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Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

adereth.github.io

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Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#11

Post by dexen »

rkowalick wrote: post #8
dexen wrote: post #5

I'm happy with tiled windows in Acme (editor/IDE) for daily work. The layouting algorithm (a simple one) does the right thing most of the time :^) My usual mode is Acme maximized on one screen, and browser, email and IM spread on the other. See it in action in rsc's screencast: http://research.swtch.com/acme

I really wanted to like it, but the lack of syntax highlighting drove me nuts.

Partly matter of taste, partly matter of code formatting style. Used to be big on syntax highlighting for years, but now I prefer mono. When needed, double-click highlights area between matching parens/brackets/braces/tags.

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#12

Post by boothead »

drcode wrote: post #6

Anyone know if "Notion" works as well in the latest Ubuntu releases as suggested by the author of the post? (i.e. XMondad got jacked pretty badly in Ubuntu 13.04 and now requires lots of low level linux voodoo.)

Yeah, I got bitten by that too. There's a list kicking round of all the individual packages required to install to make a haskell-platform-alike. If you want I can dig it out of my ansible config.

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#13

Post by [deleted] »

joeframbach wrote: post #2

I kind of use tiling in OSX. Most of my apps are running full-screen on two monitors, and I swipe across desktops to get to other apps. Of course, I am able to stack apps on top of eachother, but for the most part I don't. I have a desktop for sublime, a desktop for sequel pro, a desktop for a browser. In the event I need to look at two things at once, it's easy enough to drag things around.

[deleted]

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#15

Post by jared314 »

I've settled on ShiftIt [1], which gives me more partial desktop control at a good price (free). There was a good post, a while ago, on the various options for OSX [2].

I've also noticed that, because I use a widescreen and split my web browsers into two columns less-than 1000px wide, every Twitter Bootstrap site thinks i'm on a mobile device and collapses the grid layout.

[1] https://github.com/fikovnik/ShiftIt

[2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4059820

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#16

Post by ajross »

joeframbach wrote: post #2

I kind of use tiling in OSX. Most of my apps are running full-screen on two monitors, and I swipe across desktops to get to other apps. Of course, I am able to stack apps on top of eachother, but for the most part I don't. I have a desktop for sublime, a desktop for sequel pro, a desktop for a browser. In the event I need to look at two things at once, it's easy enough to drag things around.

This isn't really the same thing. Virtual desktops have been around for decades now, and people have been using them like this (with or without two physical displays) forever. It works for the kind of full-screenable "apps" like you mention. It works poorly for smaller tools: what if you want to have your editor and a console side-by-side, and still view a chat window below that.

And of course you can do all that stuff with regular window UIs too, so that isn't really the essence of a tiling window manager either. As I see it, the real thing that distinguishes tiled environments isn't the "tiling" at all, it's the keyboard-first navigation UI that the tiling enables. And even though I don't actually use these things (I've tried now and again), that's something I see a lot of value in.

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#17

Post by CJefferson »

I currently use xmonad, along with the gnome top-bar to get applets, network configuration, etc. I have found this the easiest way to move into tiling window managers.

It still annoys that tiling window managers all seem designed to be hard to use to configure, almost as a matter of principle. I see no reason that a tiling window manager can't still be easy to use (for example, I use the mouse as much with xmonad as I can, and would like to be able to use it more).

Re: Why You Should Try a Tiling Window Manager

#19

Post by seniorsassycat »

I'm not familiar with notion or ion3, but I've used all of the other tilling managers listed. I really like AwesomeWM as a starting point because it comes sanely configured, and does not rely on haskell like Xmonad. Awesome is configured via Lua scripts, Lua might not be the most popular language but it's easier to pick up than Haskell and has a smaller dependence base.

Besides notion/ion3, which I am not familiar with, all these tilling managers are automatic. You select a layout directive like

- place all windows horizontally,

- place all windows in a grid,

- place one window filling 2/3rd the screen and the rest stacked in the remaining 1/3rd

There are other tilling wm's like i3, wmii, bspwm, and herbstluftwm which are manual tilling managers. i3 and wmii are probably the best ones to start with, but herbstluftwm is my favorite.

With manual tillers you typically split the workspace into multiple frames and windows are automatically arranged in those frames.

Here is an impressive gif of bspwm, a manual tilling window manager [0], and here is the reddit thread where the creater talks about his configurations [1]

[0] http://paste.unixhub.net/index.php/NlKe/

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/1m0ea1/arch_bspwm_...

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