Tiling window manager users: how exactly do you use yours?
Do you have advanced keybindings for bringing up frequently used programs?
Are there less common layouts you use frequently?
Do you use any advanced or fancy features?
I read this as "tilting window manager" and was about to get so upset. That diagonal monitor meme has infected my brain
I have a very unusual workflow. In addition to not stacking windows, I don't minimize them either. Instead, I spread them out over many workspaces. Per workspace, I usually only have 1 or 2 windows, but I 'group' workspaces to keep semantically related windows together.
And I do that, by having all workspaces in a column and just placing windows in neighboring workspaces + leaving workspaces empty between the groupings. I also have a minimap for my workspaces in my panel, to just keep track of all of this.I like this workflow a lot, because it maps semantics to location. It feels like a desk where you just place related documents next to each other and might place some documents more in the middle, others in a faraway corner.
This is in contrast to the traditional Windows workflow or the workflow that many tiling folks use, where the first workspace is for web browsing etc..
Those use groupings based on the kind of task you do in them (often effectively being tabs in an application), like web browsing. They don't group by the topic, e.g. you might frantically research ants and use a separate browser window, separate text editor etc., all grouped up for ants.Now, traditional use of workspaces does allow this grouping by topics, by just assigning each workspace a topic. But personally, I found that too static.
Like, yeah, I have some larger, completely distinct topics, but often I'll just quickly research bees and that's kind of ant-related, but doesn't need to be fully mixed with that either. I'd rather just place it to the side of the ant stuff.That's pretty much what I do as well. It was an absolute game-changer for me when I discovered tiling WMs some ~7 years ago, because it meant super consistent keyboard shortcuts for getting to exactly what I wanted to interact with. I know where individual apps/tasks go, so I put them there. And then when I need to switch to them, it's as straightforward as Super+[workspace].
Also helps a ton that i3wm's workspaces only take up a single monitor at a time, which makes it excellent for jumping between monitors.
None of this is set in stone, but I usually follow a relatively consistent pattern:
Center Monitor
- 1: Primary/"serious tasks" web browser
- 4: Any remote or virtualized desktop I might have open at the time
- 6: Image/video editors. Also sometimes just misc usage.
- 8: Development web browser next to neovim
- 9: Steam/games
- 10: Misc. Often a DBMS or file manager
- 11: Misc. Often where I put any secondary tasks or second projects I need to reference
- 12: Misc. Often where I'll stick any long-running tasks that I just need to check on every now and again.
Left monitor
- 2: Music/comms/task list
Right monitor
- 3: Always only a terminal.
- 5: Text editor to use as a
- 7: Secondary/"wasting time" web browser
There is two of us. Sidenote: my workspaces are all named after the topic they represent. E.g. dots, htmxpoc...
I don't do that (again, too static for me), but I have larger meta-workspaces still, which group 20 workspaces each into very big, very distinct topics like "Orga" and "Work".
I do this too, but additionally group these outputs strategically on my 4 displays. I never thought of it like a desk with papers on it but that's very much what it is. And also how I organize papers on the few occasions that I do that.
Former Xmonad user here.
I had two 5 screens and two columns. One screen was for terminal emulators, one was for writing code and software development, one was for my web browser, 2 others were for miscelaneous things, but most often were for working with files a GUI file browser like Nautilus or Thunar, or for reading PDF files in Evince, or reading PowerPoint or Excel documents in LibreOffice.
On each screen the tiles were always in 2 columns. The left for doing work, writing code, prose, drawing graphics and charts, interacting with the CLI, and so on. On the right was documentation: manual pages, PDF files, HTML documents, sometimes the MPV video player window when watching a tutorial that I was able to download from YouTube.
The right column usually had no more than 3 windows open, they started to get too narrow to be useful if more than that were open. I would occasionally horizontally split the left column as well, usually when going back and forth between two documents I was editing.
However...
I did not use this workflow once I started using Tmux, and then I continued not using this workflow when I switched to Emacs. The reason is of course because Tmux and Emacs both provide their own tiling windowing system that operate within a single application window. So my main workflow was always in a single maximized terminal window, or a single maximized Emacs window, or a single maximized GIMP window. Only occasionally would I un-maximize these windows, but then to keep it from getting too small, I would set it in "floating window" mode. Also my web browser, PDF reader, GIMP, LibreOffice, all worked better in full-screen (maximized window) mode. Even Thunar (GUI file browser) has multiple tabs, and a multi-column mode which was useful for the very few times I ever needed a GUI file browser.
At one point, I actually changed my tiling window manager configuration to always open windows maximized, except for Thnuar (GUI file browser) which would open in floating mode, not tiling mode. At that point I finally realized that I don't really using a tiling window manager at all, it is just there managing windows the same as a non-tiling window manager would do.
I switched back to the Xfce default window manager, and quit worrying about window managers all together.
I just use Super+p to run commands. Awesome and custom keybidings are to easily move between tags, windows and monitors, not to launch programs. I use nvim for coding and this combined with awesome means I can do a lot without touching my mouse. At work I use Cinnamon and IntelliJ tools and it's just less ergonomic. Not a huge difference but I definitely prefer my home setup. In general all Linux WM I used over the years were easy to configure and get good experience. The worst environment I had to ever use was OS X. I just hated all their weir solutions like the launch bar and the common menu bar on top. On Linux I never had any issues.
All i need is https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM it's a tiling feature for GNOME
Advanced keybindings are Meta+1,2,3,..., to launch the pinned apps
I had to remap some important keys
- Meta+Space for a scratch window (floating window), disabled other scratch commands
- Meta+Tab - cycle through windows
- Meta+Shift+Tab - cycle through windows left (like tabs in a browser just with Meta)
simplicity, there is a comfort from not having to position windows for mutitasking
i use bismuth / polonium on KDE. both are very bare bone, but it's nice to have a full plasma desktop + tiling.
let me know if you happen to know a better combination
Gnome + pop shell extension. Normal i3 tiling keybinds. All the following bindings include super. w for tabbed layout, f1 for calculator, f2 for Firefox, f3 for nautilus, f4 for settings, f5 for package manager. D for search which I can use like dmenu but much better. Shift+s for screenshot. Shift+q to quit application. I program with in the terminal so I need tiling for keyboard-only use. when I first used i3 I underrated tabbing. It solved nearly all of my problems with tiling.
I mostly work in qtile in a fullscreen layout or a diagonal split between two windows. My hotkeys are super+d for rofi in dmenu mode and super+q for a shutdown menu also in rofi.
sway with tabs (i usually dont use actual tiling)+4-5 workspaces
waybar for status display and on mobile also for menu access
rofi as the app launcher (i also plan to write a proper rofi menu for my phone for quick access to useful commands/config but it's heavily wip)
i patched sway for push to talk because wayland spec doesnt support keybindings in a way required for push to talk for now
i also plan to patch it on the phone to completely forbid fullscreen apps (as they hide the menu which i use for workspace/window switching) and show the window bar on all windows (for example, firefox extension/downloads popups)
Pinephone?
Also I like fuzzle better than rofi, check it out if you haven't
I don't care much about rofi itself, I primarily like it for how powerful its scripting is compared to e.g. dmenu (css themes are nice to have too I guess)
And no, OnePlus 6
Using i3, I have a screen shot utility bound, a gif maker bound, and also I have a smart light which i turn on and off via an HTTP request, also bound in i3.
I have an binding for my terminal, my Emacs and a general fuzzy selector for apps or SSH hosts. I generally operate with everything full screen with windows sorted across 10 named workspaces across 3 monitors.
Sway config: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/stsquad/dotfiles/master/dotconfig/sway/config
