Why I Use Tiling Window Managers - And Why You Should Too 

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Dude, you're super well-spoken and your video quality is excellent! I'm glad I found your channel

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Matt. I’m using arch and I’m in the process of really figuring out my ideal workflow so it’s helpful to hear your perspective.

I realized that we spend so much time moving app windows around and arrange them to our liking before the actual work begins. That’s where TWM come in. I only spend a couple hours on Qtile for now and quite like it. What I don’t appreciate is that, key bindings are pretty much the opposite to NTWM.

Very good video! Probably one of the best videos explaining tiling window managers I've seen.

I moved partially to WM's but I also love the ootb of a bare bone Plasma. Having said that: keybinds? Yes, absolutely! For applications and basic window actions I use the same keybinds across any environment (KDE, dk, OpenBox, bspwm, Cinnamon whatever). Workspaces? Love it. For me 5 are enough, and I have always the same (type of) application on the same workspace anywhere (browser on 1, terminal on 2 etc, torrent on 5, you get it). All that has improved my workflow tremendously and indeed kept me out of RSI in the pandemic. Every now and then I do need my floaters though ;-)

As always great information in your videos, I've been using i3wm for a few months now (after following some of your guides) and is awesome, I really like the workflow. Thanks for sharing.

I use hyprland as a tilling window manager. Hyprland is really awesome and have very cool animations. For rounded corners you must only set this in the config and you get this. The only thing that be a problem is screen sharing in Arch.

Could be a good summer project to get used to a WM by the time the next academic year comes around. 🤔

I'm now a TWM user mostly thanks to you (your i3wm videos especially). When I used Windows, I was always searching for an easier way to resize and rearrange windows on the screen. Well, this is it. This is the easier way. All I had to do was switch to Linux and have an open mind.

Really appreciate the continued enthusiasm for, and evangelization of qtile. It really is that good

I just got back into Linux and your videos on i3 were very helpful. Thanks Matt!

The desktop environment feels like shuffling among open books stacked on a physical surface, which is how I grew up doing research in school. But all but one class for me was in the last century. As you say, one great thing about Linux is that we're not all obliged to adopt the same setup, and given all the things I have to do--and will have to learn at some point--tiling window managers are something that I'll keep for the mythical future when I have some free time.

Great to hear about your experience using them. I just started exploring them myself, starting with i3 because that is the one I've heard most about. Curious about xmonad and how it compares to Qtile.

I think many productivity junkies or people who just need more spaces for work would really not mind the transition to a tilingWM. Studying in uni I have markdown apps open, file managers, documents, notes, textbook pdfs, music, and even a pomodoro timer open. On windows I would constantly snap edges together and mouse around like a pleb trying to get the perfect ratios of stuff on one window. On mac OS I would constantly open up new spaces and trackpad between them when all my stuff was open. The most similar work experience is probably IpadOS lol, since all you can do on there is open apps and split them between each other. Thus, when I switched to hyprland on a laptop I was using to run linux on I got the hang of it once I got to familiarize myself with all the keybinds. Productivity rose tenfold since I was working on a smoother wm, along with the typical benefits of linux such as power efficiency, speed, and lack of bloat.

Laptop touchpads partially get rid of the break in workflow that comes from reaching for a mouse. Also, the use of workspaces in a tiler creates a paradox. On one hand, the tiling window manager is lightweight, but the user’s habits with it make heavy use of system resources. On the other hand, the floating window manager (and accompanying desktop encryption) are heavier, but the user won’t have as many things open, which makes lighter use if resources.

I may be the only one that uses 12 workspaces with KDE, and I've got a lot of shortcut keys setup. I use the numpad with the modifier key to push windows around, [1379] for corners, [8462] for [top left right bottom] and of course 5 to full screen, which is the only one I duplicated to the number row. I can open an app on any desktop and shift it immediately to any other. When I'm writing code I usually have at least 2, sometimes 4 terminals open on whichever desktop I'm on, and whichever ones have vim usually have multiple tabs. Although I'll admit my most common usage pattern is two terminals side by side, one has all the headers opened in a series of tabs, the other all the implementations.

Been using i3 for about a week now, been loving it so far. Customized a whole bunch of stuff and polybar

I understand perfectly your reflection, for example, most of my time is spent modeling in 3D in Blender and I upload them to blenderkit, and in my experience the best performance I get modeling is through keyboard shortcuts. By the way, since you are a historian, I made a model of an antique telephone from the late 1800's, but the bell I put in was a model of the liberty bell in Philadelphia, since I found the story about its founding fascinating.

My answer to clutter is two things. 1) three monitors. 2) mouse hover on widow title, then mouse wheel to shade and unshade. Easy, quick, no tiling fuzz.

Really cool rice Matt. Do you mind making a video on ricing your version of qtile.... Or just going through your config ?? Cause you are probably one of few youtubers who explains things in a sensible way...

I been using linux since 1995. I mostly used plasma on my main work station. On my laptop that have low resources I used sway on it. Sway was first wm I did not hate at start so I took time to learn it more.

It's nice to see I am not the only Shinedown fan in the universe. Sound of Madness is a fire song!

I gave tiling window managers a shot with a KDE plugin and then tried AWESOME. But I couldn't get Awesome looking that nice. I gave BSPWM a shot and I've been happy ever since. I love having monitors have their own workspaces and keyboard shortcuts just feel great.

i have never used tiling managers, i have spent the last week getting hyprland configured and i can honestly say xfce has always been my fave DE but now i am a tiling window manager enthusiast :)

I'm on KDE Plasma right now (which has many more options for keybindings than GNOME, might I add) and some of what you're saying is true for me. I have three workspaces and don't like having more than three windows in a single workspace. I *do* close apps, but that's because I'm on old hardware, to say the least; otherwise I'd love to leave my browser up all the time.

You got it all backward. Awesome is a tiling Windows Manager. Jokes aside - I agree! Tiling VM is my number one reason to drop Win and use Linux. There are quite a lot of other reasons, but Tiling VM is just way more effective and natural.

A cosmetic question - I like to watch videos with video player apps that allow switching to "minimalist view" - where the all the controls disappear and all that's left is just the video frame.. Does the titling window manager allow one to create a separate window that can custom conform to the aspect ratio of the video player app, in minimalist view, or is one stuck having to use a floating window for that?

I’m new to window tiling managers and linux in general, what’s a good distro and wm to start off with? I wanna give Linux my all

For me biggest wow-moment in Linux was to discover worksspaces and that lead me to Window managers and I never looked back to regular DE:s.

Qtile is really great. My favorite window manager too. Stable, expandable and fast. Even better with polybar. Just hide the Qtile bar and start polybar in the autostart script.

I have switched to tiling window manager yesterday, now this😺

Ok I like the scratchpad too, gonna have to try qtile. Thanks.

Thanks for sharing Krusader thing ❤ I should try that

Do you have a video of or dot files for that rice? It looks absolutely stunning

I switched to Gnome recently because I had trouble with window managers in Wayland. It actually feels and looks great with a mix libadwaita and terminal apps. All the scripts I used in dwm are still useful in Gnome too (using wofi). I miss the tiling of course haha

i really enjoy your channel keep it up

Thank so much for the content, do you have any new thought thought about AwesomeWM love to hear you notes man (I know lua can't stop you).

We’ll see if I can get used to a keyboard-centric OS with a 60% keyboard. Most of the default binds don’t work for me, but it will take a lot of effort to figure out binds that work. For now I’ve enjoyed using super + z/x to go left and right between workspaces. Nice one-handed switching.

I like multi-monitor setups over this because I like to see literally everything at once. But, of course, you can only have so many monitors. So I use multiple laptops with multiple laptops lol. My biggest challenge with Linux is to keep my focus on my actual work instead of my operating systems adjustments. All this said, I really want to get into Openbox because I have a secret love of Mabox, the most beautiful distro I've ever seen.

I basically only use KDE at this moment in time but I just tried hyprland for the first time and after some practice I found tiling to have a way better workflow and I basically didn't have to use my mouse at all. I think the better workflow is mostly down to users not having to struggle to aim their mouse at tiny icons to click them and drag and all that hassle they can just press a few buttons on their keyboard and have their desktop looking exactly how they want it to.

As a longtime Fluxbox and Openbox user (floating WMs) I appreciate you making this video.

I'm the same, I like to have several apps open across 2 monitors, I don't use a tiling manager yet but will deffo have a look. Part of the reason I got 32GB of RAM was so I could have Firefox open with 5 tabs, file manager, system monitor etc whist gaming. Has 0 effect on my fps.

There's a part of me that wants to deep dive making the perfect Linux setup with a TWM. Then there's the other part of me that barely has a couple hours a day to do so, and I'm still working on learning C lol

I switched over to TWMs a few months ago, and it has been a lot of fun. This said, it is a very DIY experience, and if I were to be honest with myself, TWMs are probably not suitable for the vast majority of computer users. While window managers are great for keyboard oriented workflows, and for learning Linux in general, it lacks the intuitiveness of conventional DEs, and can very much be a time sink as pointed out.

I have some questions about tiling window managers. So does this run efficiently... Also couldn't you implement a way to quote "pause' the tiling window manager while not in use? If it not already doing that. Wouldn't that boost performance??

I think we could be very productive through optimizing workflows in most environments, but let’s just admit that it’s not about productivity. It’s about tinkering with cool things.

What is your base distro? What about ANTI-X with ICE to learn about tiling? What do you do in Discord? thank you for your video

That's a beautiful wallpaper.

i'm a huge fan of zero mouse OS interaction. i love using hotkeys, but linux is quite a daunting OS. but i think because of you Matt, i'm sticking to Linux, after being a slave to windows for so long haha. you make the experience of switching to a new system relaxing :)

13:04 eleven months later: Oh, my muffins are done, thanks for the timer! Muffin be my fave

How long is your and jacks challenge?

How is the workflow different from just minimising full screen windows? There also u can have from quad tiling. 1+2 tiling or dual tiling. Moving apps to a workspace that is not in ur primary display or minimise it, how are effectively different? Edit1: I would also like to know what happens if you have 5 windows of the same application, say firefox, how do u kno which workspace to put em on?

gnome is great for using multiple workspaces, had between 8 and a lot workspaces, now i use 9, 5 are always used [ferdium, keepassxc, firefox, sleek, nautilus]. But yea, tried out bspwm on my notebook (with openBSD) and i really saw that u NEED workspaces.

What is that font called?

I use gnome and constantly switch via keybindings, I still don't really see any advantage with tiling window managers as they seem to just do the same but less of it

I want to try it but thing is I’d rather just install it on my existing arch install after making a snapshot. Is there a way by chance you could make a video of installing this window manager on an existing setup?

I was scared of them for a long time then I actually put the effort in to learn & installed i3 on my 2 systems like 1.5 years ago & got hooked. Fast forward & I have been using Hyprland on both systems for the last 6 months & don't think I can ever go back to a general DE again. At work I have to use Windows & can see why there are people out there that shake babies.

A few years ago I used wmii for some time. But since I got a 4K 28" screen and I don’t want to have windows covering all that space. I usually have 1-2 windows open at max, and having a browser constantly in fullscreen is just not the right thing for me. So I ended up adding “padding windows” or have most windows in floating mode. For small screens and low resolutions (1080p and under) tiling is great in my opinion, but for larger screens absolutely not.

Last time I used KDE, workspaces were tied to all monitors. Meaning when you switch workspace on one monitor, all of monitors switched. That was terrible. I do not keep a lot of stuff open. No need to keep open programs that start instantly or you won't use for a while.

once you go Ratpoison, you never go back. 08:08 you don't need gazillion workspaces Matt, you need ratpoison. or at least use your tiling wm on monocle layout. i don't split the screen for applications, though. i use everything fullscreen. i don't have much programs to switch between anyways. there are only 3 programs (terminal emulator, firefox and mpv) that might be opened at the same time. that's why i don't need tags or workspaces, all i need one workspace. and i very rarely touch the mouse while i'm on linux. all i need from my linux installition is below: minimal arch or void installation + ratpoison + alacritty + rofi + vim + firefox + mpv + feh + picom + ranger + zsh. i don't install more packages than that.

used Pop!_OS for over few years and switched to vanilla i3 and now using bspwm, next one I will be hooking up with qtile. At the same time , I will be writing some code with python.

I remember when they first added workspace to windows and I used them all of the time. Sadly, after an update they made it very slow and I completely stopped using them all together.

How do you have an application (ie Crusader) open automatically into a Workspace?

Matt, would you consider doing a video about KDE 5.27 tiling support?

"One of the symptoms of late stage linux autism is using a window manager." Mental Outlaw in his video "How to Get a Window Manager on ANY Distro" from 19th October 2020, time code: 0:09

Hmm, isn't Gnome workspace oriented? At least for me it feels like it is, it made me start using them, usually 3-4 as you say. Made the whole Gnome experience so much more enjoyable.

say i want to start learning window managers, I'm very new to linux. I'm on fedora, which would be easier for me to start with?

The first time I tried i3, I could not even figure out how to set up hidip (4k display, 200% scale) properly so I switched back to gnome...

How did you customize your arch to look like that in the terminal?

I agree with you, I also came to similar setup, 99% of the time you work in a single window, and most of the time you want it to open in the center of your vision/monitor.

Some tasks such as photo editing would surely be difficult if not impossible without a mouse.

If you are worried about going whole hog into a TWM, Plasma + Bismuth is wonderful.

17:06 where can I get yours? :D

What qtile layout do you mainly use?

How did you get rounded corners on qtile?

do you have any experience of using tiling window manager with multiple monitors ?

What panel do you use?

I gave tiling a serious try in the past. Fo the love of it, I could not get used to Full Screen All The Time and then windows changing size the more windows there are. Also, staying with the keyboard all the time doesn't work well if you use GUI applications a lot. Tiling is over-hyped because it looks cool.

@11:31 is cracking me up because i feel the same way 😅

Tiling manager using python? ❤ Wow! I've mainly been using i3, awesome and different gui and I can say Python inside is amazing! I should have try this thing.

Eyyy Fellow Qtile user here

Maybe I will challenge myself to use i3 for 1 week..thanks for the great video!

Not 18, not 20 but 19. Prime number for the win!

Is there a chance to have your config for qtile?

Yes!!

Just looked at that video too.

I have made an ansible script to deploy my personal i3wm setup with gnome on the background and I loved

I switch between cinnamon and windowmaker. Used to use windowmaker at work in the early 2000's.

No need for a tiling window manager because Thunderbird and Firefox are the only two I always have opened and besides I like using the mouse.

I see people switch between the same two windows by using the mouse a lot, the Alt-Tab solution, which is around for 25+ years has still not made it into many users habits. I think just using Alt-Tab generates a dynamic workspace, because the last applications you used, are always at the top of the Alt-Tab stack. Unfortunately many modern Alt-Tab implementations bring up huge application thumbnails to switch between. I think this is a bad idea and I always revert to the Win2000 style of the Alt-Tab switcher. Just using simple Icons to identify the applications to switch to is way more efficient than trying to decide on huge "thumbnails" of application instances, because the thumbnails basically look the same anyway most of the time because of dark mode and application layout being quite similar in general. Application Icons on the other hand are not similar and very easy to tell apart in a small window in the centre of the screen. If you use 90% of the applications maximized anyway, you don't really need a window manager, do you? Some terminal windows might still be floating, but that's ok. Setting up dedicated desktops / workspaces never worked for me, since I always need a browser, a file manager, an editor, a remote desktop session and the terminal. Just using Alt-Tab to mix in another application here and there is perfect I think as it creates a fluid transition between the applications you are using the most in the current work step. I recently watched a video on how to "switch applications on a Mac laptop efficiently", the guy in the video used two and three and whatnot amount of finger gestures on the touch pad to bring up multiple window / task switchers and I thought "man, you're really making it harder than it is"! o) A bit of that feeling came up when watching this video. It was nevertheless interesting, as I like to find out how people are using Linux and how their workflow looks like. Thank you! o)

Can you try out EXWM

I really like IceWM !!!

Corner snapping in KDE gives easy instant tile-ability on demand. I don't see the need for a workspace that is limited only to that.

I already only use fullscreen on Windows :D

What do you do with 64 GB of RAM?

Hahaha... I use 12 work spaces and no more than 2 per work space. I do use a DE but I find it way to slow... Lol Thanks Matt! LLAP 🖖

Using a tiling window manager at first is very awkward, you dont know the keybinds, the windows seem "stuck" and it feels weird. I highly recommend that everyone who uses one set up their own key binds, that way you know what to do and you don't get stuck and frustrated. Just keep it simple and set the few that you know you will use/need. After that its awesome, every application has its own place to sit. AwesomeWM is amazing because every workspace is independent of the monitor so you basically can have one monitor playing youtube and switch around to Firefox on 1 Krita on 2, discord on 3 and terminal on your 2nd monitor...

I ran qtile for a while a couple of years ago, but tiling window managers just aren't for me, they're ok if you have no more than 3 windows open, but if you have a single monitor and more than 3 windows open they basically become useless, your windows will get so small they become unusable, unless you switch to a different desktop and open more, but that's basically just another way of showing the desktop or minimizing all your windows, I much prefer stacking window managers like openbox, no problem with having multiple windows open, and if it gets too busy then just minimize some, and with the tint2 panel just hover the mouse over a window on the taskbar and you'll get a window preview, plus you can even set keybinds to tile windows in half, or even quarter tile windows.

Tiling window managers are not good if you are using a huge screen/monitor. Opening a window in fullscreen results in a very huge window, where you type in the upper left corner of your screen and for that you have to move your head in that direction and let it stay like that. Thats pretty nasty. Therefore it is way better to not let your application open at fullscreen by default. It is better to let it open in the middle and let some minor important windows circle/float around them. Same goes for more futuristic methods like VR/AR. Its also nice to see some of your background (or the real world in case of AR) between your windows. ^^ But that does not mean that tiling is bad. Its great on small screens and also on big screens if you need alot of somehow evenly important windows at the same time where you have to switch between them alot. But for this kind of work you can just go to another workspace and enable/disable tiling to your needs. So I think tiling window managers are not the best. The best window manager is one that can do both very good. I personally would like to have a great combination of wayfire and hyprland. ;)