What would be a good starting tilling windows manager

I’m a none tiling window user (a bad habit picked up from work). I use XFCE as my go-to on any distro. I used GNOME when it had wobbly windows but GNOME just went down a path that was not for me. I love to tinker stuff to fit my needs so XFCE fit’s me a lot.

Anyway, I would love to pick up tilling WM which I could run on XFCE. I also have few questions regarding WM’s.

  1. WM is not a DE, right? like XFCE, Budgie, KDE, ect.

  2. Does a WM need a DE to support it underneath or can we use a WM without a DE?

  3. What tilling WM would it be best to start with, can’t choose there are so many?

  4. Would it be possible for me to run a tilling WM on top of XFCE?

I didn’t post this under a specific DE or WM because I think it’s more general if I posted in the wrong place I’m sorry.

  1. Yes WM it’s not DE (meaning it’s not a full featured software suite), it’s usually very minimal

  2. Not really, it can be SUPER minimal, like dwm for example

  3. Different strokes for different folks…I’d say best candidates for both beginner and advanced user are:

    • dwm (extremely minimal suckless software, no config files - need to compile it manually or patch to change options)

    • Awesome (fork of dwm with extreme abilities to configure it through lua language, there are no limits! …i mean, you can really go places in there)

    But those choices are not for everyone…Most people would say i3, bspwm or xmonad as they’re maybe easier at first, but…i don’t know :upside_down_face:

  4. Sure, most people do that for ease :slight_smile:

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i3 is probably the one which is mostly widely used. The advantage of that is that there is lots of documentation and support on it’s use.

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this might interest you .

[Tutorial] Easy Setup: Endeavour XFCE + i3 tiling window manager

that give best both world, if you no sure go full WM

here some info on EOS i3

There also community sway wm + bspwm

EDit :pray: there community Qtile in works

There no best WM just different level of complexity ( my opinion ) try all and find what fit you best :+1:

if worry about mess system up ? try in VM 1st

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I say you should submerge fully in WM if you go there!! :partying_face:

:blowfish: :octopus: :shark:

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Yeah, time to dive in and see where I would end up. Time to dust off my Arch and burn my self :smiley: .

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An aside here - there is more than one way to get wobbly windows (and lots of other effects) - but I don’t know how well it integrates with a tiler. 2 methods that spring to mind are running compiz fusion with XFCE, or kwin (default) with KDE. You would have to either experiment, or research more widely to know which, if either, handles tiling…

Thank you, but I’m done with wobbly windows. I just want to find a good tilling WM so I can start getting into using one. Then get my workflow going.

I suspected that :grin: As for a tiler, I would (from experiences other than my own that have been discussed on here) suggest that either i3, or a combo i3/xfce would be a really good starting point. Lots of other users here, preset “get-you-going” options for simplicity - even installs available.

That said - I’m staying xfce myself for the most part, and only 1 or 2 builds with ‘effects’ - mainly on workspaces and app switchers…

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EndeavourOS i3 would be a great start.

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If you go for a “combo” as mentioned I would suggest using Xfce as one login and a tiling WM as the other. Xfce seems to be able to happily co-exist with many things. The main thing to consider I suppose is the GTK/Qt thing. But that applies to most setups and affects looks, menus and dependencies. I have to admit I don’t use a tiling WM (yet!) but I have tried various combinations of DE’s with extra WM’s with varying degrees of integration. I’ve usually found Xfce easiest to work with.

Seconding (thirding) trying one out in XFCE. As a DE it usually couldn’t care less what you do to it and will just keep on chuggin’. You could also try KDE Plasma with khronkite kwin script to get your feet wet.

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I’ve tried EnOS i3 spin and EnOS bspwm spin by this great community. I did like bspwm when I loaded in, but once I started to take it apart I kind of realized that bspwm needs many other dependencies to be bspwm. Unlike i3wm which is kind of running on XFCE4 with EnOS.

Will be giving it a try with awesome wm and xmonad in my Arch fun install :wink:. But I’m leaning much towards i3wm even for the long run. I will be marking this thread as solved now, thank you everyone.

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Indeed!

Bspwm tries to do only one thing - window management.

i3 has builtin hotkey support and bar support, which bspwm does not have. But it is not necessary to use them. You can use a different hotkey daemon and bar with i3 too :wink:

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Yeah, bspwm depends on too many external stuff for my liking. I like things to be tight as possible that’s why I like i3 more out of the two.

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