4 ms·

He makes some great points and I can relate to most of them, but my god do I love my tiling window manager. There is nothing on earth that would convince me to

He makes some great points and I can relate to most of them, but my god do I love my tiling window manager. There is nothing on earth that would convince me to go back to stacking. IMO, the key thing about tiling window managers is that if you configure it correctly, you always know where everything is, and you're only ever one or two keystrokes (or mouse clicks) away. For example, on my setup, workspace 8 is always Firefox. If I open workspace 8 and Firefox hasn't been launched yet it immediately opens. Workspace 7 is my meassaging app, 6 is discord, 1 is a terminal, and so on. Windows are never hidden behind each other so you never go hunting for anything. There's also a lot of little customization things that make it feel really nice. Like I can hit a hotkey to size a youtube video to a pixel-perfect, borderless 720p window with other windows filling space around it. Or a global hotkey to hide notifications for the next hour. I have a "get focused" hotkey that will lock the screen and require an admin password if I open the browser. TWMs are definitely not for everybody. But for me it removes a ton of frustration that I get with stacking window managers, and it lets me customize my own experience in ways that I find super valuable.

indigodaddy 4y ago
I like what you describe here...! I haven't been in Linux-land for awhile as I got a new Windows 11 laptop recentlyish and haven't put Linux on it yet, and my work laptop is Windows.. But for my new upcoming job they should be sending me a Macbook. Does the latest OS X have a workspace concept? If not is there an free application that can implement workspaces/desktops on OS X?
- uberduper 4y ago
  OSX has a fantastic workspace implementation.
  - indigodaddy 4y ago
    Ah cool found the documentation thanks.. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-in-multiple-spaces-mh14112/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-in-multiple-sp... I never really utilized it at all last time I used a macbook for work.. :/
  - darthrupert 4y ago
    Then I guess I must be a horrible user since I cannot get them to work for me. Whereas I got the tiling paradigm immediately. I think the worst offence is how Mac OS conflates full screen with workspace, and how you cannot (I think?) assign keybindings for instantly (=0ms animation) moving focus and windows to workspace x.
- mikenew 4y ago
  I haven't used macOS as my main OS in a long time, but I think your best bet is https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst Also I highly recommend disabling the "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" in settings. That always felt like it was just randomly sorting my workspaces so that I had to fling them around until I found what I needed.
uberduper 4y ago
I want to like TWMs but they all seem tailored to running single app workspaces on low res screens. I would absolutely love a TWM that let me place/size windows like Spectacle or Rectangle but also _push_ other windows out of the way to maintain a grid and avoid overlapping. Open terminal, use keybind to place in upper right 1/3rd the screen width and 1/2 height. Open slack, hit same keybind, terminal gets pushed left (or down if there's already something to the left). Open browser, hit center 1/3rd 100% height keybind. Pushes terminal left. Focus slack, hit top right keybind again to expand window to 2/3rd width. Pushes browser down to center 1/3rd bottom 1/2. etc.
- mikenew 4y ago
  What you're describing is what tiling window managers do (or at least very close to what you're describing). Neither Spectacle or Rectangle are actually tiling window managers; they're just window snapping tools. I have never tried this (haven't used macos as my main OS in years), but I've heard it works well, and should give you the tiling window experience: https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
  - kergonath 4y ago
    It works very well indeed. No problem either tiling or stacking when I want one or the other.
  - uberduper 4y ago
    I'm a linux desktop user. Today I use pygrid with a couple tweaks to get the Spectacle keybinds. I've used this with gnome and kde and it's fine. I would really like to use it with a wm that supports per-screen workspaces/virtual desktops. As far as I've been able to find, ONLY tiling window managers do this. I've also used sway quite a bit. And i3... and even pop's tiling.. They are nothing, at all, like I've described. I've gone so far as to setup sway to float all windows and created swaymsg keybinds to place/size windows like spectacle but discovered that sway has a bug with focus window up/down/left/right keybinds and floating windows.
candiddevmike 4y ago
What distro/TWM do you use? Do you configure all of this via dotfiles? Do you use multiple monitors?
- mikenew 4y ago
  Arch Linux with Sway, yes and yes. Right now I have a main monitor in front of me and a monitor rotated 90 degrees to landscape on my left for messaging apps or documentation. I can't really speak to the other tiling window managers because I've been using i3 and Sway for years now and never felt any need to switch (i3 and Sway work pretty much the same; Sway is just the more modern Wayland implementation), but browsing r/unixporn is a good place to check out the different setups, and people often post their dotfiles if you want a starting point.
dinvlad 4y ago
This sounds great, actually! I'm personally a fan of maximized windows for most of everything, and would very much like to use something that allows me to pin certain windows to certain workspaces like you describe. Not sure if Windows 11 has something similar (at least, not with native workspaces - they only "remember" certain windows and not others..)

indigodaddy 4y ago

I like what you describe here...! I haven't been in Linux-land for awhile as I got a new Windows 11 laptop recentlyish and haven't put Linux on it yet, and my work laptop is Windows.. But for my new upcoming job they should be sending me a Macbook. Does the latest OS X have a workspace concept? If not is there an free application that can implement workspaces/desktops on OS X?

uberduper 4y ago
OSX has a fantastic workspace implementation.
- indigodaddy 4y ago
  Ah cool found the documentation thanks.. https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-in-multiple-spaces-mh14112/mac https://support.apple.com/guide/mac-help/work-in-multiple-sp... I never really utilized it at all last time I used a macbook for work.. :/
- darthrupert 4y ago
  Then I guess I must be a horrible user since I cannot get them to work for me. Whereas I got the tiling paradigm immediately. I think the worst offence is how Mac OS conflates full screen with workspace, and how you cannot (I think?) assign keybindings for instantly (=0ms animation) moving focus and windows to workspace x.
mikenew 4y ago
I haven't used macOS as my main OS in a long time, but I think your best bet is https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst Also I highly recommend disabling the "Automatically rearrange Spaces based on most recent use" in settings. That always felt like it was just randomly sorting my workspaces so that I had to fling them around until I found what I needed.

uberduper 4y ago

I want to like TWMs but they all seem tailored to running single app workspaces on low res screens. I would absolutely love a TWM that let me place/size windows like Spectacle or Rectangle but also _push_ other windows out of the way to maintain a grid and avoid overlapping. Open terminal, use keybind to place in upper right 1/3rd the screen width and 1/2 height. Open slack, hit same keybind, terminal gets pushed left (or down if there's already something to the left). Open browser, hit center 1/3rd 100% height keybind. Pushes terminal left. Focus slack, hit top right keybind again to expand window to 2/3rd width. Pushes browser down to center 1/3rd bottom 1/2. etc.

mikenew 4y ago
What you're describing is what tiling window managers do (or at least very close to what you're describing). Neither Spectacle or Rectangle are actually tiling window managers; they're just window snapping tools. I have never tried this (haven't used macos as my main OS in years), but I've heard it works well, and should give you the tiling window experience: https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
- kergonath 4y ago
  It works very well indeed. No problem either tiling or stacking when I want one or the other.
- uberduper 4y ago
  I'm a linux desktop user. Today I use pygrid with a couple tweaks to get the Spectacle keybinds. I've used this with gnome and kde and it's fine. I would really like to use it with a wm that supports per-screen workspaces/virtual desktops. As far as I've been able to find, ONLY tiling window managers do this. I've also used sway quite a bit. And i3... and even pop's tiling.. They are nothing, at all, like I've described. I've gone so far as to setup sway to float all windows and created swaymsg keybinds to place/size windows like spectacle but discovered that sway has a bug with focus window up/down/left/right keybinds and floating windows.

candiddevmike 4y ago

What distro/TWM do you use? Do you configure all of this via dotfiles? Do you use multiple monitors?

mikenew 4y ago
Arch Linux with Sway, yes and yes. Right now I have a main monitor in front of me and a monitor rotated 90 degrees to landscape on my left for messaging apps or documentation. I can't really speak to the other tiling window managers because I've been using i3 and Sway for years now and never felt any need to switch (i3 and Sway work pretty much the same; Sway is just the more modern Wayland implementation), but browsing r/unixporn is a good place to check out the different setups, and people often post their dotfiles if you want a starting point.

dinvlad 4y ago

This sounds great, actually! I'm personally a fan of maximized windows for most of everything, and would very much like to use something that allows me to pin certain windows to certain workspaces like you describe. Not sure if Windows 11 has something similar (at least, not with native workspaces - they only "remember" certain windows and not others..)