Why use a tiling window manager

window-manager

I've been hearing a lot about tiling window managers lately. People seem to love them, swear by them, even wonder why everyone doesn't use them. But after searching for a little bit, I couldn't find anyone explaining why they make any sense at all.

What am I missing? It seems like unless you have a huge screen, you can't have more than 4-5 applications open at the same time. And it seems so wasteful to only be using a tiny part of your screen for any specific task.

Please help me understand.

To be fair, it took me a while to get tabbed browsing when it first came out, so I am truly waiting to see the light here.

Best Answer

You won't get the answer to your question by searching. You won't even understand it even after asking here and reading the answers :-) You have to try it for yourself and see the bright sides. Of course, ending my answer here would keep its informational value at 0, so please let me share my findings:

  • a tiling wm doesn't imply mandatory usage of multiple monitors (I have one)
  • a tiling wm doesn't imply mandatory usage of a huge monitor with a huge resolution (still using 1024x768)
  • a tiling wm doesn't imply all your windows are on the same virtual desktop, tiling wms can have multiple virtual desktops just like non-tiling wms
  • windows in a tiling wm usually don't have border decorations, this saves some screen space
  • switching virtual desktops and windows using keyboard only is indeed much faster and convenient as soon as you get used to it
  • if you ever decide to try a tiling wm, this doesn't mean you should just get rid of your current wm/de, change and cringe in pain. You could try a tiling wm in a virtual machine or in a window (by using a nested X server like Xnest / Xephyr)

Take this with a grain of salt, I'm a very happy tiling wm newbie and I admit I may be partially biased.