4 ms·

Post points out very well how inferior products that charge can beat superior products that are free. It's quite sad that Linux already has the best experience

Post points out very well how inferior products that charge can beat superior products that are free. It's quite sad that Linux already has the best experience if you care about getting things done. In order to save the desktop we must kill the desktop. Stop the madness and get on with life: apt-get install ratpoison The desktop metaphor is the worst kind of skeuomorphic design. Why should I waste precious screen real estate to show a background image? The only thing tiling window managers need for better adoption is to ship with better defaults and a reference card for keyboard shortcuts.

exDM69 14y ago
> The only thing tiling window managers need for better adoption is to ship with better defaults and a reference card for keyboard shortcuts. That works for hackers but for non-techies that aren't willing to put any time and effort into re-learning the basics. What I hope to see is more tiling windowing features on mainstream user interfaces for the intermediate users.
- willholloway 14y ago
  This is the direction Android will go in. I am pretty sure that in five years most people will have one smart phone that they dock at home to have access to large screens and keyboard/mouse. The laptop as we know it will be replaced by laptop shells with a smart phone dock. And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers. I believe tiling window managers would be fantastic productivity boosters for enterprise use. Less distractions for the worker bees.
  - ekianjo 14y ago
    > And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers. You seem to assume Android is just another Linux distro with a different windows manager? If so, you are mistaken. An Android system is very different from a Linux distro - they basically only share the kernels and it is quite wrong to classify Android as "Linux" because it creates confusion.
    - willholloway 14y ago
      The Linux kernel and Android kernel have already become one again, and I suspect that the community will narrow the gap further. Right now they mainly just share the kernel. If the GNU tool chain is included and you can compile and run linux programs, what is the difference besides some architectural changes?
      - ekianjo 14y ago
        > " If the GNU tool chain is included" That's a very big "if". It is not the case currently so I would not put them under the same umbrella.
sliverstorm 14y ago
Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts. - Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment. - If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 medium size windows simultaneously. - Often in a floating environment, I can overlap windows, maximizing utilized screen space by covering up unimportant parts of a certain window. There are basically two reasons I keep using a tiling WM. First, it does pretty well with term emulators. Second, the existence of tabbed term emulators. The ability to spawn and destroy tabs on a whim without changing the screen layout really helps with my thought flow. If I was really a purist I'd be using GNU screen for that, but at that point what am I doing in X11 anyway?
- willholloway 14y ago
  > If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 windows simultaneously. This is my biggest issue as well. I would like a way to hide these windows and take them out of my next/previous stack. Out of all the tiling WMs out there I feel one has to have this feature but I've been so happy with ratpoison otherwise I haven't looked.
  - deleted 14y ago
    [deleted]
  - sliverstorm 14y ago
    I feel like a tiling WM could really benefit from a taskbar-like metaphor. It doesn't have to be precisely a taskbar, but the ability to make this or that application completely invisible without sending it to another virtual desktop is often useful. Perhaps, to stay in keeping with the ability to do everything from the keyboard, treat the "taskbar" like a second stack, only reduced to names instead of shrunken windows.

exDM69 14y ago

> The only thing tiling window managers need for better adoption is to ship with better defaults and a reference card for keyboard shortcuts. That works for hackers but for non-techies that aren't willing to put any time and effort into re-learning the basics. What I hope to see is more tiling windowing features on mainstream user interfaces for the intermediate users.

willholloway 14y ago
This is the direction Android will go in. I am pretty sure that in five years most people will have one smart phone that they dock at home to have access to large screens and keyboard/mouse. The laptop as we know it will be replaced by laptop shells with a smart phone dock. And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers. I believe tiling window managers would be fantastic productivity boosters for enterprise use. Less distractions for the worker bees.
- ekianjo 14y ago
  > And those phones will run Linux with the Android UI and drivers. You seem to assume Android is just another Linux distro with a different windows manager? If so, you are mistaken. An Android system is very different from a Linux distro - they basically only share the kernels and it is quite wrong to classify Android as "Linux" because it creates confusion.
  - willholloway 14y ago
    The Linux kernel and Android kernel have already become one again, and I suspect that the community will narrow the gap further. Right now they mainly just share the kernel. If the GNU tool chain is included and you can compile and run linux programs, what is the difference besides some architectural changes?
    - ekianjo 14y ago
      > " If the GNU tool chain is included" That's a very big "if". It is not the case currently so I would not put them under the same umbrella.

sliverstorm 14y ago

Allow me to say, as a regular user of a tiling window manager, that they have more than a few shortcomings. Shortcomings which go beyond defaults and shortcuts. - Many applications are designed with a floating environment in mind, and as a result simply translate very poorly to a tiling environment. - If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 medium size windows simultaneously. - Often in a floating environment, I can overlap windows, maximizing utilized screen space by covering up unimportant parts of a certain window. There are basically two reasons I keep using a tiling WM. First, it does pretty well with term emulators. Second, the existence of tabbed term emulators. The ability to spawn and destroy tabs on a whim without changing the screen layout really helps with my thought flow. If I was really a purist I'd be using GNU screen for that, but at that point what am I doing in X11 anyway?

willholloway 14y ago
> If I'm working with more than three or four windows (which is common) I've basically got my active window and a stack of non-active, tiny, non-useable windows. In other words, it becomes difficult to combine even a medium-size set of windows with a usage model wherein I wish to interact with 2-3 windows simultaneously. This is my biggest issue as well. I would like a way to hide these windows and take them out of my next/previous stack. Out of all the tiling WMs out there I feel one has to have this feature but I've been so happy with ratpoison otherwise I haven't looked.
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- sliverstorm 14y ago
  I feel like a tiling WM could really benefit from a taskbar-like metaphor. It doesn't have to be precisely a taskbar, but the ability to make this or that application completely invisible without sending it to another virtual desktop is often useful. Perhaps, to stay in keeping with the ability to do everything from the keyboard, treat the "taskbar" like a second stack, only reduced to names instead of shrunken windows.