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Only fairly recently has Linux really seen much development of tiling WMs on top of things like Gnome and KDE. I know some of them can be run on top of XFCE and

by least 4y ago

Only fairly recently has Linux really seen much development of tiling WMs on top of things like Gnome and KDE. I know some of them can be run on top of XFCE and have for a while, but all of them fell similarly janky to ones on MacOS. It's only once you adopt something like i3, dwm, awesome, bspwm, xmonad, etc. that you get something that works as you'd hope in terms of spaces and tiling behavior. The problem is that those window managers (in my opinion) is that they fail to do the basics well. You have to find the individual components like the bar if the WM comes with it and write your own scripts or hopefully find one that someone else wrote to get the things that are built into Gnome and KDE and work out of the box. You gotta set up your own notifications daemon. You need to configure how to launch applications through something like rofi or by configuring keybinds in your config. You need to configure your login windows. It can be enjoyable to a point but it can also just become really frustrating to deal with. I think PopOS' tiling WM built on top of Gnome is pretty good but Gnome itself is frustrating trying to configure. KDE is highly configurable but its base configuration/experience is worse than Gnome. The closest I've gotten to something that does both is replacing xfce's xfwm with i3 but ultimately it can easily break since it depends on turning off xfwm in sessions and making i3 an autolaunch item. Linux is obviously the best for tiling WMs, but they have their own set of issues that traditional WMs on popular DEs in linux don't. Windows and MacOS have even more issues when attempting to implement them. I feel like there's just no winning here, regardless of what OS you're using.

bbertelsen 4y ago
The experience with the PopOS related pop shell is an honourable mention here with reasonable key defaults. You should try it if you haven't already, it's quite good.
- least 4y ago
  I did mention that I tried it. The issue is less with the extension and more with dealing with Gnome. I think Gnome has sane defaults and works pretty well for a lot of people but the problem is that the second you want to change something it fights you and Gnome has gotten increasingly hostile towards user customization with each release. I think another issue might have been with setting keybinds with hyper and meh is problematic but it's been a while since I've used Gnome.
- thecrumb 4y ago
  I am liking PopOS. Used i3wm for a long time but for work it's nice to be able to easily turn tiling on/off if I'm doing a presentation or something.
seanp2k2 4y ago
Generally agree, and https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html is the best thing I've found for MacOS. Snap is pretty good now on Windows 11 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-windows-885a9b1e-a983-a3b1-16cd-c531795e6241 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window... but AquaSnap can still do more. https://github.com/glsorre/amethystwindows https://github.com/glsorre/amethystwindows looks decent and more minimal but I haven't tried it.
- least 4y ago
  There's no shortage of window management apps on MacOS, though I think the limitations of the API make it hard for them to be anywhere near as fluid and snappy as Linux's tiling WMs. Amethyst and Yabai are the two automatic tiling WMs I'm aware of on MacOS, along with a hammerspoon tiling wm that I can't recall the name of. Magnet, Moom, BetterTouchTool (and BetterSnapTool), Rectangle, and countless others are all quite good if you want to manually move windows around. A lot of it just unreliable for reasons I can't discern. I have keybindings in my hammerspoon config to switch between applications based on their position on screen relative to the active window, but sometimes it just doesn't work and even when it does it's quite slow. It feels like it should not only work but should be extremely fast given that MacOS knows exactly where every window is placed and its dimensions that can be accessed by hammerspoon, but unfortunately it's neither fast nor reliable. I'm currently using a mix of hammerspoon and amethyst which is working okay but not great and everything is a bit slow. Changing spaces is slow, modestly improved by reduce motion settings. Yabai can get rid of the delay between switching spaces but only if you disable SIP. Glad they exist and I'm glad that third party applications can interact with MacOS' window management, but I do wish some of it were snappier. Moving single windows is quite fast but anything more than that it feels sluggish.
chaorace 4y ago
You've inadvertently described the delineation between a DE and WM. WMs manage windows and that's it -- they're lacking by design. A DE (e.g. Gnome, KDE) is a multi-part package that bundles up a given WM with the software suite necessary for running a conventional desktop. There exist plenty of DEs that bundle up tiling WMs for convenient use (for example: Regolith[1]) [1]: https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/
- least 4y ago
  I've tried Regolith but at the time I believe it was just a ubuntu fork and you couldn't install it as a standalone package. It seems that has changed now which might warrant looking at. > You've inadvertently described the delineation between a DE and WM. My problem is that the competently done DEs tend to have their own WM and are not designed to allow you to run a different WM on top of it. I understand that most tiling WMs expect that the user might also want to set up their own desktop picture service, notifications, status bars, etc. I just think that there should be one that ships with something sensible that it doesn't just feel like it's piping STDOUT to an html file overlayed on top of the desktop that you then have to create custom scripts to have reasonable functionality. Polybar comes to mind as one such example. It just feels like the tradeoffs are so massive and I simply don't have the skill to create something that matches my own wants for a linux desktop. I love tinkering but I don't want to have to tinker with everything to get a solution that works for me.
  - vladvasiliu 4y ago
    I've tried Regolith at one point (mid-2020) out of curiosity, and the experience was miserable. For some reason, everything was extremely laggy. It was on an older PC (i5-6500) so I figured the integrated GPU was too slow. Of course, my even older (2013) macbook pro worked absolutely fine with macOs's effects, but still. I was down to the point of trying to order a dedicated GPU that would fit the small form-factor case while being fanless. Then I tried Arch with i3 and the slowness went away. It would even happily render blur effects via picom without any issue.

by least 4y ago

bbertelsen 4y ago

The experience with the PopOS related pop shell is an honourable mention here with reasonable key defaults. You should try it if you haven't already, it's quite good.

least 4y ago
I did mention that I tried it. The issue is less with the extension and more with dealing with Gnome. I think Gnome has sane defaults and works pretty well for a lot of people but the problem is that the second you want to change something it fights you and Gnome has gotten increasingly hostile towards user customization with each release. I think another issue might have been with setting keybinds with hyper and meh is problematic but it's been a while since I've used Gnome.
thecrumb 4y ago
I am liking PopOS. Used i3wm for a long time but for work it's nice to be able to easily turn tiling on/off if I'm doing a presentation or something.

seanp2k2 4y ago

Generally agree, and https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html https://magnet.crowdcafe.com/index.html is the best thing I've found for MacOS. Snap is pretty good now on Windows 11 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-windows-885a9b1e-a983-a3b1-16cd-c531795e6241 https://support.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/snap-your-window... but AquaSnap can still do more. https://github.com/glsorre/amethystwindows https://github.com/glsorre/amethystwindows looks decent and more minimal but I haven't tried it.

least 4y ago
There's no shortage of window management apps on MacOS, though I think the limitations of the API make it hard for them to be anywhere near as fluid and snappy as Linux's tiling WMs. Amethyst and Yabai are the two automatic tiling WMs I'm aware of on MacOS, along with a hammerspoon tiling wm that I can't recall the name of. Magnet, Moom, BetterTouchTool (and BetterSnapTool), Rectangle, and countless others are all quite good if you want to manually move windows around. A lot of it just unreliable for reasons I can't discern. I have keybindings in my hammerspoon config to switch between applications based on their position on screen relative to the active window, but sometimes it just doesn't work and even when it does it's quite slow. It feels like it should not only work but should be extremely fast given that MacOS knows exactly where every window is placed and its dimensions that can be accessed by hammerspoon, but unfortunately it's neither fast nor reliable. I'm currently using a mix of hammerspoon and amethyst which is working okay but not great and everything is a bit slow. Changing spaces is slow, modestly improved by reduce motion settings. Yabai can get rid of the delay between switching spaces but only if you disable SIP. Glad they exist and I'm glad that third party applications can interact with MacOS' window management, but I do wish some of it were snappier. Moving single windows is quite fast but anything more than that it feels sluggish.

chaorace 4y ago

You've inadvertently described the delineation between a DE and WM. WMs manage windows and that's it -- they're lacking by design. A DE (e.g. Gnome, KDE) is a multi-part package that bundles up a given WM with the software suite necessary for running a conventional desktop. There exist plenty of DEs that bundle up tiling WMs for convenient use (for example: Regolith[1]) [1]: https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/

least 4y ago
I've tried Regolith but at the time I believe it was just a ubuntu fork and you couldn't install it as a standalone package. It seems that has changed now which might warrant looking at. > You've inadvertently described the delineation between a DE and WM. My problem is that the competently done DEs tend to have their own WM and are not designed to allow you to run a different WM on top of it. I understand that most tiling WMs expect that the user might also want to set up their own desktop picture service, notifications, status bars, etc. I just think that there should be one that ships with something sensible that it doesn't just feel like it's piping STDOUT to an html file overlayed on top of the desktop that you then have to create custom scripts to have reasonable functionality. Polybar comes to mind as one such example. It just feels like the tradeoffs are so massive and I simply don't have the skill to create something that matches my own wants for a linux desktop. I love tinkering but I don't want to have to tinker with everything to get a solution that works for me.
- vladvasiliu 4y ago
  I've tried Regolith at one point (mid-2020) out of curiosity, and the experience was miserable. For some reason, everything was extremely laggy. It was on an older PC (i5-6500) so I figured the integrated GPU was too slow. Of course, my even older (2013) macbook pro worked absolutely fine with macOs's effects, but still. I was down to the point of trying to order a dedicated GPU that would fit the small form-factor case while being fanless. Then I tried Arch with i3 and the slowness went away. It would even happily render blur effects via picom without any issue.