Noob friendly Introduction to Window Managers?

Desktop Environments
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Looking for recommendations on some content that is geared towards a noob friendly introduction to window managers.

Or do you recommend just jumping in and figuring it out? The last time I tried that a couple years ago I failed miserably. Just curious if anyone has anything they can share that would open up this whole new world of Window Managers.

Thanks!

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3 video series on setting up and using i3wm:

Also make sure to print out the keybindings and use them for 2-3 weeks. Then it becomes second nature.

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I have just recently started using i3WM. I have found that “just jumping in and figuring it out” while watching YT tutorials and reading documents at https://i3wm.org/ has been giving me enough exposure to have what you may call a workflow in i3WM.

I am still far from being able to customize every aspect of it but I feel I can do in i3 quite much of the same things that I can do in a full DE. But differently, naturally.

So personally I would suggest using it full-time and learning as you go could be the most effective approach.Your mileage could of course vary.

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one point you can use the standard setup what endeavouros i3 give, or someone else its dotfiles :slight_smile:

But personal i like it the standard i dont want a browser workspace or terminal but its preferences… and currently i removed i3bar from screen and i use it with my lxqt setup.

you can’t really do to bad but with learning you have to fail sometimes :slight_smile:

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I3 is quite easy to handle, at the beginning take time to change the I3.config to your preferences and to adjust it directly when your not comfortable with certain combinations.

By the way you should change the default bindsym for rofi with the F9 and F10 keybindings. Because sometimes, it’ll we override what you want to do. For example you won’t be able to kill an app with HTOP because it’ll be open rofi overlay before.

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@Wadax
Thanks for giving EndeavourOS a try, and welcome to the forum. I hope you enjoy your time here.

Nice, first post and you are already contributing. :sunglasses:

Pudge

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Hi, I’ve been lurking for a while on this forum to learn more about arch and EOS. Now I think I have the minimum knowledge to help the community !

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Hi ! i3 seems to me the easiest WM for a beginning. Its config file is really self-explanatory.
The defaults setup of EndeavourOS i3 is a good starts as everything works and there is a good documentation.
Just take the time to look at the config files in ~/.config/i3 and you will learn really useful things to manage your WM.

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I’m late on this thread. There are plenty of youtubes on window managers, so you can get multiple opinions on each, how they stack up, how configurable they are, etc.

There’s a wikipedia page that lists most of the X based Window managers: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_X_window_managers

I personally don’t do a lot of text editing or coding (hope to some day, maybe in retirement). I spend most of my day in browsers and Slack and a few desktop apps. I’m not sure one of the more prominent WM’s would benefit me (i3, dwm, xmonad, bpswm, qtiles, awesome).

However, I did find that in XFCE, it has some basic window tiling placement functionality such that if you drag a window to a side of the screen, it may snap into a quadrant if in a corner or a half screen if at the screen middle.

There is also a older package called zentiles that functions as a WM as an app. I didn’t have much luck with it, but you might have more.

Edit: there’s also an AUR package called xpytiles that works within XFCE to do some basic dynamic tiling.

I’ve ended up with a minimal XFCE panel at the top that autohides, and use the keyboard shortcuts when I can.

If I had to choose one, my choices would be between awesome and xmonad, maybe Qtiles. Although I’m hoping worm, as brought up by another EOS forum member develops well, as I have an interest in Rust as a language.

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Surprised no one mentioned this yet but if you’re coming from a full Desktop Environment I think the far easiest transition would be starting out with Openbox which is a stacking WM with tiling capabilities. When you feel comfortable you can then move on to a full tiling WM if that’s what you desire.

As for tiling WMs I think bspwm and qtile are quite simple to start with. The latter in particular has excellent documentation and unlike the others it has a lot of built in widgets (including a bar/dock) and the config is limited to one file rather than across multiple different plugins.

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