Fancy Zones, a tiling window manager

Looks like:

* https://i3wm.org/ (i3)

* https://xmonad.org/ (xmonad)

* https://awesomewm.org/ (Awesome)

Am I the only one who read Quincy Jones?

So, there are a great many tiling window managers out there. i3 is just one fish in the sea. Here's a starting point at a list just for X11: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/window_manager#Tiling_w...

The usual classification is static vs. dynamic: static managers maintain a certain fixed layout of slots which they then fill windows into, while dynamic ones adjust the number, layout and size of those slots on the fly as new windows are spawned.

While I don't usually see them classified this way, there is also pre-defined vs. on-the-fly (manual?) layout. This is pretty much what it says on the tin; pre-defined managers have pre-defined zones (for static managers) or algorithms (for dynamic managers); generally you can customize these in some way if you wish. On-the-fly managers let you create custom layouts as you go.

Examples of various combinations: static, pre-defined: Fancy Zones, Slate, most simple tools for windows / mac static, on-the-fly: stumpwm/ratpoison, emacs (not really a window manager but the paradigm is familiar to many) dynamic, pre-defined: dwm, awesomewm, xmonad dynamic, on-the-fly: i3

All of these models have strengths and weaknesses. Dynamic/pre-defined (e.g. dwm) is well suited for a workflow leaning on traditional unix tools (vi, sed, awk, lots of shell magic) where one tends to frequently spawn and despawn terminals (i3 is probably also decent here), but tends to fall down if you have a lot of windows to manage (workspaces can sometimes help with this, but they aren't always the answer). Static/on-the-fly (e.g. stumpwm) works really well if you have a lot of windows to manage, but only want to display a few of them at a time in some ad-hoc manner --- but isn't so great if you want to constantly adjust your layout. Static/pre-defined usually have a control system that is less automatic (more overhead on the user) but play nicer in environments that are traditionally dominated by stacking managers (so also less headache for the user). i3 is kind of it's own beast; it has a lot of power in creating whatever specific layout you might find optimal at the moment; downsides include evolved complexity as your layout develops, and simple lack of the specific strengths of other approaches.

You seem to have found happiness with i3, which is great. I currently prefer the approach of dwm or stumpwm, depending. Others have other preferences, but all of the above are valid approaches to tiling. While I agree that more detail in the title could be a good thing, I definitely wouldn't call it clickbait.

Decade-long user of i3 here, I have three different keyboards (netbook to server) and three different trackpads\mouses -- the keyboard is more efficient for resize operations. I use focus-follows-mouse (agreed, why not use all devices) and fling the cursor all over the place all the time, but don't have to click and don't even have to use my fingers if I can drag my lower palm across the trackpad.

Does windows have virtual desktops? I don't see any hotkeys for moving between vdesks. Never thought I'd see the day MS makes a tiling wm with hotkeys inspired by i3 & friends.

I'll stick with i3 though.