pretty inefficient, and if it can be improved, I'm going to keep calling it out because I think people deserve the help. Maybe that's my character flaw, I don't know.
StreakyCobra 5y ago
> tiling window managers are awful and broken You comment may have been useful if you would have said how and why they are awful and broken. For now it is just a rant without any supporting arguments.
- md8z 5y ago
  I'm sorry, the article does not mention anything specific really so there was nothing I could respond to, I will follow up to a post above though.
nathias 5y ago
What? How are they broken? I can't imagine going back to anything else ... I really never had a better interaction with my computer than with i3.
Gibheer 5y ago
When tiling window managers don't work for you, that is totally fine, but I wouldn't say that they are broken and awful. They all have different trade offs, the same as all the Desktop Environments. I tried a couple tiling window managers many years ago and none was usable in the way I thought how it should work. But instead of investing time to make it work the way I want it, I just switched to the next one and tried that. I think at that time I tried 5 or 6 window managers a day. The one that worked for me at the end was one written by Sean Pringle called Musca. It used relative movement from each window and it made so much more sense than all others. Sadly he dropped it a bit later for another project but herbstluftwm is its successor and it worked for me. My config hasn't actually changed for the last 10 years. There are so many great tools out there we can use for what we want to do. Choose the one you like and works for you. Thats why peoples desks or their work places all look differently. A smith woulnd't talk to a smelter about his setup being awful, because he does a different job.
- md8z 5y ago
  I don't understand your analogy. If a smelter is using something in a bad or inefficient way and a smith is capable of explaining it to them, then that would be beneficial to do so. People do not have to do exactly the same job in the exact same way in order to discuss how a specific tool works. Like you, I went through a period where I tried pretty much every tiling window manager I could find. And I can say with confidence: they are all broken and awful, in part because the very concept of tiling doesn't really work. The design is flawed. It's like you are making a comparison between every jigsaw on the shelf and picking out the best one but are missing that you could get a miter saw and that would work even better for your use case. Does that explain it?
- kaba0 5y ago
  Is musca the one where you divided the screen first, and later could fill specific applications into those areas? I found that pretty cool at the tkme! It could probably work much better with wayland though, because programs often refused to remain in their little borders.
girvo 5y ago
In what way? I found Amethyst on macOS to be extremely useful in bridging the gap between how modern UIs/window management wants to work, and tiling window managers. I'm curious what makes you see them as broken, and whether that's specific to the deeply integrated X-compatible ones?
- md8z 5y ago
  In my opinion, all that stuff on MacOS (Amethyst, Rectangle, Spectacle, etc) is also broken in the same way. Apple's window manager has a built in fullscreen tiling mode that could actually be way better but is currently missing things. I think there are some paid window managers there but I haven't tried them, maybe those are better? I don't know. You can read some of my other comments, but with MacOS it's the same kind of problems, part of it is that the apps don't play nice with it and they can't really be made to do so without breaking things.
rawoke083600 5y ago
You used a "broken system" for 9 years ?
- md8z 5y ago
  Yes, if you think it's stupid, just imagine how I feel...

by md8z 5y ago

aneutron 5y ago

I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken". 1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken". 2nd of all, I've used i3 plenty, and the amount of power it gives me when I'm working is immense. I no longer need to alt+tab 7 times to get to the terminal for the monitoring servers, I always know they're on screen 4. I need my web browser ? I know it's in screen 2. Heck, I can pin apps, and even screens to specific monitors. When I'm working on an incident, my throughput is basically multiplied by 3 as a result of how streamlined my work environment is. That is simply not possible with other environment where the mouse is the main device. Yes you have virtual desktops, but try having 15 open terminals without having them pinned in some form. Just a simple swipe to the corner and your GPU will heat-up from the 3D acceleration required to show all the windows :D All-in-all, I genuinely believe that tiling wms are an amazing godsend, but for my use case. And I cannot emphasize this enough. It's a personal preference. Yes it's a bit of a pain to set up (although I literally used a two-part youtube video to set up i3, and never touched it again, not even need the Arch wiki), but if you don't have to tinker in your configuration are you really running linux :D

laumars 5y ago
> I don't understand how you can objectively qualify a tiling manager as "broken". 1st of all, tiling managers are a matter of personal preference, no wether it's "broken". People in IT love to declare their subjective experience as objective scientific fact. I don’t know if it’s because they’re taught that the industry is a science (albeit computer science) or if it’s just their inability to disable their analytical part of the brain but you see the same bullshit posts all the time from programming language debates, $SHELL preferences, desktop environments, operating systems, etc. IT engineers arguing other mundane preferences are as old as vi and emacs.
- md8z 5y ago
  I am not talking about this as a preference, I think they are actually a fundamentally flawed design. This is my experience from using it for a long period of time and talking to hundreds of people about this and reading probably in the thousands of github issues and comments where the various bugs pop up. Is there some other better way you know of to identify issues like this? If so I would like to know. Otherwise it is somewhat specious to say that I don't know what I'm talking about. How long to I have to deal with bugs in this stuff before my opinions don't get handwaved away as bullshit?
  - jeromenerf 5y ago
    1. There is no single design for “tiling window manager”. Some uses lists, trees, manual tiling… All can be inadequate. 2. The “tiling” part is no longer the only feature, most have floating modes, automation interfaces, … 3. Bugs happen everywhere.
    - md8z 5y ago
      For 1, all of them are inadequate in the same way, because tiling is just not adequate for most use cases. Most desktop apps are not designed for tiling, and the few that work well with it, also work just fine with another system. For 2, if you have to use all those other features, I think that defeats the purpose of it. I can't count the number of configurations I've seen that float the majority of windows. What is the point? I ask people about this and they know it's bad but they just keep on going with it, it's like nobody wants to actually admit it's a problem. I'm sorry if I'm getting worked up about this but it's really frustrating to keep having this same type of conversation over and over again where nobody actually wants to fix any problems. For 3, See above, there are specific bugs here that don't need to exist and could actually be fixed, quite easily I might add, but are purposefully being ignored because people expect it to be that way as part of the design. To me, that's pretty inefficient, and if it can be improved, I'm going to keep calling it out because I think people deserve the help. Maybe that's my character flaw, I don't know.

StreakyCobra 5y ago

> tiling window managers are awful and broken You comment may have been useful if you would have said how and why they are awful and broken. For now it is just a rant without any supporting arguments.

md8z 5y ago
I'm sorry, the article does not mention anything specific really so there was nothing I could respond to, I will follow up to a post above though.

nathias 5y ago

What? How are they broken? I can't imagine going back to anything else ... I really never had a better interaction with my computer than with i3.

Gibheer 5y ago

When tiling window managers don't work for you, that is totally fine, but I wouldn't say that they are broken and awful. They all have different trade offs, the same as all the Desktop Environments. I tried a couple tiling window managers many years ago and none was usable in the way I thought how it should work. But instead of investing time to make it work the way I want it, I just switched to the next one and tried that. I think at that time I tried 5 or 6 window managers a day. The one that worked for me at the end was one written by Sean Pringle called Musca. It used relative movement from each window and it made so much more sense than all others. Sadly he dropped it a bit later for another project but herbstluftwm is its successor and it worked for me. My config hasn't actually changed for the last 10 years. There are so many great tools out there we can use for what we want to do. Choose the one you like and works for you. Thats why peoples desks or their work places all look differently. A smith woulnd't talk to a smelter about his setup being awful, because he does a different job.

md8z 5y ago
I don't understand your analogy. If a smelter is using something in a bad or inefficient way and a smith is capable of explaining it to them, then that would be beneficial to do so. People do not have to do exactly the same job in the exact same way in order to discuss how a specific tool works. Like you, I went through a period where I tried pretty much every tiling window manager I could find. And I can say with confidence: they are all broken and awful, in part because the very concept of tiling doesn't really work. The design is flawed. It's like you are making a comparison between every jigsaw on the shelf and picking out the best one but are missing that you could get a miter saw and that would work even better for your use case. Does that explain it?
kaba0 5y ago
Is musca the one where you divided the screen first, and later could fill specific applications into those areas? I found that pretty cool at the tkme! It could probably work much better with wayland though, because programs often refused to remain in their little borders.

girvo 5y ago

In what way? I found Amethyst on macOS to be extremely useful in bridging the gap between how modern UIs/window management wants to work, and tiling window managers. I'm curious what makes you see them as broken, and whether that's specific to the deeply integrated X-compatible ones?

md8z 5y ago
In my opinion, all that stuff on MacOS (Amethyst, Rectangle, Spectacle, etc) is also broken in the same way. Apple's window manager has a built in fullscreen tiling mode that could actually be way better but is currently missing things. I think there are some paid window managers there but I haven't tried them, maybe those are better? I don't know. You can read some of my other comments, but with MacOS it's the same kind of problems, part of it is that the apps don't play nice with it and they can't really be made to do so without breaking things.

rawoke083600 5y ago

You used a "broken system" for 9 years ?

md8z 5y ago
Yes, if you think it's stupid, just imagine how I feel...