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I've found XFCE with the keyboard shortcuts (built-in) to tile to top,left,bottom,right,fullscreen work really well and fit my model of usage (which is mostly open new source file, split screen).
Reasons why you shouldn't try a tiling window manager: Well, mostly if you use tools that have a "view portal" or depend heavily on pop-out style toolboxes. The WM is constantly resizing your windows, which makes it a chore to keep everything adjusted, and pop-out style toolboxes are pretty much best at on-top usage by nature, rather than tiled. I use CAD software on a regular basis, and while I managed to make a til…
If you're on OS X, I've found Slate to be the best option: https://github.com/jigish/slate It's open source, has a simple text file based config, and is generally more configurable than most other similar tools.
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…
When I'm browsing, I like to have firefox in the middle of my screen. If it's stuck off to the side somewhere or buried amongst other tabs, I'm going to hate it. How do I make that work?
Eclipse is going to be full screen. I assume that's not going to be difficult.
Now with all that, I get someone asking me a question via skype. How do I get notified? Currently I get a nice notification via the taskbar. Do I lose the concept of notifications?
What about for widget-like things (cpu/network/etc)? Do people use conky or something like that in a tiled window?
Reasons why you shouldn't try a tiling window manager: Well, mostly if you use tools that have a "view portal" or depend heavily on pop-out style toolboxes. The WM is constantly resizing your windows, which makes it a chore to keep everything adjusted, and pop-out style toolboxes are pretty much best at on-top usage by nature, rather than tiled. I use CAD software on a regular basis, and while I managed to make a til…
Have you considered i3? It supports fully floating windows separate from the tiling, and normal pop-up windows go straight to the floating layer. It's extremely handy (As what you noted annoys me a ton with WM's like XMonad). i3 can act just like a normal floating WM if needed.
But at the end of the day it was a chore to use and just didn't add much value. I guess what you could take away is I want/need my windows to be sized & placed specifically the way I direct, and a tiling WM is the opposite of this.
BTW: KDE and XFCE WM has some basic tiling support as well.
Back to the future!
I've used awesome before, and I was quite impressed. Once you get the hang of shortcuts, you tend to be vastly more productive than if you were using a traditional or compositing wm. I grew up with a compositing WM, but the transition was easy enough. I'm curious if the advent of mobile devices (i.e. smartphone, tablet, etc) would lead one to choose tiling WMs over the traditional kind.
It looks like Windows 8 's metro interface is a basic tiling WM. It isn't very featured, but it can show multiple apps at the same time, and will automatically split the screen between them (without overlap).
I read so much about why Tiling is Great because the Mouse is Awful.
I think the mouse has its place. For writing code and text I have my hands on the keyboard—which means I also want to create and move windows with the keyboard.
But when I'm in a web browser, or a game, or any number of other GUI-centric applications, my hand is already on the mouse. Which means I want a visual dropdown for launching applications, and I want to drag and resize windows with the mouse.
I love my Tiling because it doesn't waste space. To me, Windowing is just silly; why would I ever want large swathes of my desktop empty, and applications overlapping each other?
But I don't understand the mouse-versus-keyboard argument. I want both to control my WM with both, because I use applications with both.