Common Questions About Tiling Window Managers

one of the most common topics that I discuss on my youtube channel is telling window managers I have made a bunch of videos on various tiling window managers over the last couple of years and as the channel gains and popularity and I get more and more new subscribers a lot of you guys if you're new to the channel if you haven't watched a lot of my older videos you're asking me questions that I may or may not have answered on videos in the past but you know I'm getting a lot of the same questions regarding specific tiling window managers are just tiling window managers in general like on a daily basis so instead of having to answer a lot of those questions individually I thought today I would make a quick video answering some of the common questions and comments that I get about tiling window managers so let's start with maybe the most common question I get on the channel ADT what window manager are you using right now well why are you asking me that question and the reason I say that is it's you guys are asking me this many of you are asking me this because it's like whatever window manager I happen to be using at this moment and you know it's like my influence might actually influence you on the window manager you decide to use that really shouldn't be the case you know you should not use a window manager based solely on what I happen to be using today I really caution you guys on making a decision like that based solely on what I use or what some other YouTube personality uses that's not the way to go about this thing also you have to understand I am a very weird kind of desktop user Desktop Linux user I have nine or ten different window managers installed on my system right now I have one floating window manager open box installed on the system and then I have DWM awesome cute all I 3bs bwm herbs lifts X monad I think stump wim is also somewhere on the system I've got a bunch of window managers here on the system and I log into most of them on a regular basis today if I switch to my desktop I am in cute Oh cute all tiling window manager written in Python one I used many times over the years one I really like yesterday I made a video and I was in DWM when I made that video the video before that I think I recorded in X monad or awesome you know it varies you know I'll log in to different window managers every other day so asking me what window manager I happen to be using now is kind of pointless because I never know what I'm gonna be using and it doesn't really matter to me they're all pretty much the same to me because I've got them all configured to do kind of the same thing they all kind of use the same key bindings and again don't think that whatever I'm using is some is some way an endorsement for a window manager as far as that's the one for you guys to use don't think like that probably the second most common question I get is hey DT which tiling window manager is the best all right so there is no bist there there's no best anything that's that's a stupid question and I'm not kidding at all that is a stupid question anytime you ask hey what is the best something and it's just a very broad general question what's the best movie you know what's the best car what's the best this what's the best that what's the best tiling window manager I mean we have to have more information to answer that besides there's no just general best anything everyone has their own workflow their own biases their own experiences there's no Universal best anything there just isn't so that's just a ridiculous question quit asking me hey what's the best anything I don't care what it what's the best music player what's the best video editor guys you know you got to work out some of this stuff on your own because it all comes down to again your own experiences and biases and personal choice so now a more specific version of that question is which tiling window manager is best for beginners or which tiling window manager is the easiest to get into I get that question a lot and that one is a little bit of a better question to ask and it's one I typically do give an answer to the one I typically recommend for beginners is the awesome window manager because the awesome window manager you can actually use it straight out of the box it's got a pretty decent configuration out of the box it's got a panel that's already configured for you it's got some widgets you know it's got a right-click menu kind of similar to open box you can actually log into awesome for the very first time and actually figure some stuff out and you'll get your programs launched and actually get some work done right away that's not the case and a lot of other tiling window managers but that is the case with awesome if you've tried awesome or you don't want to try awesome for some reason you want some other telling window manager recommendations as far as good first telling window managers I three is pretty easy to get into and cue tile is pretty straightforward as well cue tells another one it just kind of works out of the box for the most part we need to talk about the ones to avoid though because increasingly I'm getting questions from you guys you know I'm getting a lot of questions and comments here recently about DWM especially because I've spent some time in DWM on camera here in the last month or so and because I a big proponent of ex-mo net I'm getting a lot of people asking me about ex-mo net as a first toddler those are not good first tyler's those are not the way to go do not think that you're just going to install DWM or X monad as a first tiling window manager and that's going to be a great experience because that's not DW m and X moanin are very minimal and they have steep learning curves and they have some quirks to them that may cause you a bit of grief if you are not properly prepared for them another question I've gotten recently is hey DT is a telling window manager worth it especially to a non programmer so you guys a lot of you guys I think have this misconception the telling window managers are only used by programmers and I'm not a programmer I'm not a programmer by trade I actually don't work with computers I don't have a job that deals with Linux or computers at all I'm just a regular guy right so yes you don't have to be a programmer to use a tiling window manager at all really tiling window managers are not that different from floating window managers as far as your typical desk top usage like if you're just a normal computer user if your average computer user typically all you open up is a web browser anyway you open up a web browser and that's fullscreen on your desktop and you go to Facebook and Netflix and all that crap you know it's the same in a big desktop environment like you know more plasma as it is in a tiling window manager exactly the same if that's pretty much your workflow now we're telling window managers really shine is if you have a workflow that goes beyond just opening up your web browser and watching Hulu or whatever it is you do like if you spend a lot of time and a terminal or you spent a lot of time in a text editor you know tiling window managers really make a lot of sense especially if you have multiple windows open a lot if you're the kind of person that you do some writing and you have a text editor taking up one half of your screen but you need a web browser to do some search or you know whatever it is you research for whatever it is you're writing about and you want that on the other half of the screen you know having a tiling window manager is nice because you can manipulate the windows you can bring one full screen when you need it you can push one you know to hide it when you need it you can rearrange them to divide the screen in half you can move them so one is on the right instead of the live you telling window managers add a lot of functionality that typically your floating window managers just will not have another common question I've been getting is what is the most customizable tiling window manager now this one is actually not that hard to answer because well I think pretty much all the tiling window managers that I have used are very very customizable extreme customization there is one that really does stand out if you take the time to learn it and take the time to learn the programming language that it is configured in and that is the awesome window manager the awesome window manager offers extreme customization options if you are willing to take the time to learn Lua the awesome window manager like the sky's the limit anything you can imagine you can turn the awesome window manager into it's just something that's you know it can do things that are possible and any other window manager another common question I get is DT I heard that Python is slow and sucky as a programming language why do you like Utah it must be slow right no Utah is just as fast as any other tiling window manager I've ever used just as fast let's open up some windows let's you know let's close some windows you know let's launch something and well if I can type right let's launch something and move the windows and let's resize the windows and close the windows right it's the exact same speed that I get at a DW M which is written in C which is a very fast language it's the exact same speed I get out of X monad which is written in Haskell which is a very fast language Q times just as fast as those but but that can't be it's written in slow and sucky Python because you know somebody else told me Python was slow python is slow python is slow for some tasks but you guys you have to think of what a tiling window manager is you know what a window manager is and in case you are confused at all you see this blue border around this window that blue border around that window is the window manager that's all it is that is basically the window manager it determines where this window is placed on the screen as I drag it with the mouse or as I open on your new window or as I close a window the window manager is just that blue border that determines where that window is placed on the screen that's all it is you know it's not highly computational intensive work that Python is doing right this is not something that you know Python is perfectly suited to be a window manager I think a lot of people think when they see my desktop you know the cute aisle desktop here they think maybe everything here is Python you know the terminal emulator that I'm running is written in Python or the programs I launch inside the terminal emulator must be pods on the whole operating system must be Python no we're just talking a window manager just the border around the window that determines where that window is placed on the screen that's all it is Python is perfectly suited for that task another question is does using a telling window manager make a terminal multiplexer obsolete I get this question on a regular basis as well for the most part yes if you use a tiling window manager you do not need a terminal multiplexer like team-ups or screen a tiling window manager kind of makes T MUX pointless at least as far as a local machine you know team looks is pointless if you're already using a tiler anyway why tile with T MUX your window manager already tiles right so yes it does kind of make it obsolete but on the flip side here don't forget that you know most terminal multiplexers like T months they work over SSH they offer the ability to detach and reattach so yes you might have a use case 14 bucks even if you do use a tiling window manager if you use T MUX for remote connections so for me I don't really have a need for it so I don't use T monks but for some of you guys if you need to do anything remotely yeah T MUX may have a use for you the next question is hey DT I use i3 mainly for its tabbed a layout because I can't live without the tab to layout are there any other tiling window managers out there that have this kind of tabbed layout um no but you don't really need it I think a lot of you guys that have fallen in love with I 3 and that tab to layout think that that layout is something special that it's something that it really isn't the tabbed layout really is just like every other tiling window managers monocle layout or max layout or full screen layout depending on what they call it so if I switch to the max layout and I open a window and I'll launch something I won't change the top here you know this is full screen and if I open up something else you know I can launch something else and I don't know I'm just gonna run an LS we've got something different on the screen you know the full screen layout the monocle layout the max layout in your tiling window manager is essentially like I three tab layout when you're like well I don't have I don't see any tabs yeah there's no tabs but you don't need the tips it's the same thing the windows are all here they're stacked on top of each other you don't physically need to see a tip and you can still cycle through with the vim keys in my case super J or supercade to cycle through the stack you know to get through the windows in this case it's just two but I could have you know 15 windows open and cycle through the stack with you know Super J and K so the tabbed layout it's really no different than your monocle layout and most other tiling window managers other than I three adds that wasted space because you have the bar that actually shows you the window names as tabs that really is pointless and it kind of wastes screen real estate honestly an i3 so yes you can live without the tabbed layout and if you install something like awesome or cue tile or whatever I just use the full screen layout it's the same yes you don't actually see the tabs but I mean are you launching windows and forgetting what windows you actually launched I doubt that's really the case now some of you guys that haven't tried to tiling window manager yet you know a common thing I get is hey DT all tiling window managers look the same you know I go to our slash UNIX Bourne and look at these screenshots they all look the same what's the difference between all these window managers aren't they all basically the same well you have a point they all can do the same things absolutely because they're all very very customizable so you can make them actually do the same thing as this other window manager and that window manager can be made to do the same thing as this other window manager over here yes so you they can all basically do the same things but there are very real differences amongst the various tiling window managers one how they handle multi monitors can vary I three handles multi monitors very differently and then X monnet workspaces it's another thing some tiling window managers take DWM for example have workspaces assigned to each monitor each monitor has its own set of workspaces X Mon ed has a completely different way to handle workspaces you have one group of workspaces and they're shared amongst all the monitors the language that these window managers written ioan is another thing the programming language and the configuration thought because for example the awesome window manager is configured in Lua the configuration file is a Lua script if you don't know Lua that may be tough python is the programming language for kyouto so if you know a little Python cue table may be more appropriate and the last question I'm going to discuss today is DT can I get a pre-configured tiling window manager so a lot of you guys are really scared about getting a just plain vanilla tiling window manager you know and then you have to configure it you have to open that config file and start hacking on it and you're not really sure what to do hey can I get a pre-configured telling window manager absolutely so if you want you can actually get some Linux distributions that come with pre-configured telling window managers out-of-the-box arco Linux has a ton of various additions that come with pre-configured tiling window managers Arco makes a pre-configured I three BS PWM awesome cute all X monad and probably a few more that escape my mind right now Manjaro offers a really nice pre-configured i3 addition they also offer a pre-configured awesome window manager edition the other thing you can do is just pull down other people's configs most people that run tiling window managers push their configs to a github or a git lab repository it just makes it easier you know when you have to reinstall your operating system you just pull your configs down from in my case get lab and everything's the same so I push all my configs to my get Lib so and that's what I suggest you guys do just go to my get lab page if you're sure what to do with something like cute I'll go grab my cute I'll configure or my awesome config or my X monad config try it out for yourself you guys if you want to try out DWM try my build of DWM it's also on my get lab if you're on an arch based system just look for a package DWM - distro tube - get you can install it from the aur but really you shouldn't use any of these pre-configured tiling window managers I mean it's okay to use them as a guideline you if you use my configs or the Arco configs or the Manjaro configs or you find somebody's configs on github I mean it's kind of cool that they can provide inspiration but really just use that as a guideline you know find out what works for you find out what doesn't work for you take what you want throw away the risk but eventually what you really need to do you got to customize your own config to suit your needs that's the whole point of running a tiling window manager now before I go I need to thank a few people this episode was produced by Michael Mitchell Chris DJ Donnie Dylan George hello Nate lamda Libra quest armoury Rob Sean Willie these guys they are the producers of the show my highest tiered patrons over on patreon the show is also brought to you by all of these ladies and gentlemen each and every one of my supporters over on patreon a sincere thank you to each and every one of those ladies and gentlemen if you'd like to support the channel consider doing so you'll find me at distro tube over on patreon alright guys peace

Channel: DistroTube

Views: 50,921

Keywords: window manager, tiling window manager, window manager linux, tiling window managers, i3 window manager, desktop environment, dynamic window manager, best tiling window manager, linux window manager, dwm window manager, window manager vs desktop environment, awesome window manager, qtile, xmonad, bspwm, dwm, i3 gaps, herbstluftwm, linux, gnu linux

Id: Qauypve7zbY

Length: 18min 55sec (1135 seconds)

Published: Mon Apr 06 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/MachineGunPablo]

Dt there is a point you missed regarding i3's tabbed layout. If the tabbed layout is the layout of the root window in a workspace then yes, it is basically a monocle layout.

But I very often use the tabbed layout in a child window, I split the root window vertically and tab my right child window, this allows me to have multiple alternate but large terminals on the right so that they don't tile but overlap. I think this is the use case most people refer to when they say they will miss i3's tabbed layout.