I simply sit on a towel in an empty room with some incense lighted with an 802.11ac card embedded into my brain and simply compute x86 instructions and TCP/IP requests/responses using my exorbitantly high IQ.
Acutally yes! This is true! You've pinpointed exactly my system: r7 2700 w/ 32gb of ram. I was working today and noticed that my ram usage was a little high at 25 fucking GB... Because yes, I indeed have a few firefox tabs opened (usually under 10, I hate having a lot of tabs), well over 10 docker containers and a full Windows VM. Without the use of i3, my ram usage would be closer to 26 or 27. It's not THAT important now that I upgraded to 32gb at the start of the quarantine, but during the time that I didn't have the extra ram, i3 was a life saver. 1gb of ram can make a huge difference when you're nearing the top of your ram usage.
@@sagniknandi3781 oh fuck! I'll tell my job that they need to fire me then! I'm not good enough since I misread things sometimes! I must be lacking basic education then! But yeah, I'm sorry, I saw 16 and assumed threads because in my mind, the most popular choice (currently) would be an 8 core 16 thread cpu. Edit: Funny and ironic how you wrote 8 core **12** "thread" at first. I just hope your message was meant to be a joke.
What was your available memory? Just because programs are using memory doesn't mean that it's not available. That's really the only number that matters on Linux. The 'free' number is useless for most people because that even subtracts the drive cache, which is based on files you routinely access. However that is always available to other applications. Browsers will be the biggest hog and many times it's a garbage add-on that's leaking memory. WMs are drops in the bucket even with DEs as they don't really do a whole lot. But if going the WM route it's important to think of the entire software ecosystem that you use. If going with a basic vanilla, no composition, DWM setup and then have 5 tabs of YT open then minimalism was just some sort of virtue signaling. Also, these days in the post-Moore's law era, resources optimization is important. It takes more lines of code and implementing more tools to achieve better hardware optimization. Not that that's really a big deal for a WM as it just tells X what to do with windows (see the Xlib C library functions). At the end of the day, resource optimization is more complex than the recent Windows->Linux converts in certain Reddit subs and YT vlogers will have people believe.
@@krozareq available memory was 7gb. I made a custom script for my memory usage, one that uses the MemAvailable result from /proc/meminfo. To be honest, I don't really care about minimalism, I only care about removing as much bloat that I don't use as possible while not slowing down my workflow. For example, I love vim, but not for the minimalism aspect of it since I have over 80 plugins. I have Firefox as my main browser everywhere now, only 2 plugins: ublock origin and keepa (price history on Amazon directly added to the page). I also hate to keep tabs opened, but because of my work, lately I've had to have around 10 tabs opened at all times. The most demanding things on there are Jira and Bitbucket, for some reason they use a lot of memory. Im also running my Sql dev server on a separate dedicated server that I have. It consumes around 8gb of ram when it has been running for a while (although I believe that it has simply cached a lot of informations and wouldn't require as much ram if it was on my computer and therefore restarted every day). The fact that TWMs are less resource demanding is just a bonus for me. If i3 took more resources than gnome to run, I'd still run it.
I can't live without tiling WMs now. Operating your entire computer with just the keyboard(aside from using a web browser) is so much more comfortable imho.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 Gnome leave so much of a footprint, I hate it. I'd love it if it didn't change every update and forces me to wait for extensions to work again. In the first place who the hell came up with the idea of getting rid of the system tray? My experiences with gnome were always like this and thus I'll stick to my i3 or if it has to be a DE I'd rather go XFCE.
I still don't entirely understand the hate for GNOME. It, KDE, and Cinnamon are the only DEs that don't look like they're from 2006, and they're considerably more lightweight on equivalent hardware than, say, Windows' native WM and macOS's Quartz compositing layer.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 "macOS especially becoming unusable on older hardware" That being SAID, older MacBooks handle pretty much any system that isn't macOS remarkably well. I've got a friend who thrifted an old black pre-unibody polycarbonate Dual-Core MacBook with a dead graphics card and got it to exclusively run Windows. It's fucking *insane* how well it runs on that thing.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 Oh shit, nice! What distributions did you get working on those machines? The reason I ask is: I've historically had trouble finding a Linux or BSD system that's optimized well for a Mac. I remember trying to install Debian on a 2012 MacBook Pro. I was able to boot into the live CD but not actually *install* it onto the machine? I suppose it's something to do with SIP or some other Apple DRM component, but I'm not entirely sure.
This. When I first started using i3, I spent a few hours each day tooling with it. but now I only edit the config if I find a new program that I love to use and I just add a quick shortcut instead of dmenu-ing it every time.
A pretty good video, it's only "wrong" by the fact that tiling windows managers are to increase production in coding and data management, not necessarily audio/video production/consumption. Different strokes for different folks, gotta pick the best brush for the job and realize not everyone paints wet on wet.
I've my file manager locked to workspace 1 with window rules and the media players locked to workspace 5 and for one screen to switch to media 5 when (e.g) mpv is launched. Ideal for video consumption.
@@akza0729 I use Vim regularly for coding and sometimes for quick edits nano. Alternatively i use an GUI text editor called geany, which i run in VIM mode. Sooooo... i use VIM technically on daily basis. Just sometimes with an different painting on it. Specially when you work with servers, you should know how to code and work within terminals without the usage of an GUI (Depending on the servers). So it happens relatively often that you meet people in that area that work with VIM, in some cases even privately. And servers are the area in which Linux has the biggest usage share compared to windows, mac and others.
i use tiling window manager to keep my desktop experience fun! i get super bored with full-fledged desktop environments! tinkering with your system and customizing every little thing according to you is just so satisfying!
OlejkaLive after a lot of testing, girls are nowhere as fun as tiling wm’s. Really fun to interact with at first but get tiresome fast due to the amount of bugs and lack of customization.
I agree with you, for the most part. However, you need to consider couple more things. These twms are for developers and sysadmins and not for casual users. Imo, twms for casual and semi technical users would be purely nonsensical. For us, the developers, we do a lot of switching, showing-hiding, swapping, resizing while we work with the keyboard; and everytime reaching the mouse, finding the cursor and moving it can be not only annoying but also a bit more time consuming. I think, muscle memory on your own customization is the key defense for twms. After the initial hiccups and when adjusted, they actually bring faster experience.
This is true. I'm a developer and I'm enjoying i3 on Manjaro. I'm very productive and love that I barely touch my touchpad on my laptop anymore. I think also using twm on my laptop is another plus as sometimes I'm in a spot where I can't really use a mouse.
I'm not å developer. I'm just a casual user - but after more thañ 5 years on twm 's I hate every moment when I'm forced to use a regular DE. For me there are several reasons why I choose to stay on tiling. The tiling itself (The layout of windows) just makes more sense to me. I use bspwm so there are some automatic tiling schemes where windows will open in a predefined layout but personally I prefer to use preselect and manually decide where my next window will open and what split ratio I will use.Using the keyboard for everything have become normal to me. Window navigation is only one part of it - but open programs - move between workspaces and nodes - is really effective once its become muscle memory. And then comes all the aliases and functions we can add to our Shells rc file. Qutebrowser - tmux - rofi - dunst - and vim and I'm golden. Will install some other programs too - but the only time I leave a terminal is whenever I use a browser. If it weren't for those overdesigned websites that make you use a "real" browser - I'd probably never even need x. Tty would do just fine. Minimalism FTW 😁
Yeah, I've been using tiling with tmux for a while and recently started using i3 for when I'm doing software development or writing. tmux is great but twms allow for having documentation up in a browser or a preview up when writing with LaTeX. For text-centric work where you want to glance at a gui for documentation and previews, a twm is perfect. That some gui applications are harder to use can even be a benefit, as it makes me get less distracted. It's also easy to set up multiple types of sessions so you have access to different environments from your DM depending on what you want to work on.
I do see more and more that Tiling WM's are geared towards the power users and to that end the access to customization is greater than in typical desktop environments. And since this channel has a lot about Thinkpads, I want to say for me personally it has made me enjoy using my T430 far more. Coming from a full size keyboard with larger trackpad, it's taken some time for me to get used to the smaller T430 and its different mouse button placement. Awesome WM has been a great boon to that. A regular DE would have been harder for me ergonomically speaking.
Nah. You can't call it an actual take over until you start storing your hot sauce in your computer case and go around saying a lenovo laptop is the right laptop.
also recently switched from arch + dwm to fedora + gnome + pop-shell and ive really been enjoying it. Coming from DWM I am missing some functionalities / customization but im not bothered by that most of the time.
The first time I saw a tiling wm was in those subreddits, and while yes, it look hella beautiful also all the apps that were running were pure cli apps, and the question rises "what if I want to use programs like Blender or Krita, pretty sure you can but there is no screenshot here with those" and that's were the magic broke
Here's what you can do with Awesome WM: ua-cam.com/video/OoSts990-lY/v-deo.html And yes, out of the box you can run your GUI apps (like Blender or Krita or Gparted, whatever) in fullscreen. You can even work in floating windows mode (no tiling) if you really want.
Or you can assign these to a specific workspaces so they always open there and have a whole workspace for themselves (unless you open something on it) You can also move all windows between workspaces freely
@@xGOKOPx Yeah, good point. In my opinion if you are keen to invest some time in configuration of window manager it will be way more convenient (and less resource heavy) than full desktop environment. But everyone has different taste:)
I use tab mode for those apps, press MOD+w and it's basically like in Windows with fullscreen apps and tab bar, plus I can use the mouse to scroll between apps.
@Game Over PopOS uses the Gnome desktop environment, not a window manager. Vit C said that Java and Wine have problems in every Window Manager, that doesn't include desktop environments.
ironically, I thought most of the issue he mentions specifically AREN'T in i3. Except of course having to use keyboard shortcuts, but that's the whole damn point of using a TWM. If you actually think using the mouse is better, well first of all i'm sorry for you if you use the pc all day like that, but in that case obviously don't install a TWM.
I'm a heavy keyboard user who mainly uses openbox and saw no major benefit when tried i3. Like you said your last segment, most of the useful functionality is present in stacking wms as well, especially if you take something customizable like ob and add some keyboard shorcuts to manage window locations (namely moving active window to the next window border on screen in a certain direction)
I like having a window manager installed alongside my desktop environment, you get all the benefits of imagining you will manage to finally reach the perfect configuration while always being able to safely fall back to something less keyboard friendly but also something that doesn't inspire lengthy and distracting customization sessions.
Or you can use your desktop environment of choice (mine is Xfce) and swap out xfwm4 (or whichever window manager the environment is using) for i3 or you favorite tiling window manager to have the best of both worlds
Most wm can do that even wm in DEs, it's almost a standard. A Gentoo user didn't know that is blowing my mind. Nobody, literally nobody resize window in tiling wm like he mentioned in the video.
Honestly, I won a lot in productivity with some tiling wm, and in fact you can use usual tiling wm with common DE (like KDE+i3), in which case it requires minimum configuration (see the arch wiki for an how to)
6:23 well this is just bs, I get more songs in my player list, I get more files on the screen if there are more files in the folder, my working area in inkscape is bigger, I get more settings in blender panels, I do less scrolling in browsing, there is no perfect window size. For most programs the bigger your screen the better. The point about the setup is good, we should have some kind of noob friendly desktop with tilling by default for not geeky users.
@@EdLrandom You can package i3 config with distros to make it easy but the main problem nobody ever seems to cover when talking about tiling window managers. the target audience. Which is not the user who is uncomfortable editing config files. Look at the mess regolith had with trying to change config locations in their i3 setup just confused those people who had been using i3 elsewhere.
@@EdLrandom I was wondering if using Blender with its quadrillion keyboard shortcuts makes configuring a suitable twm setup harder ? What wm are you using ?
@@parityviolation968 Funny enough I use gnome now (use to hate it a lot) but I been using i3wm for a year or so, I don't know why twm should be hard with blender, most key bindings I used in i3 involve a win key (I had both left and right win keys on my old keybord) blender does not use win keys.
Programmer's point of view here, I'll go through all the points and explain why I love TWMs (more specifically i3, I intend to try others, but i3 works so well for my workflow that I haven't gotten around to doing it yet) :p DE = Desktop Environment (Gnome, KDE, xfce, cinnamon, budgie, etc.) TWM = Tiling Window Manage (i3, awesomewm, bspwm, xmonad, sway, etc.) 1- That's part of the fun. I hate feeling confined to what my DE gives me, I like being able to customize every inch of my setup. Weirdly enough, if I customize something myself (like setting up shortcuts), I'll remember them more easily. "While this makes the setup very portable, ..." Yeah, that's one of the big things. My setup has worked on all the distros I tried (in order from older to most recent: Arch (Antergos (rip)), Gentoo, Raw arch from scratch, Fedora, Debian (didn't get to install everything and already had issues, god I hate Debian based distros) and now OpenSUSE). 2- You learned to use your tools. GUIs are everywhere so you don't realize it, but if you lived with TWMs first, you'd make the same comments about GUIs now. And yes, I do indeed use the terminal for mostly anything that is not: Web Browsing, Chat clients (Discord + Slack but they have some good shortcuts so it's mostly fine) and my Windows VM. Video? mpv. File management? ls, tree, ranger. Music? mpd + nmcpcpp. Text editor? neovim. 3- GUI apps look like crap in a TWM because they're not meant to be there. Use something else. If you want to use mostly GUI apps, don't use a TWM, it's that simple. "You don't save any screen real estate" I started using TWMs because my laptop's screen was 15" @1080p. Most GUI apps have a lot of extra bullshit like window title, a fucking huge bar (or even 2 in some cases), maybe its own tab management. At the end of the day, if I can replace Chrome by Surf, I gain an insane amount of real estate. Then I replace my GUI based text editor by a more compact TUI one, then I learn to properly use the command line for most stuff and BOOM. I went from barely being able to fit 2 apps and sometimes being forced to have only 1 app running at once to being able to fit 4 apps and therefore 4 tasks at once on my small screen. 4- "Keyboard shortcuts" Well yes, but I'll end up learning a DE's keyboard shortcuts anyway. The only difference is that I didn't set them up, so they might not feel good and I might forget them easily. If I have an issue and configured my shortcuts and didn't save them somewhere, I'll lose time configuring everything again. As someone that switches distros a lot and reinstalls a lot, portability is really important. More so than ease of use thanks to a GUI that doesn't behave the same every time I use it. Also, I never had a single keyboard shortcut overlap with my TWM. But I always have some conflicts once I change to a DE. 5- "managing shore". I don't know, I never manage anything. I use a lot of workspaces instead which divide my work: general terminals, web browsing, programming related terminals, VM remote, chats, music player, email client. That's 8 workspaces already. Alt-tabbing that shit would be an horrible waste of time. 6- Ok? I've had some issues, but nothing groundbreaking tbh. I don't use TWMs for gaming, I still use Windows for that, so I haven't really looked at the situation in years. Linux gaming has come a long way, but it's still nowhere close to being ready (yes, I'm aware of dxvk, proton, lutris. I've tried them and was easily able to find some of my games didn't work). 7- App overview? Why would you want that, why not divide your work properly? Just in case I have a rofi configuration that allows me to have an overview of my current windows across all my workspaces. So that's a need that's already answered I guess. 8- PiP and Drop Down Terminals? I can pop out any window and move it around where I want. So that answers my need for the pip (firefox and opera also have a built-in pip that works really well for videos (at least on i3)). 9- I see this as a con for DEs actually: Why should the APP do the job of the Window Manager? If your window manager can have splitting and tabs, why should your apps have tabs? Then you end up with 10 different apps with 10 different ways of handling spliting and tabbing. That's not a good thing to me. Why can't the DE directly include that under its window title? Why does a window HAVE to only contain ONE instance of the app? Then I'll have to learn 100 different shortcuts (let's say 10 per app), which sounds weird and contradictory when you said that TWMs needed a lot of shortcuts. To conclude, use whatever feels right to you! If you feel more comfortable using a DE, go ahead! I've had a blast trying to use gnome every time I install a new distro, I really like it, but it still doesn't feel right to me.
agree with a lot of that but... debian tho... ive been using a debain based distro for the past 2 years since i first used Linux have i seriously been on the more problematic side of Linux?
also btw i use a tiling window manager called qtile and i use kde apps with gui cause that boosts my productivity a bunch honestly can't do anything without dolphin and as for the app overview thing you mensioned, i probably use the same rofi config nice
@@RenderingUser the fact that you even ask the question already means you have an answer. I've been using Linux for at least 10 years and switched to it for school and then work, so that would be around 6 years of pretty consistent use. Debian has never worked for me. I have terrible luck I think. But Debian, Ubuntu, PopOS, Elementary and another one that has Z in the name but that I never remember have always broken in a month. Even Arch has been more stable. And nowadays I use OpenSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed depending on what I need and recently switched to Nixos for my server. I'm of the opinion that it doesn't hurt to try something else, but at the same time, if you're not curious and don't have any blatant issue with Debian, the there's no reason to switch :p
@@DevilDead13820 well i dont really have any issue with distros im kind of really used to apt most my problems lie in window managers currently using qtile but im looking for better alternatives heard i3 was great so currently checking that out edit: decided to stick with qtile because python
I've never felt more demotivated to try a window manager after reading this comment. Recently I've started to feel like this pride to spend a bunch of time configuring things and learning this niche UX is just a waste of my productivity and time. I could easily become a better developer spending time developing than figuring out the perfect way to configure all the things and finding **the one** setup.
As someone with multiple screens one of which is pivoted, tiling works like a dream, i3 is a huge improvement over anything I've ever used, no stacking environment really seems to understand what I want to do with my windows.
Stacking / floating window management is mostly a toy in my opinion. You can of course create nice marketing slides for Windows and MacOS with a lot of stacked windows showing, but useful, REAL work is done on the keyboard, not by doing toy like colourful button clicking.
Just to correct you on one thing, you CAN easily resize the windows in i3 by hoding the mod key and click/drag as long as you're within about 200px of the border, so that works pretty well.
I disagree on the configuration portion. I love the way i3 is configured. Everything is in one easy to read list. Where as on gnome or another DE the gui settings are categorized in into different parts.
I have been using i3wm for the last 3 years. I’ve been given a MacOS at work. I spent 5 weeks doing my best to love it, but I absolutely hate it. Everything is in my way and I had to constantly use the mouse. “It doesn’t really help in productivity”. Heck yeah it does. Every key is mapped in my config. I was wasting more time in MacOS just switching between browser and VSCode and terminal, than I spent on my vimrc config. I asked my company to give me a Linux laptop, and I literally just cloned my repository and my config was there. I spent 1 minute setting up everything and I’m back to being actually productive. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time on AltTab anymore. And with Average typing speed at 105wpm, doing anything with a keyboard will be a lot faster than with a mouse. For sure. And yeah, “GUI apps are broken with tiling wm”. Solution - don’t use GUI apps. I use a terminal music player, vscode with Vim for editing, Ranger for File manager, sxiv for image view and qutebrowser for keyboard browser needs. Only GUI apps I use is Discord and Google Chrome
Resizing vimdiff windows is already a pain. Better to use gvimdiff for that. I already have all letters bound in vim, and I definitely won't press something as awkward as for anything to do with windows. The mouse can also be very flexible, even if in most cases, using a keyboard is just faster.
@@Cat-vs7rc Interesting statement, but yes, doing mod+1 is faster than doing alt+tab 6 times in a row, then doing it 2 times, then 4, then it's just 3 because you changed to that other app..... It just doesn't feel right to me. Which is a good point, people think differently, who would have thought...
well, if you're more interested in installing desktops than actually coding something useless, creating something useful. Then a tiling window manager is perfect for you. It gives you this sense of accomplishments much more easily than trying to code something to solve a real world problem!
@@afonsosalbrecht I don't know what you mean by that. I use Qtile now and configure it by coding in Python. And in general, your argumentation seem not to make sense for me. Installing a Tiling Window Manager does not exclude coding and solving real problems. But if you feel a sense of accomplishment by not installing a software you like, then it is the way to go for you. To me, Qtile is one of the best things happened to me in recent years. It is really useful and is so much better than traditional window managers. I wish I had switched to such a tiling window manager earlier. Same goes for Vim as an editor. But that is another story for another time.
what do you think of regolith-desktop? I've seen its a nice combo of the gnome daemons and system management with i3 to handle window management. I'm being thinking of switching over because trying to spend hours making sure wifi and screen tearing doesn't happen is just not realistic moving forward.
Nice video, really like how you pointed weaknesses of tiling WMs. However, I'm still on i3 because I use tiling very rarely: all my apps are fullscreen and i switch them like tabs with mod left mod right. Super convenient, and honestly most apps are best fullscreen anyway. And multimonitor support is really great in i3. Also, you mentioned mouse centric apps contrast - my most prevalent app in this department is Chromium. This one has cVim extension, which gives me OPTION to control with keyboard. With this setup, everything flies so fast. Ticket in browser, terminal to fix, ticket reply, new ticket, terminal ... All with keyboard, bam bam bam - done :)
In my experience the learning curve for a TWM doesn't seem to be that bad. I find it effective to learn features of the wm as you use them instead of trying to brute force memorize the shortcuts. Now that it's just muscle memory for me, I'm not thinking about the shortcuts as I'm moving windows around. It feels more like I just think how I want my windows laid out, and they just do it. Besides, we're linux users. We're all about learning curves haha
KDE has an awesome app overview ability. You can also use it with active corners to make for super fast mouse access. For example when I drag my mouse to the lower left corner of my desktop I get an instant overview of all windows on that particular desktop. When I drag my mouse to the opposite corner I get an overview of my four desktops in a grid and all windows. Then I can easily drag windows between them as well. Taskbar and menu at the top and latte-dock as a launcher only at the bottom and I have lightning fast access to all running applications. Everything auto-hides and looks sooooo clean. You can have every edge and corner configured to a different function and there are dozens available in the KDE store. It feels so fast and natural for my use case.
I have same thoughts, Wolfgang! I've found the look of the tiling wm tidy. I went for i3wm but at the end I felt somewhat limited. Then I've found that I can easily tile on KDE with Super+arrows or PgUp, use multiple desktops for different workflows (Super+F1:F4), _plus_ I can use the mouse whenever I want. Whatever I wanted a tiling WM for, I've found key bindings in KDE and in the apps themselves. I know that there might be some for whom that might be insufficient, but that's why we love Linux - everyone can find a distro and window manager they personally like.
Apparently some people have gotten Plasma to work with i3. I'm not sure how much effort it takes or if it's still possible but it seems like it would be pretty cool
I used KDE for a while, and the ease of customization was great. But one thing I never got over was that you cannot change workspaces on only one monitor at a time with KWin.
thanks for the clarification. I was really wondering about GUI applications, since most demos of tiling WM only show you nice arrangements of terminals
@@michaelrose5242 Most daily apps you need to use are mouse-driven, and the shortcut of all of them are totally different from each other. You end up jumping from keyboard to mouse more often. You have to spend too many days configuring every app to standardize the shortcuts. In fact you could tile some windows in Gnome and you have both worlds. Is my opinion, nothing more.
@@hernanpangia7593 lmao, you literally only need to configure your wm once and from now to the end of time you'll have a workflow tailored to your exact specifications
Reason no7: You can use 'rofi -show window' to get a list of all opened windows and switch to any window on any workspace. I use it to find a window when I have loads of windows opened, though this can be lacking a bit as it is text only, for instance usually all opened terminals will have title 'user@hostname', which can make it hard to find the window you want. Having a GUI overview of all opened apps would be very useful, perhaps would be a good project for someone to do.
1. That is actually a plus to me. It's nice to have a standalone window manager instead of a DE because I don't even want everything a DE would install. For example I even wish notifications were completely centralized so I could just make my whole system not support them. But there's always something bringing it's own notification engine. I don't want the DE to set my keyboard layout and do various other things that would clash with my standard Linux setup, like things that are run in my xorg startup script. If I wanted to use a DE with more features, it would be actually more complicated because I'd have to change things that I've done the same for years and years. Tasks would then be done by things the DE has included and if I wanted to change them I'd have to learn how to configure that module (probably a gui config but still). 2. You do have to learn how to use it a bit, but much more you have to think about what you want it to do and set it up to work like this. Make your computer learn your workflow, not the other way around. 3. IntelliJ and other IDEs works fine in tiling WMs. Writing rules is not a waste of time, manually placing windows where you want them (Some of them every day) is when you can have your window manager doing it. But in the end I don't use that many gui apps in Linux. But I didn't learn CLI applications because of Tiling Window Managers, I've learnt them becasue I like them being more punctual than GUIs. (You make a decision and issue a command rather than looking at what options the GUI presents to you and chose one, just like you didn't know what it was you wanted to do. Complicated GUIs actually cna make you forget about that though.) And I never had any shortcut conflicts because I use the Super Key as my mod key, and almost nothing else uses it. The super key is always mapped to something related to the window manager/DE, even in goddamn Windows. 5. Of course you can use the mouse, but what's really nice is having three different shortcuts/modifiers for the shortcut, one resizing the window just by a pixel, one by 5 pixels and one by 10 or 15 or something like that. But the real point not having to move/resitze windows that often in the first place. I have the same layout of windows on my screen every day. I don't just wake up and randomly put my cmus or my browser on a different screen or workspace than yesterday. Of course I don't use the same programs every day, but there is a goto layout for everything I use a computer for and it's usually seperated by workspaces. 6. Only thing that ever made problems was wine, and wine messes up in any WM. 7. Why would you need it when you can see everything already? To go cross-workspace? Just switch the workspace for half a second! 8. In which? It works out of the Box in i3 and dwm which are probably the most profic ones. 9. I think it's stupid to build something into a application that can be centralized. Interesting channel though, I may subscribe.
I think this depends a lot on the use case. For someone whose workflow primarily involves programming (particularly through the terminal through bash/vim/etc.), tiling window managers are a lot more efficient, since you pretty much don't need to use a mouse. I particularly like that Alt+j/k on i3 allows you to shift context to an open window on another monitor without you ever having to take your hands off the keyboard. EDIT: The learning curve for me was nonexistent because I was very comfortable with Alt+j/k and Alt+Arrow Keys from having used vim and terminator for pretty much as long as I can remember. For someone without this background, the time to adapt to this environment will obviously be longer. I think it's a case of using the right tool for the job. I would not want to edit a video/image using a tiling WM, since I'm mainly using my mouse. But for terminal-heavy workflows, I think they make a lot of sense. EDIT 2: It is possible to have multiple WMs/DMs. Yes, sometimes they conflict, but I've had a backup XFCE environment for a long time whenever I'm giving a talk/presenting something. Just use the most appropriate environment for the job.
Small counterpoint to Reason 5: I actually agree that re-arranging, moving, and resizing windows is a chore. That is precisely why I prefer my window manager to make those decisions for me, rather than have a floating mess of windows all over the place that I need to manipulate myself. It is, of course, possible to run every app in fullscreen. In such a case, it does not matter too much whether you do app switching with workspaces or by clicking on a dockbar icon. In fact, I use Sway on my laptop with Waybar, and I can do both of those things. What I like more is that I can define which programs can open on which workspaces, and I can even make them autostart there. My swayconf contains exact instructions on where windows should be opened. When I login to Sway, all my windows are already laid out in the appropriate workspace. And some workspaces have tiled layouts to let me view multiple windows (again pre-defined). I would think that such a setup actually saves me a LOT of time. :) Also Sway makes window resizing and rearranging with mouse easy. The hitbox is not tiny like i3. You can also set whatever border size you want, if you want an even bigger hitbox. I will say, however, that I use XFCE on my desktop because I am dealing with multiple monitors, and am still using X11 there because of Wayland issues with stuff like screen recording (as my desktop is used for streaming via OBS, this can be a dealbreaker).
I can recommend the desktop environment Regolith as a DE with a tiling windows manager that is easy to install and does not require configurations. It uses Ubuntu and i3/rofi and ubuntu settings menus, and it is preconfigured, as in it is not ugly and everything works. This is exactly the reason i started using it, as i just needed a quick OS to install on my new pc before university. It has been working out for me, and i have pushed it onto 4 other people who are all very happy with the tiling windows manager experience. They haven't had to configure anything at all, so for them as new users it has been a great.
Switching from DEs into customized window managers is changing into a new paradigm, that emphasizes freedom. Much like when you build your own house in which YOU want to live, when you individuate and leave your parents house. Yes, building your own house takes a little time and effort, but that is YOUR house adjusted to YOUR preferences and values. And you do it once.
> And you do it once. Actually no. As well as with house which you built yourself, you continue to build it all the time you live in it. But that's a part of pleasure :)
if you like to keep installing and tweaking environment settings, then tiling window manager is for you. Most people would rather spend this time coding something useful to solve real world problems. But i get it, you feel more "succesful" by spending your time trying to configure your desktop envinroment. xD
@@heterodoxagnostic8070 make things faster? that's the biggest fallacy! Why? I agree that you use a WM to get rid of your mouse, so you spent your time tweaking the keybindings (making sure they aren't overlapping with the key-bindings of other programs), installing all the basic desktop utilities from scratch (internet, screen resolution, keyboard language, wallpapers...) and then after some time you finally get used to all this customised set up! *THEN* you realised that apart from the terminal, all the other apps are mouse-oriented apps. So you use your super-duper fast keybinding to open those apps and then grab the mouse! (HAHA). However, you can say that your workflow involves 90% of the time the terminal, and for this argument I suggest you installing tmux. But again, if you want to get this sense of accomplishment by tweaking basic linux settings, instead of learning a language and try to solve real world problems, then of couse, go for it! Tiling window managers are great in this case.
1. "Configuration is difficult" I configured it once, put my configs up on github, and now I just git clone to get my entire desktop environment set up. These configs only require a couple basic extra programs that I can install in once command. With other DEs, I need to spend more time setting them up. 2. "to even benefit from keyboard features you have to learn all the other console/keyboard driven apps" The benefit from keyboard shortcuts on your window manager isn't lost the moment you have to switch to your mouse. It's not all or nothing. Lots of apps already have keyboard driven navigation that you could learn that are entirely separate from i3. I have bad RSI in my wrists and it's a life-saver for me. 3. I don't have keyboard shortcut conflicts because I use the super key for the WM.
I wish but how can you with one key binding rearrange all open floating apps to a dwm layout for example? I set up many keybindings to change the focused app layout in my openbox but they change only the layout of the focused app, not all at once. Or I missed something on how Openbox keybindings work.
Interesting point about the friction between mouse-intensive GUIs and the window-manager of choice. It really depends on how things are intermixed. I, for instance, work mostly either text-editing (coding, writing, pdf-reading, searching for info already on my machine) or information-hunting online. In my case, the balance goes to tiling window managers, but it's great to have choice! Although, by far, my best time saving strategy has been holding up before changing interfaces. (As in: wait until you know well what the pain points are, to avoid spending a constant fraction of my time tweaking the environment, switching window manager, etc.) I typically spend, between 2 to 4 years between major changes ;-) Of course, my way of computing happens to be quite stable (same profession for years now...).
@@meledo I found the charchter using reverse image search it's a genshin impact charchter called fischl shame i can't find sadly i couldn't find the wallpaper so i setteld for this w.wallha.com/ws/14/MpPkjI3F.jpg
Yes you have to memorize lots of shortcuts, but once you're used to it its super convenient. Although I tend to forget some of the short cut that I don't use often...
I have been using i3wm for a 2 years (i am programmer) and i enjoy it. Most of a times I use it in home too :-) From your commentary, I conclude that watching this vlog, I will only waste time. Am I right?
@@GreyDeathVaccine YES. As long as you already enjoy it - don't waste time on this. :) He has some good points - but the only point that's important is if YOU like it or not.
Tiling Windows meant to be productive but in the end is just to show our coworkers how nerd we are to look cool. Ps: XFCE user and i sooooooooo productive with it. Perfect.
I think some of these things can be fixed. Alt-Tab can be added in. Pop up windows can be made to be automatically configured by the devs to be floating, etc.
I watched the video because I honestly had a very great time using i3 so far (one and a half years, I'd say). There are a lot of valid points made (especially considering that I for example only rarely edit the config, and do some of the same stuff again and again), however, I do think that the basic idea is worth further extending. For example, the tiling wm should not put the new application in a predetermined place, but should rather both take optimal window sizes (as requested by the applications) and recorded user actions ("user put that kind of window into floating mode last time") into consideration. In general, most of what I use is the terminal (I don't use a graphical file manager, `ls`, `cd` and friends are usually more than enough) and my web browser, which in turn has a vim keyboard mapping add on installed, which works very well for most non-app pages, or simpler app-pages. It also feels nicer to have vim be more application like, because I can do the splits the same way I do them everywhere else (of course syncing everything with the X clipboard)
I love the default tiling mode in Pop!_OS because it addresses most of my complaints with pure tiling WMs. I'm able enjoy easily resizing windows with my mouse. It feels like the perfect blend.
When I first heard about tilers my first thought was “wait you mean that thing I always try to force my computer to do anyways”. the tiling in floating WMs/DEs is at best limited to halves and quarters of the full screen and is a massive pain to use compared to using a tiling wm. If you're mostly going to be using tiled windows anyways, it makes sense to use a window manager that's built to do that. Additionally, in most tilers moving/resizing windows can be done easily with the keyboard, or by holding the mod key (either alt or super usually) and left or right clicking and dragging for moving and resizing respectively. I know for a fact this works in i3, which you specifically said was difficult to resize windows due to the hit box, but if you had used mod+rclick that problem would have gone away.
7:15, fortunataly i know this clip, and was able to turn the volume down... I also live in a russian speaking country, I don't have a door, use speakers and my parents are home. Can you please put on a loud warning next time.
I know I’m much later to this conversation, by now the tiling window managers like i3wm in Arco Linux comes with everything installed out of the box, you just start using it, you don’t need to do extra stuff if you don’t want to. In fact it’s currently my main core window manager. On the Ubuntu family there is tiling inPop!OS that can be switched on and off as the need for your workflow arises, also makes like very easy also works out of the box. But the issues you raised were all of concern. Great conversation
ah yes my productivity is increased by the stress i feel from needing to memorize hotkeys and navigate my tiles during finals studies, only because i realize in that very moment that something is artificially bottlenecking me and now i have to be hyper aware of what im doing.
I'm a developer and when I'm developing my i3 environment is perfect for my productivity. Most of IDE, Terminal, Text Editors ... I can control using the keyboard and with multiples workspaces, it's absolute awesome. However, when I'm not coding but just using the computer for other things I like to switch for my normal desktop environment.
For newbies, yes it's difficult at first, I remember my first experience, it was difficult, especially coming from the latest macbook with the huge trackpad, ahh bliss, but then I slowly got used to it and now I can't do regular GUI anymore... I'm more productive on a tiling window manager, I use i3-gaps, gives me a zen like feel. You mentioned the main issue is to do with configuration, when I install arch + i3-gaps + compton + oh-my-zsh, it takes me around 20 minutes, and you can easily spend more than that with gnome-tweaks and so on. It all varies really, I mean I've been doing this for 2 years now, so a newcomer might find it difficult. But always remember, the best GUI/wm/DE is the one that you like.
For a general user, perhaps wm are not worth it, but for a developer/sysadming they definitely are. Yes, they require investment, but it is a concept of investing time to save time later, and you do save time and more importantly your brain effort. Constant context switching between mouse and keyboard takes it toll and makes getting in the flow much harder (which is paramount for developers to get a job done). For me it took about a month or so to get into WMs and choose the proper one. I started, unsuprisingly, with i3 and in the end stopped at dwm, because the basic concept of it's tiling system is very much what i need. It took me around month or two of small tinkering with it in background to get a set up that i like and didn't touch wnything since (excvept changing colorscheme a couple of times). Not only do i have anything i need at a distance of a couple of keystrokes, i can create this setup on any machine in terms of minutes (depending on download speed). I it already came handy several times. In browser i use keys too mostly, it least when i'm at work, cVim is pretty good (though sometimes a bit buggy).
Also, for people who are more familiar with cli tools, WM are definitely a much better choice. Same concept of investing some time to learn the tools, to save time when doing your job.
I think you are missing a point about keyboard and mouse. The goal is not to NEVER use the mouse, but to avoid constantly switching between keyboard and mouse, because context switch for a brain is a pretty expensive operation and breaks the flow of the work, which makes you tire faster. That is also the reason of why i use vim and not some gui IDE.
I use Openbox and Tint2 panel. It doesn't even allow icons on the desktop. But it's really functional and fast after few tweaks on the Tint2 and Guake terminal. I like how minimal GUI can actually improve the experience without all the fancy features of full desktop environment.
thats why i use an hybrid WM meaning i still use my mouse when i want to and get the benefits of auto resizing (like if i an gonna do 2 thing together i can without fiddling with it)
All gui is bloat and we should just go back to using the abacus
abacus needs specialized hardware, fingers it is
you're life is bloat.
@@MastarCheef1337 My are laif we're bloat
DDG FTW
I simply sit on a towel in an empty room with some incense lighted with an 802.11ac card embedded into my brain and simply compute x86 instructions and TCP/IP requests/responses using my exorbitantly high IQ.
9 months ago: My i3wm Workflow
8 months ago: Virgin i3 vs. Chad BSPWM
2 months ago: Tiling Window Managers suck. Here's why
Alternative titile: Why tmux is The One True Tiling WM.
@@y__h That is the right answer right there.
@@y__h tmux is bloated.
Unaboomer's impact on the society is effing enormous
Coming soon: How to plan your video content for maximum views
user with 16core cpu, 32gb mem: "I installed wm because it is lightweight"
Acutally yes! This is true!
You've pinpointed exactly my system: r7 2700 w/ 32gb of ram.
I was working today and noticed that my ram usage was a little high at 25 fucking GB... Because yes, I indeed have a few firefox tabs opened (usually under 10, I hate having a lot of tabs), well over 10 docker containers and a full Windows VM. Without the use of i3, my ram usage would be closer to 26 or 27. It's not THAT important now that I upgraded to 32gb at the start of the quarantine, but during the time that I didn't have the extra ram, i3 was a life saver. 1gb of ram can make a huge difference when you're nearing the top of your ram usage.
@@DevilDead13820 R7 2700 is a 8 core 16 "thread" CPU ! Go get your primary education first!
@@sagniknandi3781 oh fuck! I'll tell my job that they need to fire me then! I'm not good enough since I misread things sometimes! I must be lacking basic education then!
But yeah, I'm sorry, I saw 16 and assumed threads because in my mind, the most popular choice (currently) would be an 8 core 16 thread cpu.
Edit: Funny and ironic how you wrote 8 core **12** "thread" at first. I just hope your message was meant to be a joke.
What was your available memory? Just because programs are using memory doesn't mean that it's not available. That's really the only number that matters on Linux. The 'free' number is useless for most people because that even subtracts the drive cache, which is based on files you routinely access. However that is always available to other applications. Browsers will be the biggest hog and many times it's a garbage add-on that's leaking memory. WMs are drops in the bucket even with DEs as they don't really do a whole lot. But if going the WM route it's important to think of the entire software ecosystem that you use. If going with a basic vanilla, no composition, DWM setup and then have 5 tabs of YT open then minimalism was just some sort of virtue signaling.
Also, these days in the post-Moore's law era, resources optimization is important. It takes more lines of code and implementing more tools to achieve better hardware optimization. Not that that's really a big deal for a WM as it just tells X what to do with windows (see the Xlib C library functions).
At the end of the day, resource optimization is more complex than the recent Windows->Linux converts in certain Reddit subs and YT vlogers will have people believe.
@@krozareq available memory was 7gb.
I made a custom script for my memory usage, one that uses the MemAvailable result from /proc/meminfo.
To be honest, I don't really care about minimalism, I only care about removing as much bloat that I don't use as possible while not slowing down my workflow.
For example, I love vim, but not for the minimalism aspect of it since I have over 80 plugins.
I have Firefox as my main browser everywhere now, only 2 plugins: ublock origin and keepa (price history on Amazon directly added to the page).
I also hate to keep tabs opened, but because of my work, lately I've had to have around 10 tabs opened at all times. The most demanding things on there are Jira and Bitbucket, for some reason they use a lot of memory.
Im also running my Sql dev server on a separate dedicated server that I have. It consumes around 8gb of ram when it has been running for a while (although I believe that it has simply cached a lot of informations and wouldn't require as much ram if it was on my computer and therefore restarted every day).
The fact that TWMs are less resource demanding is just a bonus for me. If i3 took more resources than gnome to run, I'd still run it.
Don’t let Distrotube find you!
@DistroTube *runs*
Jokes aside, I don't think he'll care all that much.
*angry haskell sounds in the distance*
Distrotube: "Linux Elitists Are Frauds - Making Their Linux Life Harder To Look Cool"
vim diesel wants to know your location
Same goes for LanDuke.
I can't live without tiling WMs now. Operating your entire computer with just the keyboard(aside from using a web browser) is so much more comfortable imho.
@@mitchelvalentino1569
Gnome leave so much of a footprint, I hate it. I'd love it if it didn't change every update and forces me to wait for extensions to work again. In the first place who the hell came up with the idea of getting rid of the system tray?
My experiences with gnome were always like this and thus I'll stick to my i3 or if it has to be a DE I'd rather go XFCE.
Papa Bones I hated Gnome for years, so I understand.
I still don't entirely understand the hate for GNOME. It, KDE, and Cinnamon are the only DEs that don't look like they're from 2006, and they're considerably more lightweight on equivalent hardware than, say, Windows' native WM and macOS's Quartz compositing layer.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 "macOS especially becoming unusable on older hardware"
That being SAID, older MacBooks handle pretty much any system that isn't macOS remarkably well. I've got a friend who thrifted an old black pre-unibody polycarbonate Dual-Core MacBook with a dead graphics card and got it to exclusively run Windows.
It's fucking *insane* how well it runs on that thing.
@@mitchelvalentino1569 Oh shit, nice! What distributions did you get working on those machines?
The reason I ask is: I've historically had trouble finding a Linux or BSD system that's optimized well for a Mac.
I remember trying to install Debian on a 2012 MacBook Pro. I was able to boot into the live CD but not actually *install* it onto the machine? I suppose it's something to do with SIP or some other Apple DRM component, but I'm not entirely sure.
You don't really spend time re-configuring your setup unless it's your hobby. I've been on the same theme for 3-4 years now.
This. When I first started using i3, I spent a few hours each day tooling with it. but now I only edit the config if I find a new program that I love to use and I just add a quick shortcut instead of dmenu-ing it every time.
This.
I just use the defaults in xmonad
i do the same on gnome
And do not forget about backups! The main reason I am not using i3 is because I lost my config and did not have the time to re-configure it.
A pretty good video, it's only "wrong" by the fact that tiling windows managers are to increase production in coding and data management, not necessarily audio/video production/consumption. Different strokes for different folks, gotta pick the best brush for the job and realize not everyone paints wet on wet.
I've my file manager locked to workspace 1 with window rules and the media players locked to workspace 5 and for one screen to switch to media 5 when (e.g) mpv is launched. Ideal for video consumption.
If you're using something like Vim or it's forks, Yes. But that's also a rare case.
Enter the pop-shell.
If some is playing games all day and then talks about about _productivity_ that's disingenuous. Fix thyself before seeking _nirvana_ .
@@akza0729 I use Vim regularly for coding and sometimes for quick edits nano. Alternatively i use an GUI text editor called geany, which i run in VIM mode. Sooooo... i use VIM technically on daily basis. Just sometimes with an different painting on it.
Specially when you work with servers, you should know how to code and work within terminals without the usage of an GUI (Depending on the servers). So it happens relatively often that you meet people in that area that work with VIM, in some cases even privately.
And servers are the area in which Linux has the biggest usage share compared to windows, mac and others.
Unless you're Luke Smith
i use tiling window manager to keep my desktop experience fun! i get super bored with full-fledged desktop environments! tinkering with your system and customizing every little thing according to you is just so satisfying!
Completely agree! I spent last winter basically just tinkering with i3
you need a girl
You must be the most unproductive computer user in the world if you're "bored" with a desktop environment.
Not everyone has time and enough knowledge to do it manually
OlejkaLive after a lot of testing, girls are nowhere as fun as tiling wm’s. Really fun to interact with at first but get tiresome fast due to the amount of bugs and lack of customization.
0:53 the myth, the man, the legend himself
YES!
I agree with you, for the most part. However, you need to consider couple more things. These twms are for developers and sysadmins and not for casual users. Imo, twms for casual and semi technical users would be purely nonsensical. For us, the developers, we do a lot of switching, showing-hiding, swapping, resizing while we work with the keyboard; and everytime reaching the mouse, finding the cursor and moving it can be not only annoying but also a bit more time consuming. I think, muscle memory on your own customization is the key defense for twms. After the initial hiccups and when adjusted, they actually bring faster experience.
Exactly!
This is true. I'm a developer and I'm enjoying i3 on Manjaro. I'm very productive and love that I barely touch my touchpad on my laptop anymore. I think also using twm on my laptop is another plus as sometimes I'm in a spot where I can't really use a mouse.
I'm not å developer. I'm just a casual user - but after more thañ 5 years on twm 's I hate every moment when I'm forced to use a regular DE. For me there are several reasons why I choose to stay on tiling. The tiling itself (The layout of windows) just makes more sense to me. I use bspwm so there are some automatic tiling schemes where windows will open in a predefined layout but personally I prefer to use preselect and manually decide where my next window will open and what split ratio I will use.Using the keyboard for everything have become normal to me. Window navigation is only one part of it - but open programs - move between workspaces and nodes - is really effective once its become muscle memory. And then comes all the aliases and functions we can add to our Shells rc file. Qutebrowser - tmux - rofi - dunst - and vim and I'm golden. Will install some other programs too - but the only time I leave a terminal is whenever I use a browser. If it weren't for those overdesigned websites that make you use a "real" browser - I'd probably never even need x. Tty would do just fine. Minimalism FTW 😁
Yeah, I've been using tiling with tmux for a while and recently started using i3 for when I'm doing software development or writing. tmux is great but twms allow for having documentation up in a browser or a preview up when writing with LaTeX. For text-centric work where you want to glance at a gui for documentation and previews, a twm is perfect. That some gui applications are harder to use can even be a benefit, as it makes me get less distracted. It's also easy to set up multiple types of sessions so you have access to different environments from your DM depending on what you want to work on.
I do see more and more that Tiling WM's are geared towards the power users and to that end the access to customization is greater than in typical desktop environments. And since this channel has a lot about Thinkpads, I want to say for me personally it has made me enjoy using my T430 far more. Coming from a full size keyboard with larger trackpad, it's taken some time for me to get used to the smaller T430 and its different mouse button placement. Awesome WM has been a great boon to that. A regular DE would have been harder for me ergonomically speaking.
*Best are Hybrid of both. Just add an on/off switch from whatever manager you have.*
when /g/ takes over ur life...
You are forever here
Nah. You can't call it an actual take over until you start storing your hot sauce in your computer case and go around saying a lenovo laptop is the right laptop.
I really like pop-shell with gnome. I get the benefits of a “just werks” desktop environment and the efficiency of tiling windows.
pop os shell bro found🤜
also recently switched from arch + dwm to fedora + gnome + pop-shell and ive really been enjoying it. Coming from DWM I am missing some functionalities / customization but im not bothered by that most of the time.
i need that uncensored thumbnail picture..
7:12 Меня не проведёшь! Я то знаю что там звучит!!11!
на аве natalie mars?
Михайло Шевченко да
@@khakiviper6154 aww, I see you're a Man of Culture as well
Very strange. I know who is N.Mars and where from that scream ( russian kid played Minecraft and something going wrong)
The first time I saw a tiling wm was in those subreddits, and while yes, it look hella beautiful also all the apps that were running were pure cli apps, and the question rises "what if I want to use programs like Blender or Krita, pretty sure you can but there is no screenshot here with those" and that's were the magic broke
Here's what you can do with Awesome WM:
ua-cam.com/video/OoSts990-lY/v-deo.html
And yes, out of the box you can run your GUI apps (like Blender or Krita or Gparted, whatever) in fullscreen. You can even work in floating windows mode (no tiling) if you really want.
Or you can assign these to a specific workspaces so they always open there and have a whole workspace for themselves (unless you open something on it)
You can also move all windows between workspaces freely
@@xGOKOPx Yeah, good point. In my opinion if you are keen to invest some time in configuration of window manager it will be way more convenient (and less resource heavy) than full desktop environment. But everyone has different taste:)
Hey guys!!! Thanks for the comments!!! I will check them out for sure!!!
I use tab mode for those apps, press MOD+w and it's basically like in Windows with fullscreen apps and tab bar, plus I can use the mouse to scroll between apps.
Reason 6: - Java and Wine ahave problems in EVERY WM. Not only in TWM. It's becasue funny Java.
export _JAVA_AWT_WM_NONREPARENTING=1
export _JAVA_OPTIONS='-Dawt.useSystemAAFontSettings=on'
*PAIN*
What? What issue?
@Game Over PopOS uses the Gnome desktop environment, not a window manager. Vit C said that Java and Wine have problems in every Window Manager, that doesn't include desktop environments.
A lot of your issues aren't window managers issues but I3 issues.
And some of them aren't even issues, for instance the window resizing hit-box; try shift+mod+RMB!
@@colinjacobs176 I'm not an i3 user, i use bspwm and all the shortcuts issue, are i3 issue, you don't have those problems with sxhkd
@@alkeryn1700 I use i3 with sxhkd :p
@@VictorRodriguez-zp2do That's what i'd do if i used I3
ironically, I thought most of the issue he mentions specifically AREN'T in i3. Except of course having to use keyboard shortcuts, but that's the whole damn point of using a TWM. If you actually think using the mouse is better, well first of all i'm sorry for you if you use the pc all day like that, but in that case obviously don't install a TWM.
I'm a heavy keyboard user who mainly uses openbox and saw no major benefit when tried i3. Like you said your last segment, most of the useful functionality is present in stacking wms as well, especially if you take something customizable like ob and add some keyboard shorcuts to manage window locations (namely moving active window to the next window border on screen in a certain direction)
I like having a window manager installed alongside my desktop environment, you get all the benefits of imagining you will manage to finally reach the perfect configuration while always being able to safely fall back to something less keyboard friendly but also something that doesn't inspire lengthy and distracting customization sessions.
Or you can use your desktop environment of choice (mine is Xfce) and swap out xfwm4 (or whichever window manager the environment is using) for i3 or you favorite tiling window manager to have the best of both worlds
If you like Tiling window managers use them. If you don't, don't use them. I don't think it's really that complex of a debate
7:49 under i3, you can hold down mod and use right-button to resize and the cursor will snap to the edge
Most wm can do that even wm in DEs, it's almost a standard.
A Gentoo user didn't know that is blowing my mind.
Nobody, literally nobody resize window in tiling wm like he mentioned in the video.
You have just improved my life greatly.
7:48 don't you know? mod + right mouse key is default for i3 (maybe i3 gaps)
@dr?w No you dont need
@@meyimagalot9497 Aw that helped me
Honestly, I won a lot in productivity with some tiling wm, and in fact you can use usual tiling wm with common DE (like KDE+i3), in which case it requires minimum configuration (see the arch wiki for an how to)
what wallpaper is that?
7:20 You can hold the mod key and drag with left/right click to move/resize the windows.
6:23 well this is just bs, I get more songs in my player list, I get more files on the screen if there are more files in the folder, my working area in inkscape is bigger, I get more settings in blender panels, I do less scrolling in browsing, there is no perfect window size. For most programs the bigger your screen the better. The point about the setup is good, we should have some kind of noob friendly desktop with tilling by default for not geeky users.
I think there's pre-configured Manjaro with i3 but I've never used it so I'm not sure.
@@xGOKOPx well you still need to use a config file for i3 settings, for some people that would be weird.
@@EdLrandom You can package i3 config with distros to make it easy but the main problem nobody ever seems to cover when talking about tiling window managers. the target audience. Which is not the user who is uncomfortable editing config files. Look at the mess regolith had with trying to change config locations in their i3 setup just confused those people who had been using i3 elsewhere.
@@EdLrandom I was wondering if using Blender with its quadrillion keyboard shortcuts makes configuring a suitable twm setup harder ? What wm are you using ?
@@parityviolation968 Funny enough I use gnome now (use to hate it a lot) but I been using i3wm for a year or so, I don't know why twm should be hard with blender, most key bindings I used in i3 involve a win key (I had both left and right win keys on my old keybord) blender does not use win keys.
Programmer's point of view here, I'll go through all the points and explain why I love TWMs (more specifically i3, I intend to try others, but i3 works so well for my workflow that I haven't gotten around to doing it yet) :p
DE = Desktop Environment (Gnome, KDE, xfce, cinnamon, budgie, etc.)
TWM = Tiling Window Manage (i3, awesomewm, bspwm, xmonad, sway, etc.)
1- That's part of the fun. I hate feeling confined to what my DE gives me, I like being able to customize every inch of my setup. Weirdly enough, if I customize something myself (like setting up shortcuts), I'll remember them more easily.
"While this makes the setup very portable, ..." Yeah, that's one of the big things. My setup has worked on all the distros I tried (in order from older to most recent: Arch (Antergos (rip)), Gentoo, Raw arch from scratch, Fedora, Debian (didn't get to install everything and already had issues, god I hate Debian based distros) and now OpenSUSE).
2- You learned to use your tools. GUIs are everywhere so you don't realize it, but if you lived with TWMs first, you'd make the same comments about GUIs now. And yes, I do indeed use the terminal for mostly anything that is not: Web Browsing, Chat clients (Discord + Slack but they have some good shortcuts so it's mostly fine) and my Windows VM. Video? mpv. File management? ls, tree, ranger. Music? mpd + nmcpcpp. Text editor? neovim.
3- GUI apps look like crap in a TWM because they're not meant to be there. Use something else. If you want to use mostly GUI apps, don't use a TWM, it's that simple.
"You don't save any screen real estate" I started using TWMs because my laptop's screen was 15" @1080p. Most GUI apps have a lot of extra bullshit like window title, a fucking huge bar (or even 2 in some cases), maybe its own tab management. At the end of the day, if I can replace Chrome by Surf, I gain an insane amount of real estate. Then I replace my GUI based text editor by a more compact TUI one, then I learn to properly use the command line for most stuff and BOOM. I went from barely being able to fit 2 apps and sometimes being forced to have only 1 app running at once to being able to fit 4 apps and therefore 4 tasks at once on my small screen.
4- "Keyboard shortcuts" Well yes, but I'll end up learning a DE's keyboard shortcuts anyway. The only difference is that I didn't set them up, so they might not feel good and I might forget them easily. If I have an issue and configured my shortcuts and didn't save them somewhere, I'll lose time configuring everything again. As someone that switches distros a lot and reinstalls a lot, portability is really important. More so than ease of use thanks to a GUI that doesn't behave the same every time I use it. Also, I never had a single keyboard shortcut overlap with my TWM. But I always have some conflicts once I change to a DE.
5- "managing shore". I don't know, I never manage anything. I use a lot of workspaces instead which divide my work: general terminals, web browsing, programming related terminals, VM remote, chats, music player, email client. That's 8 workspaces already. Alt-tabbing that shit would be an horrible waste of time.
6- Ok? I've had some issues, but nothing groundbreaking tbh. I don't use TWMs for gaming, I still use Windows for that, so I haven't really looked at the situation in years. Linux gaming has come a long way, but it's still nowhere close to being ready (yes, I'm aware of dxvk, proton, lutris. I've tried them and was easily able to find some of my games didn't work).
7- App overview? Why would you want that, why not divide your work properly? Just in case I have a rofi configuration that allows me to have an overview of my current windows across all my workspaces. So that's a need that's already answered I guess.
8- PiP and Drop Down Terminals? I can pop out any window and move it around where I want. So that answers my need for the pip (firefox and opera also have a built-in pip that works really well for videos (at least on i3)).
9- I see this as a con for DEs actually: Why should the APP do the job of the Window Manager? If your window manager can have splitting and tabs, why should your apps have tabs? Then you end up with 10 different apps with 10 different ways of handling spliting and tabbing. That's not a good thing to me. Why can't the DE directly include that under its window title? Why does a window HAVE to only contain ONE instance of the app? Then I'll have to learn 100 different shortcuts (let's say 10 per app), which sounds weird and contradictory when you said that TWMs needed a lot of shortcuts.
To conclude, use whatever feels right to you! If you feel more comfortable using a DE, go ahead! I've had a blast trying to use gnome every time I install a new distro, I really like it, but it still doesn't feel right to me.
agree with a lot of that but...
debian tho...
ive been using a debain based distro for the past 2 years since i first used Linux
have i seriously been on the more problematic side of Linux?
also btw
i use a tiling window manager called qtile
and i use kde apps with gui cause that boosts my productivity a bunch
honestly can't do anything without dolphin
and as for the app overview thing you mensioned, i probably use the same rofi config
nice
@@RenderingUser the fact that you even ask the question already means you have an answer.
I've been using Linux for at least 10 years and switched to it for school and then work, so that would be around 6 years of pretty consistent use.
Debian has never worked for me. I have terrible luck I think. But Debian, Ubuntu, PopOS, Elementary and another one that has Z in the name but that I never remember have always broken in a month.
Even Arch has been more stable. And nowadays I use OpenSUSE Leap and Tumbleweed depending on what I need and recently switched to Nixos for my server.
I'm of the opinion that it doesn't hurt to try something else, but at the same time, if you're not curious and don't have any blatant issue with Debian, the there's no reason to switch :p
@@DevilDead13820 well
i dont really have any issue with distros
im kind of really used to apt
most my problems lie in window managers
currently using qtile but im looking for better alternatives
heard i3 was great so currently checking that out
edit: decided to stick with qtile because python
I've never felt more demotivated to try a window manager after reading this comment. Recently I've started to feel like this pride to spend a bunch of time configuring things and learning this niche UX is just a waste of my productivity and time. I could easily become a better developer spending time developing than figuring out the perfect way to configure all the things and finding **the one** setup.
Every few months I get the itch to try out a tiling WM *once again*. Your video is a necessary antidote
or you could just think for yourself lol
As someone with multiple screens one of which is pivoted, tiling works like a dream, i3 is a huge improvement over anything I've ever used, no stacking environment really seems to understand what I want to do with my windows.
Stacking / floating window management is mostly a toy in my opinion. You can of course create nice marketing slides for Windows and MacOS with a lot of stacked windows showing, but useful, REAL work is done on the keyboard, not by doing toy like colourful button clicking.
thoroughly unconvincing but thank you for the video. It's very helpful to see the downsides of tiling managers can be helpful to evaluates the cons
Just to correct you on one thing, you CAN easily resize the windows in i3 by hoding the mod key and click/drag as long as you're within about 200px of the border, so that works pretty well.
Where did you find the background image used in the thumbnail?
I disagree on the configuration portion. I love the way i3 is configured. Everything is in one easy to read list. Where as on gnome or another DE the gui settings are categorized in into different parts.
tiling wm's were what saved me from mouse induced RSI. i personally will keep using them.
@@luca5678 4 years of using i3 and my rsi went away, i doubt it's going to happen.
This. It saved me too.
Luca get a good keyboard like an Ergodox and use proper keyboard placement and posture...
Saved me too
Ive heard good things about Trackballs.
link to the thumbnail?
I have been using i3wm for the last 3 years. I’ve been given a MacOS at work. I spent 5 weeks doing my best to love it, but I absolutely hate it. Everything is in my way and I had to constantly use the mouse. “It doesn’t really help in productivity”. Heck yeah it does. Every key is mapped in my config. I was wasting more time in MacOS just switching between browser and VSCode and terminal, than I spent on my vimrc config.
I asked my company to give me a Linux laptop, and I literally just cloned my repository and my config was there. I spent 1 minute setting up everything and I’m back to being actually productive. I don’t feel like I’m wasting time on AltTab anymore. And with Average typing speed at 105wpm, doing anything with a keyboard will be a lot faster than with a mouse. For sure.
And yeah, “GUI apps are broken with tiling wm”. Solution - don’t use GUI apps. I use a terminal music player, vscode with Vim for editing, Ranger for File manager, sxiv for image view and qutebrowser for keyboard browser needs. Only GUI apps I use is Discord and Google Chrome
Resizing vimdiff windows is already a pain. Better to use gvimdiff for that. I already have all letters bound in vim, and I definitely won't press something as awkward as for anything to do with windows. The mouse can also be very flexible, even if in most cases, using a keyboard is just faster.
You should try yabai. It's a twm for mac
so your i3 de switches tiles by reading your mind? interesting. Stop being edgy and just use alt tab.
@@Cat-vs7rc Interesting statement, but yes, doing mod+1 is faster than doing alt+tab 6 times in a row, then doing it 2 times, then 4, then it's just 3 because you changed to that other app..... It just doesn't feel right to me. Which is a good point, people think differently, who would have thought...
@@Cat-vs7rc if you know where your apps are, you'll see which is better, mod+number once or alt tab a ton of times
What is your opinion about Cardboard, PaperWM, EndlessWM, etc. (all based on the 10gui concept)?
The funny thing is, this video made Tiling Managers more interesting to me. :-)
well, if you're more interested in installing desktops than actually coding something useless, creating something useful. Then a tiling window manager is perfect for you. It gives you this sense of accomplishments much more easily than trying to code something to solve a real world problem!
@@afonsosalbrecht I don't know what you mean by that. I use Qtile now and configure it by coding in Python.
And in general, your argumentation seem not to make sense for me. Installing a Tiling Window Manager does not exclude coding and solving real problems. But if you feel a sense of accomplishment by not installing a software you like, then it is the way to go for you.
To me, Qtile is one of the best things happened to me in recent years. It is really useful and is so much better than traditional window managers. I wish I had switched to such a tiling window manager earlier. Same goes for Vim as an editor. But that is another story for another time.
2:46 you have to do that ONLY ONCE!
what do you think of regolith-desktop? I've seen its a nice combo of the gnome daemons and system management with i3 to handle window management. I'm being thinking of switching over because trying to spend hours making sure wifi and screen tearing doesn't happen is just not realistic moving forward.
I tried it last year and was very impressed. Definitely check it out!
Where did you get that japanese clip from? Wanna use it on a video of mine :)
3:16 GNOME has Pop Shell and KDE Plasma has Kwin tiling scripts
Nice video, really like how you pointed weaknesses of tiling WMs. However, I'm still on i3 because I use tiling very rarely: all my apps are fullscreen and i switch them like tabs with mod left mod right. Super convenient, and honestly most apps are best fullscreen anyway. And multimonitor support is really great in i3.
Also, you mentioned mouse centric apps contrast - my most prevalent app in this department is Chromium. This one has cVim extension, which gives me OPTION to control with keyboard.
With this setup, everything flies so fast. Ticket in browser, terminal to fix, ticket reply, new ticket, terminal ... All with keyboard, bam bam bam - done :)
What are you using as a quick launch panel, for GNOME?
What do you think about Pop shell?
In my experience the learning curve for a TWM doesn't seem to be that bad. I find it effective to learn features of the wm as you use them instead of trying to brute force memorize the shortcuts.
Now that it's just muscle memory for me, I'm not thinking about the shortcuts as I'm moving windows around. It feels more like I just think how I want my windows laid out, and they just do it.
Besides, we're linux users. We're all about learning curves haha
KDE has an awesome app overview ability. You can also use it with active corners to make for super fast mouse access. For example when I drag my mouse to the lower left corner of my desktop I get an instant overview of all windows on that particular desktop. When I drag my mouse to the opposite corner I get an overview of my four desktops in a grid and all windows. Then I can easily drag windows between them as well. Taskbar and menu at the top and latte-dock as a launcher only at the bottom and I have lightning fast access to all running applications. Everything auto-hides and looks sooooo clean. You can have every edge and corner configured to a different function and there are dozens available in the KDE store. It feels so fast and natural for my use case.
Have you tried i3? It has floating mode, you can resize with a mouse, you can put an app on a separate workspace so it occupies the entire screen.
I have same thoughts, Wolfgang! I've found the look of the tiling wm tidy. I went for i3wm but at the end I felt somewhat limited. Then I've found that I can easily tile on KDE with Super+arrows or PgUp, use multiple desktops for different workflows (Super+F1:F4), _plus_ I can use the mouse whenever I want. Whatever I wanted a tiling WM for, I've found key bindings in KDE and in the apps themselves.
I know that there might be some for whom that might be insufficient, but that's why we love Linux - everyone can find a distro and window manager they personally like.
Apparently some people have gotten Plasma to work with i3. I'm not sure how much effort it takes or if it's still possible but it seems like it would be pretty cool
I used KDE for a while, and the ease of customization was great. But one thing I never got over was that you cannot change workspaces on only one monitor at a time with KWin.
@@kraftykactus1028It's still possible but there are better options than changing the Window Manager.
thanks for the clarification. I was really wondering about GUI applications, since most demos of tiling WM only show you nice arrangements of terminals
If you use 24 terminal at once is fantastic but for rest of us, they suck.
@@hernanpangia7593 Why?
@@michaelrose5242 Most daily apps you need to use are mouse-driven, and the shortcut of all of them are totally different from each other. You end up jumping from keyboard to mouse more often. You have to spend too many days configuring every app to standardize the shortcuts. In fact you could tile some windows in Gnome and you have both worlds. Is my opinion, nothing more.
@@hernanpangia7593 lmao, you literally only need to configure your wm once and from now to the end of time you'll have a workflow tailored to your exact specifications
where did you get that thumbnail from lol
Just googled big anime tiddies
@@WolfgangsChannel nice
Good points. I have been considering switching away from Tiling window manager. May I ask what DE/WM/Distro/OS are you using right now?
Gnome when I'm using Linux. KDE is nice too!
Reason no7:
You can use 'rofi -show window' to get a list of all opened windows and switch to any window on any workspace.
I use it to find a window when I have loads of windows opened, though this can be lacking a bit as it is text only, for instance usually all opened terminals will have title 'user@hostname', which can make it hard to find the window you want.
Having a GUI overview of all opened apps would be very useful, perhaps would be a good project for someone to do.
Regolith Desktop Environment combines i3-gaps and GNOME, making system management easy.
Nice plug lol. Btw I love regolith its my daily driver keep up the good work!
1. That is actually a plus to me. It's nice to have a standalone window manager instead of a DE because I don't even want everything a DE would install. For example I even wish notifications were completely centralized so I could just make my whole system not support them. But there's always something bringing it's own notification engine. I don't want the DE to set my keyboard layout and do various other things that would clash with my standard Linux setup, like things that are run in my xorg startup script. If I wanted to use a DE with more features, it would be actually more complicated because I'd have to change things that I've done the same for years and years. Tasks would then be done by things the DE has included and if I wanted to change them I'd have to learn how to configure that module (probably a gui config but still).
2. You do have to learn how to use it a bit, but much more you have to think about what you want it to do and set it up to work like this. Make your computer learn your workflow, not the other way around.
3. IntelliJ and other IDEs works fine in tiling WMs. Writing rules is not a waste of time, manually placing windows where you want them (Some of them every day) is when you can have your window manager doing it. But in the end I don't use that many gui apps in Linux. But I didn't learn CLI applications because of Tiling Window Managers, I've learnt them becasue I like them being more punctual than GUIs. (You make a decision and issue a command rather than looking at what options the GUI presents to you and chose one, just like you didn't know what it was you wanted to do. Complicated GUIs actually cna make you forget about that though.) And I never had any shortcut conflicts because I use the Super Key as my mod key, and almost nothing else uses it. The super key is always mapped to something related to the window manager/DE, even in goddamn Windows.
5. Of course you can use the mouse, but what's really nice is having three different shortcuts/modifiers for the shortcut, one resizing the window just by a pixel, one by 5 pixels and one by 10 or 15 or something like that. But the real point not having to move/resitze windows that often in the first place. I have the same layout of windows on my screen every day. I don't just wake up and randomly put my cmus or my browser on a different screen or workspace than yesterday. Of course I don't use the same programs every day, but there is a goto layout for everything I use a computer for and it's usually seperated by workspaces.
6. Only thing that ever made problems was wine, and wine messes up in any WM.
7. Why would you need it when you can see everything already? To go cross-workspace? Just switch the workspace for half a second!
8. In which? It works out of the Box in i3 and dwm which are probably the most profic ones.
9. I think it's stupid to build something into a application that can be centralized.
Interesting channel though, I may subscribe.
Love your comment! :)
I think this depends a lot on the use case. For someone whose workflow primarily involves programming (particularly through the terminal through bash/vim/etc.), tiling window managers are a lot more efficient, since you pretty much don't need to use a mouse. I particularly like that Alt+j/k on i3 allows you to shift context to an open window on another monitor without you ever having to take your hands off the keyboard. EDIT: The learning curve for me was nonexistent because I was very comfortable with Alt+j/k and Alt+Arrow Keys from having used vim and terminator for pretty much as long as I can remember. For someone without this background, the time to adapt to this environment will obviously be longer.
I think it's a case of using the right tool for the job. I would not want to edit a video/image using a tiling WM, since I'm mainly using my mouse. But for terminal-heavy workflows, I think they make a lot of sense.
EDIT 2: It is possible to have multiple WMs/DMs. Yes, sometimes they conflict, but I've had a backup XFCE environment for a long time whenever I'm giving a talk/presenting something. Just use the most appropriate environment for the job.
Small counterpoint to Reason 5: I actually agree that re-arranging, moving, and resizing windows is a chore. That is precisely why I prefer my window manager to make those decisions for me, rather than have a floating mess of windows all over the place that I need to manipulate myself.
It is, of course, possible to run every app in fullscreen. In such a case, it does not matter too much whether you do app switching with workspaces or by clicking on a dockbar icon. In fact, I use Sway on my laptop with Waybar, and I can do both of those things. What I like more is that I can define which programs can open on which workspaces, and I can even make them autostart there. My swayconf contains exact instructions on where windows should be opened. When I login to Sway, all my windows are already laid out in the appropriate workspace. And some workspaces have tiled layouts to let me view multiple windows (again pre-defined).
I would think that such a setup actually saves me a LOT of time. :)
Also Sway makes window resizing and rearranging with mouse easy. The hitbox is not tiny like i3. You can also set whatever border size you want, if you want an even bigger hitbox.
I will say, however, that I use XFCE on my desktop because I am dealing with multiple monitors, and am still using X11 there because of Wayland issues with stuff like screen recording (as my desktop is used for streaming via OBS, this can be a dealbreaker).
I can recommend the desktop environment Regolith as a DE with a tiling windows manager that is easy to install and does not require configurations. It uses Ubuntu and i3/rofi and ubuntu settings menus, and it is preconfigured, as in it is not ugly and everything works.
This is exactly the reason i started using it, as i just needed a quick OS to install on my new pc before university. It has been working out for me, and i have pushed it onto 4 other people who are all very happy with the tiling windows manager experience. They haven't had to configure anything at all, so for them as new users it has been a great.
I use the mouse to manipulate my tiling WM. Took like 20 seconds to learn. But okay.
Anyone have a link to the wallpaper in the thumbnail?
if you use primarily text/keyboard based apps: use text/keyboard centered tools
if you use primarily gui apps: use mouse centered tools
Switching from DEs into customized window managers is changing into a new paradigm, that emphasizes freedom. Much like when you build your own house in which YOU want to live, when you individuate and leave your parents house. Yes, building your own house takes a little time and effort, but that is YOUR house adjusted to YOUR preferences and values. And you do it once.
> And you do it once.
Actually no. As well as with house which you built yourself, you continue to build it all the time you live in it. But that's a part of pleasure :)
If you have a multimonitor setup, a tiling wm is indispensible. Going to dwm was a sigh of relief.
Love ur channel pic
whats a base idea of tilling WM. 3d desktop envirorment?
this video made want to intall a tiling WM.
if you like to keep installing and tweaking environment settings, then tiling window manager is for you. Most people would rather spend this time coding something useful to solve real world problems. But i get it, you feel more "succesful" by spending your time trying to configure your desktop envinroment. xD
@@afonsosalbrecht true, i use dwm rn because i already knew a bit c, pretty fun to mess around, also makes shit faster.
@@heterodoxagnostic8070 make things faster? that's the biggest fallacy! Why? I agree that you use a WM to get rid of your mouse, so you spent your time tweaking the keybindings (making sure they aren't overlapping with the key-bindings of other programs), installing all the basic desktop utilities from scratch (internet, screen resolution, keyboard language, wallpapers...) and then after some time you finally get used to all this customised set up! *THEN* you realised that apart from the terminal, all the other apps are mouse-oriented apps. So you use your super-duper fast keybinding to open those apps and then grab the mouse! (HAHA). However, you can say that your workflow involves 90% of the time the terminal, and for this argument I suggest you installing tmux. But again, if you want to get this sense of accomplishment by tweaking basic linux settings, instead of learning a language and try to solve real world problems, then of couse, go for it! Tiling window managers are great in this case.
1. "Configuration is difficult" I configured it once, put my configs up on github, and now I just git clone to get my entire desktop environment set up. These configs only require a couple basic extra programs that I can install in once command. With other DEs, I need to spend more time setting them up.
2. "to even benefit from keyboard features you have to learn all the other console/keyboard driven apps" The benefit from keyboard shortcuts on your window manager isn't lost the moment you have to switch to your mouse. It's not all or nothing. Lots of apps already have keyboard driven navigation that you could learn that are entirely separate from i3. I have bad RSI in my wrists and it's a life-saver for me.
3. I don't have keyboard shortcut conflicts because I use the super key for the WM.
Exactly my thoughts lol
What's the window manager at about @1:58? It looks pretty neat.
ngl, nice vid but ngl i really want to know the source for the Artoria picture in the thumbnail lol
Openbox golden mean between tiling WM and DE
I agree
I wish but how can you with one key binding rearrange all open floating apps to a dwm layout for example? I set up many keybindings to change the focused app layout in my openbox but they change only the layout of the focused app, not all at once. Or I missed something on how Openbox keybindings work.
Interesting point about the friction between mouse-intensive GUIs and the window-manager of choice. It really depends on how things are intermixed. I, for instance, work mostly either text-editing (coding, writing, pdf-reading, searching for info already on my machine) or information-hunting online. In my case, the balance goes to tiling window managers, but it's great to have choice!
Although, by far, my best time saving strategy has been holding up before changing interfaces. (As in: wait until you know well what the pain points are, to avoid spending a constant fraction of my time tweaking the environment, switching window manager, etc.) I typically spend, between 2 to 4 years between major changes ;-)
Of course, my way of computing happens to be quite stable (same profession for years now...).
Hey could you give me the link to the wallpaper in your thumbnail or the charchter name i would love to use it on my rice
Hey, have you found it yet?
@@meledo I found the charchter using reverse image search it's a genshin impact charchter called fischl shame i can't find sadly i couldn't find the wallpaper so i setteld for this w.wallha.com/ws/14/MpPkjI3F.jpg
Hi everyone. What is the name of the Panels that show up at 2:15, thanks !
Number one reason to not use tiling WMs: You can have the same functionality with stacking WM without having to read any documentation.
7:50 mod key plus right click drag
Nice background music! And thanks for adding song info in the description :).
Yes you have to memorize lots of shortcuts, but once you're used to it its super convenient. Although I tend to forget some of the short cut that I don't use often...
This video boiled to this. "It's just a window manger, not a full desktop environment, I don't like all the tweaking."
These in itself are already two different complaints.
I have been using i3wm for a 2 years (i am programmer) and i enjoy it. Most of a times I use it in home too :-) From your commentary, I conclude that watching this vlog, I will only waste time. Am I right?
@@GreyDeathVaccine YES. As long as you already enjoy it - don't waste time on this. :)
He has some good points - but the only point that's important is if YOU like it or not.
@@PerJohanHalsli Thank you for taking your time to respond.
@@GreyDeathVaccine np :)
Tiling Windows meant to be productive but in the end is just to show our coworkers how nerd we are to look cool.
Ps: XFCE user and i sooooooooo productive with it. Perfect.
I think some of these things can be fixed.
Alt-Tab can be added in. Pop up windows can be made to be automatically configured by the devs to be floating, etc.
every time i get the urge to switch back to a tiling wm i watch this video.
I watched the video because I honestly had a very great time using i3 so far (one and a half years, I'd say). There are a lot of valid points made (especially considering that I for example only rarely edit the config, and do some of the same stuff again and again), however, I do think that the basic idea is worth further extending. For example, the tiling wm should not put the new application in a predetermined place, but should rather both take optimal window sizes (as requested by the applications) and recorded user actions ("user put that kind of window into floating mode last time") into consideration.
In general, most of what I use is the terminal (I don't use a graphical file manager, `ls`, `cd` and friends are usually more than enough) and my web browser, which in turn has a vim keyboard mapping add on installed, which works very well for most non-app pages, or simpler app-pages.
It also feels nicer to have vim be more application like, because I can do the splits the same way I do them everywhere else (of course syncing everything with the X clipboard)
I love the default tiling mode in Pop!_OS because it addresses most of my complaints with pure tiling WMs. I'm able enjoy easily resizing windows with my mouse. It feels like the perfect blend.
Awesome has a panel. What's your opinion of it?
When I first heard about tilers my first thought was “wait you mean that thing I always try to force my computer to do anyways”. the tiling in floating WMs/DEs is at best limited to halves and quarters of the full screen and is a massive pain to use compared to using a tiling wm. If you're mostly going to be using tiled windows anyways, it makes sense to use a window manager that's built to do that.
Additionally, in most tilers moving/resizing windows can be done easily with the keyboard, or by holding the mod key (either alt or super usually) and left or right clicking and dragging for moving and resizing respectively. I know for a fact this works in i3, which you specifically said was difficult to resize windows due to the hit box, but if you had used mod+rclick that problem would have gone away.
7:15, fortunataly i know this clip, and was able to turn the volume down... I also live in a russian speaking country, I don't have a door, use speakers and my parents are home. Can you please put on a loud warning next time.
I know I’m much later to this conversation, by now the tiling window managers like i3wm in Arco Linux comes with everything installed out of the box, you just start using it, you don’t need to do extra stuff if you don’t want to. In fact it’s currently my main core window manager. On the Ubuntu family there is tiling inPop!OS that can be switched on and off as the need for your workflow arises, also makes like very easy also works out of the box. But the issues you raised were all of concern. Great conversation
5:49 what is the discord-like program on the left?
It's telegram.
The only real reason is the sixth, the others appear only when you try to use it as floating wm, what in the hell do u need alt-tab in a tiling wm?
ah yes my productivity is increased by the stress i feel from needing to memorize hotkeys and navigate my tiles during finals studies, only because i realize in that very moment that something is artificially bottlenecking me and now i have to be hyper aware of what im doing.
i feel for ya
I'm a developer and when I'm developing my i3 environment is perfect for my productivity. Most of IDE, Terminal, Text Editors ... I can control using the keyboard and with multiples workspaces, it's absolute awesome. However, when I'm not coding but just using the computer for other things I like to switch for my normal desktop environment.
0:41 does anyone happen to know where i can find that wallpaper?
I know it's a bit late but here it is: i.imgur.com/5bIktRY.jpg
@@jaren9 thank you
wallpaper in thumbnail?
For newbies, yes it's difficult at first, I remember my first experience, it was difficult, especially coming from the latest macbook with the huge trackpad, ahh bliss, but then I slowly got used to it and now I can't do regular GUI anymore... I'm more productive on a tiling window manager, I use i3-gaps, gives me a zen like feel.
You mentioned the main issue is to do with configuration, when I install arch + i3-gaps + compton + oh-my-zsh, it takes me around 20 minutes, and you can easily spend more than that with gnome-tweaks and so on. It all varies really, I mean I've been doing this for 2 years now, so a newcomer might find it difficult.
But always remember, the best GUI/wm/DE is the one that you like.
"I mean I've been doing this for 2 years now" must be nice shaving off 2 years for 1 hour gain.
For a general user, perhaps wm are not worth it, but for a developer/sysadming they definitely are. Yes, they require investment, but it is a concept of investing time to save time later, and you do save time and more importantly your brain effort. Constant context switching between mouse and keyboard takes it toll and makes getting in the flow much harder (which is paramount for developers to get a job done).
For me it took about a month or so to get into WMs and choose the proper one. I started, unsuprisingly, with i3 and in the end stopped at dwm, because the basic concept of it's tiling system is very much what i need. It took me around month or two of small tinkering with it in background to get a set up that i like and didn't touch wnything since (excvept changing colorscheme a couple of times). Not only do i have anything i need at a distance of a couple of keystrokes, i can create this setup on any machine in terms of minutes (depending on download speed). I it already came handy several times. In browser i use keys too mostly, it least when i'm at work, cVim is pretty good (though sometimes a bit buggy).
Also, for people who are more familiar with cli tools, WM are definitely a much better choice. Same concept of investing some time to learn the tools, to save time when doing your job.
I think you are missing a point about keyboard and mouse. The goal is not to NEVER use the mouse, but to avoid constantly switching between keyboard and mouse, because context switch for a brain is a pretty expensive operation and breaks the flow of the work, which makes you tire faster. That is also the reason of why i use vim and not some gui IDE.
I use Openbox and Tint2 panel. It doesn't even allow icons on the desktop. But it's really functional and fast after few tweaks on the Tint2 and Guake terminal. I like how minimal GUI can actually improve the experience without all the fancy features of full desktop environment.
thats why i use an hybrid WM meaning i still use my mouse when i want to and get the benefits of auto resizing (like if i an gonna do 2 thing together i can without fiddling with it)
Try Pop_OS! 20.04 LTS.....Desktop environment, BUT with Tiling Windows :)