Recent versions of KDE have pretty good tiling support, so it's possible to have a rich DE and good tiling.
when you say tiling support, do you mean automatic tiling, or sending it to a corner via key combo?
Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
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Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#12Configuring your WM in Haskell seems fun, but I suspect "fun" is the primary motivator, not any kind of practical reason.
Type-checking keybindings is cute, but you're going to discover that the keybinding doesn't work when you go to use it, so how much time are you really saving? That's not helped by the fact that many WMs/compositors have validators for their configs, so you're getting much of the same benefit with much less trouble.
For reference, Niri's config is very approachable: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri/blob/main/resources/default-c...
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#13Switched to Hyprland about a month ago. Wasn't feeling it at first but after a few weeks I don't think I can go back.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#14Tiling WMs are dead. Long live tiling WMs. Scrolling WMs like Niri/Paperwm are where it’s at now.
Looking at a video demo of Niri for an example: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri Conceptually, it's like an infinite 2D canvas windows, divided into strips (strip is a workspace), and you then scroll through an infinite ribbon of windows in each strip. Seems interesting, but also slower and less flexible than traditional tiling WMs (least of all because of the slow scrolling animations, but also because it seems to pre…
I'm still a Niri newbie, but I'm enjoying the scrolling as a ways to have "subworkspaces": when I'm working on a full-stack project, for example, I can scroll between the backend and the frontend, while arranging my windows in such a way that anything useful (e.g. the browser) remains resident on screen.
You can get similar functionality with tabbed windows, but I'm still trying to decide which workflow I prefer; scrolling feels a bit more "organic", while tabs are superior for density.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#15Tiling WMs are dead. Long live tiling WMs. Scrolling WMs like Niri/Paperwm are where it’s at now.
Looking at a video demo of Niri for an example: https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri Conceptually, it's like an infinite 2D canvas windows, divided into strips (strip is a workspace), and you then scroll through an infinite ribbon of windows in each strip. Seems interesting, but also slower and less flexible than traditional tiling WMs (least of all because of the slow scrolling animations, but also because it seems to pre…
It's the same thing as a tiling WM, with all the benefits. You can still tile windows vertically or horizontally. The big improvement is that if I have a view with my browser, editor, a terminal or two all tiled nicely but then all of a sudden I need to open the Gimp or a PDF for some one-off work related to what I'm working on, it just opens to the right. I can move over to it and do what I need to do without messing up the current layout and then close it when I'm done.
This is opposed to a traditional tiling WM where you'd either need to open the app in another workspace, use some stacking feature or worst of all shove the new window into the current view by resizing some other window(s) which is often not ideal.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#16I think Claude Code makes TilingWMs doable. I've always given up in the past because there have been reams of configs necessary to get to a fairly usable state, and I don't love reading manuals for desktop environments - but now it's all pretty easy to crank out.
I've been on HyprLand for a week now and haven't hit any blockers yet that'd force me to go back to KDE.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#17I think Claude Code makes TilingWMs doable. I've always given up in the past because there have been reams of configs necessary to get to a fairly usable state, and I don't love reading manuals for desktop environments - but now it's all pretty easy to crank out. I've been on HyprLand for a week now and haven't hit any blockers yet that'd force me to go back to KDE.
I think Claude Code is the crutch for being unable to go through docs.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#18I have been a happy user of AwesomeWM for years. I don't actually use the tiling layout all that much (I definitely do use it occasionally and find it useful, but usually I'm in floating or "monocle" mode). But in additional to tiling support, it is minimalist, keyboard-driven and infinitely configurable through Lua scripts which I really like. I think a lot of other tiling WMs are probably popular for similar reasons.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#19Recent versions of KDE have pretty good tiling support, so it's possible to have a rich DE and good tiling.
when you say tiling support, do you mean automatic tiling, or sending it to a corner via key combo?
It's not even the tiling so much, but the ability to move directionally between windows using super+hjkl or whatever, that's the killer for me. The big DEs like KDE and GNOME can technically tile but you're still stuck with alt-tab to switch windows which is horrible.
Re: Moving Back to a Tiling WM – XMonad
#20Configuring your WM in Haskell seems fun, but I suspect "fun" is the primary motivator, not any kind of practical reason. Type-checking keybindings is cute, but you're going to discover that the keybinding doesn't work when you go to use it, so how much time are you really saving? That's not helped by the fact that many WMs/compositors have validators for their configs, so you're getting much of the same benefit with…
> Configuring your WM in Haskell seems fun, but I suspect "fun" is the primary motivator, not any kind of practical reason.
Not for me. I don't know Haskell, and I had to cargo-cult forms to do what I want (which bothers me, as someone towards the end of the developer spectrum that likes to understand well how systems work).
But XMonad with a few cargo-culted tweaks works noticeably better for me than I've been able to configure i3wm. I forced myself to use i3wm at one company, for two years, rather than bring over my Xmonad config, and every evening it was a relief to be back using Xmonad on my personal laptop.