A few releases back when niri got "proper" Alt-Tab behavior like one expects from more mainline WMs made it pretty much perfect for me. Could not dream of wanting anything more than what it already has.
The only remaining feature I would like is focus-follows-mouse but only for outputs, so that if I've moved my mouse over onto a second monitor, the focus moves to that output.
There are a few discussions around this, so I'm hopeful to see it implemented at some point:
Slightly off topic: Does anyone know a window manager where you can map virtual desktops to real monitors? E.g. When I'm on the move I cycle through my virtual desktops on my laptop screen, but when connecting a monitor I want to cycle between my virtual desktops independently on either screen. While both screens share the same set of virtual desktops.
If I'm understanding the ask, I think niri has this. Workspaces for each output are independent, and switching between them only affects the focused output.
I’ve been using the PaperWM extension for Gnome (that I believe Niri took inspiration from?), and it’s definitely an interesting way to work. I’m not sure that I love it, I feel like it’s a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace.
But I’m giving it a real shot, and the nice thing about it being a Gnome extension is that the rest of the Gnome DE is right there without a ton of config.
I used Niri on a Framework laptop a few months ago, and it was Okay. I don’t think it clicked with me/I’m not sure if I was using it right, but it was giving me a headache to mentally deal with spatially mapping all of my windows (I came from MacOS where I just knew which windows I had open and cmd+tab into the right one when needed)..
I think I would’ve adjusted best if I could somehow just watch someone do their daily work on Niri, to learn how to use it right. Curious if people who like Niri came from tiling WMs or standard DEs.
I’ve been using the PaperWM extension for Gnome (that I believe Niri took inspiration from?), and it’s definitely an interesting way to work. I’m not sure that I love it, I feel like it’s a bit cumbersome when I have more than 3 windows in a single workspace. But I’m giving it a real shot, and the nice thing about it being a Gnome extension is that the rest of the Gnome DE is right there without a ton of config.
I had wanted to switch to niri for some time, but it was always a massive, several day process to figure out all the accessory config (top bar, idle timeouts, notifications, etc.). Mentioned in another comment that I have since discovered that there are wayland "desktop shells" that provide the majority of the kit and kaboodle you'd expect from gnome or whatever, with minimal or no fussing, including settings dialogs, application trays, resource monitoring, top bars, etc. I'm using dank material shell for this currently, but it's really cool being able to arbitrarily compose the desktop shell and the compositor.
I’ve gotten so used to the tiling WM workflow of quick-switching between a bunch of different dedicated fullscreen workspaces and managing windows with pure keyboard. Each workspace typically has a single app, or terminal with tmux, but occasionally I’ll split two apps side by side. Would love to hear the perspective of anyone who switched from a similar workflow to Niri. How does the mental model shift?
My perspective is: Workspaces dedicated to a single app makes no sense for tiling WMs. That workflow is fine on a floating WM.
Where tiling WMs shine is when actually tiling windows. For me it's the holy trinity of Browser, editor and terminal all visible at once, and navigatable spatially via super+hjkl or super+up/down/left/right. So I have one workspace per project which makes a lot more sense to me as an actual workflow for tiling WMs.
Niri just improves on this substantially by allowing new windows to open to the right, instead of messing with the existing layout in the current workspace. For example, if I need to open a pdf or something. I get to keep the holy trinity, but swap over to the new window easily.