4 ms·

I've been using them on and off, and the first thing I'd like to mention is that they're in no way magical -- both when it comes to using them (which is mostly

by mhd 12y ago

I've been using them on and off, and the first thing I'd like to mention is that they're in no way magical -- both when it comes to using them (which is mostly knowing a few shortcuts and internalizing the layout system), but also in regard to how much they help you. Sure, they certainly do look snazzy, especially when coupled with the movie hacker-approved unified dark color scheme. New windows pop up and quickly assume their rightful space and everything just looks so darn tidy. But for certain usage patterns, that doesn't get you a lot. Even if you're popping up disposable shell windows left and right, you might also do that within screen/tmux, where the window manager doesn't come into play at all (or have some drop-down quake-like console). Also, your running applications and especially their different configurations might not change that often, in which case you're really saving yourself some manual layout fiddling once. So a lot of people would perform pretty much the same with just alt-tab window cycling and virtual desktops (which seem orthogonal to the whole deal). I mean, if you look at the vast majority of screenshots, you don't even see that much work. The obligatory IRC client, fake-GUI music players and/or file managers and probably an editor with the configuration file or some minor coursework open. It's not exactly Scotty and his Mac Plus. Having said that, I'd add my vote to i3wm, as it isn't as ideologically pure as some others (you still have window titles if you want them, and the layout remains somewhat manual). Plus a rather readable configuration format, even if the default configuration is seemingly intended to drive vi-users mad. My alternative would be bspwm, the binary space partitioning wm. A lot more minimal, but the automatic layout algorithm is rather tractable and one certainly wouldn't be confused with too many options.

jff 12y ago
> I mean, if you look at the vast majority of screenshots, you don't even see that much work. The obligatory IRC client, fake-GUI music players and/or file managers and probably an editor with the configuration file or some minor coursework open. It's not exactly Scotty and his Mac Plus. Well, this applies to all WM screenshots ever, not just tiling window managers. The main problem with WM screenshots is that you want to show how it looks, show off some features, but my actual work is generally spread across many virtual desktops, each with just a few windows (mostly xterm)
- mhd 12y ago
  Quite a lot of screenshots do cover more than one desktop, plus often a "clean" shot to show off the otherwise covered minimalistic and/or anime background pic. I blame it more on the fact that many of the tiling wm crowd are quite young and don't do that much actual work with their machines, especially if they just switch to Linux because of other screenshots of said style. Or just not being able to show e.g. proprietary code…
  - chriswarbo 12y ago
    I'm "quite young" (26), although I don't know what you'd class as "actual work" (do Web development and PhD research count?). To be honest I like using tiling WMs because they're not magic, whizz-bang things. I could lay out my windows better with a stacking WM (eg. when badly-behaved apps make assumptions about their size and put buttons off the edge of the screen), but a tiling WM does just well enough that I really don't care about my window layout anymore. Whatever Xmonad does is usually fine. Likewise, with a tiling window manager I really don't care about background pictures anymore. Before using tiling WMs I used to use chbg to cycle through a directory of images, and use (fake, then composited) transparency in terminals, etc. These days my machines boot straight into Xmonad with st and emacs open; my only "background" is a black screen for a couple of seconds while they start up. Any screenshot I take would just advertise whatever fullscreen application I have open at the moment, along with a line of text at the top of the screen with a clock and counters for my unread email and failing tests.
    - mhd 12y ago
      > I'm "quite young" (26), although I don't know what you'd class as "actual work" (do Web development and PhD research count?). Certainly. It's always hard to judge age on the 'net, but looking at the relevant discussions on reddit or linux forums, you'll find an astonishingly uniform spread of applications, and if you find any code that's not the configuration of the window manager, it'll be some kind of programming 101 material. This, along with the "just installed Linux, this is my new awesome desktop" makes me a bit biased towards assuming a large quantity of teenagers -- also more likely to generally proactively show their neat desktops. This doesn't mean that every tiling wm user is that way (I certainly am not), just like pinterest isn't a good indicator about the prevalence of refurbished palettes in American bedrooms... I would say that you probably have more in common with corporate windows users who have their apps running fullscreen all the time, too and that way don't ever changed their backgroudn from Napa valley, than with the "unix ricers" who regularly apply patches to their minimal wms that leave large borders around their windows, so that their background is still evident.
kevin_thibedeau 12y ago
Tiling managers become more compelling on large high resolution displays where running everything maximized is inconvenient and you want to ease the burden of shuffling windows around.
gdwatson 12y ago
Having said that, I'd add my vote to i3wm, as it isn't as ideologically pure as some others (you still have window titles if you want them, and the layout remains somewhat manual). Plus a rather readable configuration format, even if the default configuration is seemingly intended to drive vi-users mad. I like i3 a lot, but even as an Emacs user the first thing I did was to change the focus key bindings to something vi-like. Using JKL; instead of HJKL on anything meant for Unix users just seems devilishly perverse.
elsjaako 12y ago
> But for certain usage patterns, that doesn't get you a lot. Even if you're popping up disposable shell windows left and right, you might also do that within screen/tmux, where the window manager doesn't come into play at all (or have some drop-down quake-like console). I've started to notice I often have i3 open with an xterm running screen in which I'm running vim with multiple buffers. I should start using ctrl-alt-F* so I have 4 layers of context switching...
numeromancer 12y ago
My alternative would be bspwm, the binary space partitioning wm. I like bspwm's approach to keyboard shortcuts: don't do them. Have an external socket through which external applications have complete control over window-manager tasks, and use an external hot-key manager (sxhkd, by the auther of bspwm) to send commands to it to handle windows.

by mhd 12y ago

jff 12y ago

> I mean, if you look at the vast majority of screenshots, you don't even see that much work. The obligatory IRC client, fake-GUI music players and/or file managers and probably an editor with the configuration file or some minor coursework open. It's not exactly Scotty and his Mac Plus. Well, this applies to all WM screenshots ever, not just tiling window managers. The main problem with WM screenshots is that you want to show how it looks, show off some features, but my actual work is generally spread across many virtual desktops, each with just a few windows (mostly xterm)

mhd 12y ago
Quite a lot of screenshots do cover more than one desktop, plus often a "clean" shot to show off the otherwise covered minimalistic and/or anime background pic. I blame it more on the fact that many of the tiling wm crowd are quite young and don't do that much actual work with their machines, especially if they just switch to Linux because of other screenshots of said style. Or just not being able to show e.g. proprietary code…
- chriswarbo 12y ago
  I'm "quite young" (26), although I don't know what you'd class as "actual work" (do Web development and PhD research count?). To be honest I like using tiling WMs because they're not magic, whizz-bang things. I could lay out my windows better with a stacking WM (eg. when badly-behaved apps make assumptions about their size and put buttons off the edge of the screen), but a tiling WM does just well enough that I really don't care about my window layout anymore. Whatever Xmonad does is usually fine. Likewise, with a tiling window manager I really don't care about background pictures anymore. Before using tiling WMs I used to use chbg to cycle through a directory of images, and use (fake, then composited) transparency in terminals, etc. These days my machines boot straight into Xmonad with st and emacs open; my only "background" is a black screen for a couple of seconds while they start up. Any screenshot I take would just advertise whatever fullscreen application I have open at the moment, along with a line of text at the top of the screen with a clock and counters for my unread email and failing tests.
  - mhd 12y ago
    > I'm "quite young" (26), although I don't know what you'd class as "actual work" (do Web development and PhD research count?). Certainly. It's always hard to judge age on the 'net, but looking at the relevant discussions on reddit or linux forums, you'll find an astonishingly uniform spread of applications, and if you find any code that's not the configuration of the window manager, it'll be some kind of programming 101 material. This, along with the "just installed Linux, this is my new awesome desktop" makes me a bit biased towards assuming a large quantity of teenagers -- also more likely to generally proactively show their neat desktops. This doesn't mean that every tiling wm user is that way (I certainly am not), just like pinterest isn't a good indicator about the prevalence of refurbished palettes in American bedrooms... I would say that you probably have more in common with corporate windows users who have their apps running fullscreen all the time, too and that way don't ever changed their backgroudn from Napa valley, than with the "unix ricers" who regularly apply patches to their minimal wms that leave large borders around their windows, so that their background is still evident.

kevin_thibedeau 12y ago

Tiling managers become more compelling on large high resolution displays where running everything maximized is inconvenient and you want to ease the burden of shuffling windows around.

gdwatson 12y ago

Having said that, I'd add my vote to i3wm, as it isn't as ideologically pure as some others (you still have window titles if you want them, and the layout remains somewhat manual). Plus a rather readable configuration format, even if the default configuration is seemingly intended to drive vi-users mad. I like i3 a lot, but even as an Emacs user the first thing I did was to change the focus key bindings to something vi-like. Using JKL; instead of HJKL on anything meant for Unix users just seems devilishly perverse.

elsjaako 12y ago

> But for certain usage patterns, that doesn't get you a lot. Even if you're popping up disposable shell windows left and right, you might also do that within screen/tmux, where the window manager doesn't come into play at all (or have some drop-down quake-like console). I've started to notice I often have i3 open with an xterm running screen in which I'm running vim with multiple buffers. I should start using ctrl-alt-F* so I have 4 layers of context switching...

numeromancer 12y ago

My alternative would be bspwm, the binary space partitioning wm. I like bspwm's approach to keyboard shortcuts: don't do them. Have an external socket through which external applications have complete control over window-manager tasks, and use an external hot-key manager (sxhkd, by the auther of bspwm) to send commands to it to handle windows.