Gnome is Rethinking Window Management

kenbw2@lemmy.world to Linux@lemmy.ml – 230 points –
blogs.gnome.org
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" Traditional tiling window managers solve the hidden window problem preventing windows from overlapping. While this works well in some cases, it falls short as a general replacement for stacked, floating windows. "

In 10 years of working with tiling WMs productively on a daily basis this has been an issue exactly 0 times. Even in a world that is tailored to non-tiling WMs they just perform better. Period.

I used i3wm for some time, configuring default placements based on window metadata and used it for work. after some time I realised I'm 40 years old and shit like this is a waste of time. I just want it to think for me

I relatively recently switched from ion3 to hyprland - not having a predefined layout with rules where windows go was a bit weird at first, but got used to it pretty quickly. I have a bunch of rules about which desktop specific applications should go, but other than that just use dynamic splits at the cursor location, and then move windows around as needed.

In 10 years of working with tiling WMs productively on a daily basis this has been an issue exactly 0 times...

...for you.

Different people have different needs.

Seems like using a window manager could be a whole rabbit hole. Where do you begin?

start with i3wm/sway or openbox. openbox is a floating window manager so it should be more familiar and i3wm is a tiling window manager. personally i use kde nowadays but i always preferred tiling window managers when i chose to use one. it all comes down to your choices so first see if you prefer tiling or floating window managers and then go from there

I'd recommend sway and waybar. Waybar offers some cool customizable templates. Currently I also use bemenu as a launcher and dunst/poweralertd for notifications. I make heavy use of stacked or tabbed layout during general use.

sway has pretty decent mouse support, but for optimal productivity try to get used to the keyboard shortcuts. As soon as moving/resizing windows and changing desktops becomes muscle memory it's a whole different ball game.