Why tile?
Why tile?
I feel like my eyes can only look at one thing at a time. I just have shortcuts to switch between programs.
Why do you prefer using a tiling WM and how do you use the tiling functionality in your workflow?
Main reason for me is because I don’t have to manage the position or size of apps I open.
Idk I just keep everything fullscreen except small things like my password manager. Use virtual desktops to switch between major functionality. One for work, one for Slack, one for email.
The only thing I split is my IDE to compare code.
Many tiling WMs can do “everything fullscreen” too, and they're better at it since you don't have to manually press the maximize button for every window you open.
Same. I've tried to use tiling WMs before, but simply can't get used to it. I usually have a three monitor setup. Left monitor is a browser full screened with just two tabs: my work emails (Outlook 365) and MS Teams. That is a 27" 1440p monitor, and I've tried splitting this to show two browser windows side-by-side to have teams and outlook at the same time, but both end up too narrow. I just switch tabs to see the one I need at any given time.
Middle monitor is my primary. It is another 27" and it has my IDE fullscreen, it can switch between all the projects im working on, and if I want to view two source files side by side, I use the split-tabs feature in my IDE.
Right monitor is my browser. It is a 23" 1080p screen and it has Firefox fullscreen with usually 20-30 tabs open to reference pages, documentation, etc. I very rarely want to look at two webpages side by side at the same time. If I do, I open a second Firefox instance and use KDE's built-in left-right split screen feature.
I actually usually also use my laptop's 14" screen as a 4th monitor, I have my notes app (Trilium) and my password manager (KeePassXC) on there and switch between them as needed.
Sometimes I want the file manager alongside the document I watch. Bspwm give them all the space available automatically.
Web dev here.
- editor + web browser + devtools when working on frontend (workspace 3)
- editor + tests + another terminal for whatever when working backend (workspace 2)
- server terminal + lazydocker for both (workspace 1)
- web browser with work related tabs + todo list + notes app on workspace 9
- chat apps and email on workspace 10
- long-running jobs and performance monitors on workspace 8
- 4-7 are used for whatever
- music on scratchpad
Tiling (as well as stacking) make it manageable to have a bunch of windows open with a minimum of fuckery. Sure I can only read one at a time, but when coding for example I'm rapidly switching between the code and the result. I can have a text editor, browser, and devtools accessible as fast as I can think, and I spend very little effort arranging windows.
Also, a good tiling window manager replaces the need to learn a bunch of windowing features for other apps. My devtools open in a new window, I don't use tmux or my terminal's split features, and I generally have a bunch of browser instances open because my window management handles it all, better.
I'm also a web dev and I have a similar workflow where each workspace has its purpose. Except I never tile anything. I do have shortcuts that switch to specific windows but I never tile anything. That way my eyes are always on the center of the screen.
I very rarely need to tile windows next to eachother. So rarely that I just don't see the point in making it the main feature of my WM/DE.
Very interesting to read though. Thanks for the thorough example.
Do you have a small monitor?
In my opinion, on a >32 4k or 1440p display, the full screen is just way too big for a single window. Which isn’t a problem, because as easy as it is to switch between two windows, it’s even easier not to. Especially for things like having a web browser and dev tools, switching back and forth every time I tweak a CSS rule would be agonizing.
The main reason I use a tiling WM is because I grew tired of having to drag my mouse all over the screen to switch maximised windows, cycling through them with hotkeys or, even worse, spending a fat minute resizing windows with surgical precision in order to have them both visible.
At first I used KDE's ability to make them transparent, which was ok enough until I tried experimenting with Sway; now I have the habit of splitting the workspace in two, and swiftly resizing the window I want my focus on.
In certain situations floating windows are more convenient, so I just Meta+F, make it a bit transparent, then drag it around.If I really do not need nor want anything else on screen, Alt+Enter forces the window to its size, and if I want to look at the time or smth I have 9 other workspaces to switch to without any delay.
The downside of tiling WMs is that no desktop PC software developer considers their existence, and most applications don't like being forcefully resized.
Also, popups often take half the screen - I can't even blame anyone, portable graphical libraries and frameworks do not expect that popups need special treatment for the WM to display them correctly.It's basically the same as a stacking WM, except you can't lose windows under others. And it automates the window handling with freely sizeable ones like terminals, not hiding them on top of each other, while eg. Steam can get its own Workspace.
Don't need the mouse. Nothing ever gets tucked behind anything else. dwm allows you to put one window on multiple tags (desktops) in multiple window arrangements. Also it's fully scriptable. Why NOT use a tiling WM?
You really hit the nail on the head here. Never having to take take your hands off the keyboard, while always having windows take up exactly the right amount of room, is the main reason I hate having to use non-tiling WM.
And your other point is spot on, too. Any workflow that you use in a standard WM you can also do in a tiling WM, except (imo) more easily. And there are lots of workflows that are agonizing without tiling functionality.
I want to read this book full screen. Hang on, didn’t that other book say something different about this? I want to open it. This is complex, I want to compare side-by-side. Oh, I get it, I should take notes on both of these. Hang on, I need to look at both books while taking notes. Okay I’m done with the second book but I still want to take notes on the first.
Slogging a mouse around to click, drag, click, drag, double click, drag, all while repositioning your hands to type, sucks so bad.
The case is even more clear when you consider that the concept of tiling WMs is just an extension of the game-changing paradigm behind terminal multiplexers and IDE splits.
It’s just better. There’s probably a bit of an adjustment when you’re first adapting to it, especially if they’re really used to a mouse-centric, window-draggy workflow, which is likely the only reason that people think they don’t like them.
You don't really get my point though. I am fully on board with using keybinds and using the mouse as little as possible. I just mean why tile windows at all. I just can't focus on anything other than one window if I need the other program I have a shortcut that brings it forward. I keep my eyes mostly in the same position this way.
Anyway this is just a matter of workflow that's what it comes down to. I may just have to accept that it's not for me.
I prefer a tiling WM for programming work. On my personal PC I actually use GNOME or KDE or something. But on my old study machine and my current work machines it's i3 all the way. Being able to quickly tile 4 terminals together makes my work much easier. Often I have many terminals open, each with a bash history specific to what I'm doing there. Workspaces then act as a sort of bundle of applications with the same general purpose. For instance, one workspace for installing and copying stuff to a machine, another for VNC related stuff, etc. If I'd have to alt+tab between 8 terminals I'd never know which one is which. But now I can remember them by location which is way easier mentally. Similarly I sometimes have multiple projects open in an IDE, and I usually remember which workspace is for which project.
It's even better on 4K monitors, where having 4 1080p terminals open is amazing. I can see everything and I only need to move my eyes. No keypress to switch terminal, everything is right there.
I've configured my entire interface to provide the most amount of input bandwidth for me so that I never have to wait for the computer to do what I want. I3 vim and vimmium solve my problems
I like vimium, but qutebrowser is way faster for me. It’s my go-to for research or reading documentation.
Because I can maximize the potential of my screen to the max.
I tend to use floating or fullscreen for general browsing but often you have to type something while frequently referring back to something else - for example when programming I will be looking at the documentation. Or maybe debugging something on the command line while looking at your code to see what's going on. In those circumstances tilling is perfect.
Even on Windows I've always used a "split" desktop. Windows has pretty okay tiling features (for the drag-and-drop folks). I found it pretty efficient being able to look at two browser tab windows or having a PDF file on one side and Word/Docs on the other.
When I was venturing into Linux and found out about i3wm, I pretty much fell in love. It does the same tiling thing on Windows but better. Now I can have four windows without it feeling too cramped and it's reallly easy to move around with workspaces. I think it's really great for students and researchers.
I don't use an exclusive tiling WM, but prefer a hybrid stacked/tiled approach.
So my argument for the stacked approach (or why I prefer floating windows sometimes) is because sometimes, some of my windows don't really work well as a small tiled space - remote desktop windows for instance. Or sometimes, there's too much white space in a window and resizing it into a tile may make it look weird, like a web page (especially web apps). So tiling doesn't always work for me, so for the most part I prefer floating/stacked windows.
As for tiling, it's great when you've got multiple things you need to refer to, or keep an eye out on. For instance, in my typical tiled work setup, I would have one tile for emails, one for chat, one for my browser, and one is a terminal or IDE. The terminal or IDE would be my main work area, I need the browser open at the same time to look at help or other reference material and maybe copy-paste code, and the emails and chat I need them open to keep an eye on things. I might make use of other monitors or workspaces for other things, like full-screen windows such as remote desktop sessions, or other monitoring stuff.
So for me, both floating and tiling windows are useful, so I prefer a general stacked WM that can also do tiling.
How big is your monitor that you can havel 5 windows open at once and you can still see everything sufficiently? Also whats a stacked WM?
I usually have 4 windows on my 34" QHD monitor (16:10 aspect ratio), the fifth window is usually a full-screen window on a different workspace or monitor.
A stacking WM is a "normal" WM that most people use, like Mutter (Gnome) or kwin (KDE). Also called as floating WM. It's called stacking because windows are organized in a layered stack, one on top of the other, similar to pieces of paper on a desk. They have a "z order", and can be "above" or "below" each other, along the Z axis in the stack.
I really enjoy it because everything is automatically maximized, but I can always easily put programs next to each other (f.e. my school uses Discord, so I have to have it open next to Matrix). The window rules are also very useful, as I can make Firefox always be on the first workspace, or my terminal always on the third. You can also make certain apps always float so password managers and such still work the same way.
Usually it's just one program per virtual desktop, and maybe a second (briefly) for one-off terminal commands, etc.
The whole point for me is to avoid wasting time moving a mouse around or manually manipulating anything.
Not needing to search through layers when I’m multitasking is the big thing. Having a file manager, ide and documentation all on one monitor makes things much easier.
I'm using tiling WM mostly to have shortcuts and more controls about window switching but I rarely have multiple windows visible at once, but when I do - tiling is more convenient. When it doesn't - you can always make that particular window floating.
I have to bounce between documents, emails, and text editing all day. Everybody processes information in their own way, but for me the learning curve for a tiling WM was only a few minutes and it made doing my work much easier. I can be looking at 3 or 4 things for a project without tapping a bunch of times and going back and forth. Same goes for bookkeeping and all of the other things that I do that seem to require looking at 4 or 5 things at once.
When I'm outside of my preferred tiling environment (especially on Windows or a Mac), I feel like the window manager is me. I can get by using shortcuts, but I feel like I'm just attempting to approximate a tiling experience while also dealing with a higher cognitive workload moving windows around, zooming out to find something that is open somewhere in the background, remembering whether the file I was looking at was a pdf/jpeg/word document, etc. My tiling workflow really helps me ignore that kind of stuff.
I am always creating content on one half of my screen and browsing through documentation or specifications or chat logs on the other half. So it makes sense, and saves me lots of time, if I setup my computer to automatically place certain windows such that they fill the whole left of the screen and other windows so they fill the whole right of the screen. And this is precisely what tiling window managers are designed to do -- especially ones that let you define your own rules about what windows go where.
I'm with you. My eyes can only look one place at a time, I don't even understand the draw of multi monitor. Alt-tab is your friend.
The only objections to that which I find convincing is the difficulty of managing switching tasks between complex sets of windows and tabs that way. But that just tells me that someone needs to invest in better controls for managing a full-screen switching workflow as a third alternative to tiling vs overlapping.
If you’re only actively using one window at a time, that makes sense, but alt+tabbing through a stack of 8 open applications to go back and forth between something you’re working on and something you’re closely referencing sucks. If your primary workflow for a computer involves that, I honestly don’t understand how someone can live without tiling.
That's why I said "someone needs to invest in ...". It's not ideal, and besides alt tab, I do select from taskbar icons (often cascading) which is not ideal either. But I do want most of these windows maximized so tiling is not really the right solution.
I really think there is something that both the tiling people and the overlapping people are missing. There is perhaps something basic in the windowing paradigm that none of us can see past to be able to get to something better.
BTW though, it's not as bad as you seem to imply with the stack of 8 windows because alt tab goes to the last used window, at least in the Plasma desktop I use. It's really only the more complicated sequences which get awkward (which for me is pretty common anyway).
at some point in my computer life, I realised that with most new window I oppened, I was dragging them to the side to tile them next to the other in order to not lost track of either the content of the other window like a webpage or a running script or to more easily drag stuff between them without having to move the first window, now behind the new one, it wasn't that annoying or time consuming since I'm pretty fast with a mouse, but it did require me to focus on the positioning of the window to get going, tiling completely removed that aspect, no I only interract with the window to resize them or change screen, which is far less often that I use to move them around to un-obstruct them
I don't like it. Changing one element is not supposed to influence all others. I put windows into predefined positions and sizes via hotkeys (and I set a font sizes to get specific line lengths) and I would violently rip every peace of code out of my system, that dares to override my orders.
i don’t like it tbh. I prefer virtual desktops; I could see how a kiosk it might be helpful, where based on streaming data, a controller opens / closes tiles and the Wm makes it work.
For me, diff desktops for diff modes of use that auto start @ login & ability to hotkey across. This was a bigger deal when debugger and editor were separate and starting an app meant clicking and dragging the initial size (who has time for that). :)
Remember: empty RAM is wasted RAM!
"Empty RAM is wasted RAM" is only for operating system; for everyone else, it's "Empty RAM is filesystem cache".
The ‘tiling’ in tiling window-managers is only half-truth. It distinguishes them from stacking window-mamagers, which would be equal to only looking at one thing at the time.
They all can also do stacking and tabbing, the term means they can do tiling as well. Most users some form of stacking even more than tiling in itself.
Most also can do floating windows, usually on per-app basis. This is achieving what most fully fledged desktop users do: have one fullscreen window per workspace, and have small things like pacucontrol as small floating window.
In no way are you limited to tiling. If you were, tiling window managers wouldn’t be very popular. They’d be like stacking window managers are today.
My most often use half-and-half layout: browser and emacs, emacs and console, emacs and emacs, and so on. If I want to have two consoles and emacs, I instead of tiling, make a stack for the two consoles. This way I always have emacs showing, and switch between the consoles, no matter how many there are. This is kind of like a “sub-workspace”.
The main advantage is ease of configuration, assuming familiarity with config-files. That enables quick, keyboard based navigation, in a very personal and fine-tuned manner. Modern tiling window-managers can also be configured on trackpad or touchscreen gestures, and work intuitively with mouse pointer. So while many users do specifically keyboard centric configuration, the key point in my opinion is that you as a user need, and get to, choose.
Permanently Deleted
In my tilling wm (xmonad and before that ion3) all software is always full screen and I have them in “tabs" per "desktop" aka "tag"'.
It is so nice to have everything available via keyboard, after decade of same setup I don't even think where is what.
And xmonad is soooo good with multiple monitors, nothing comes close.