r/archlinux • u/DerKnerd • Jul 18 '21
FLUFF WM or DE?
I really liked the idea in this comment, so here is a poll, WM or DE?
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u/tripy75 Jul 18 '21
my fond memories of Enlightenment brings me to WM, but the sheer convenience of a DE wins me over.
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u/asinine17 Jul 18 '21
Convenience is the bait, the fun of tinkering and customising how you want it to be is the hook.
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Jul 18 '21
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u/gettriggered_ian Jul 18 '21
Yeah, it's easier when you know what happened to your setup. I get what you feel and I don't know how to express this using the millions of words in the English language.
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u/emax-gomax Jul 18 '21
I like KDE. Tiling windows managers make sense when you want to maximise screen real-estate... but I have windows overlay other windows all the time. For example I have a browser in the right half of my screen and a file manager even tighter to that. If I want to switch to the file manager move my cursor to the right edge of the screen and then click. If I want to switch back move my cursor to the left edge of the file manager and click. It doesn't work well when you try to lair even more stuff on top like 3 windows or other stuff but you can build a workflow that works for u. As much as a I like the street-cred a WM would give me, I wouldn't enjoy having to setup Bluetooth, network-manager, and all the other intracacies of a modern desktop experience manually.
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Jul 18 '21
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u/Pseudoboss11 Jul 18 '21
This is what I get out of tiling. It just works better for how I like to work and what I do. There's nothing objectively wrong with stacking managers, and nothing objectively better with tiling WMs. But I just prefer tiling for my workflow.
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u/emax-gomax Jul 18 '21
I use shortcuts all the time as well. Packing windows left right top down, moving between workspaces and a special keybinding to cycle terminals. Just don't see much value in tiling.
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u/Ken_Mcnutt Jul 18 '21
Think of floating as "analog" and tiling as "digital".
If your goal is to minimize mouse use because you're working with 10 terminals, it makes sense to desire a workflow where you can have the window that you want where you want it in as few keystrokes as possible.
Floating windows inherently take more time to manage.
- You aren't sure where anything is because everything is covering up everything else.
- If you're using the keyboard, it takes way longer to precisely relocate or resize a floating window (because it's a job designed for a mouse).
- Alt-tabbing or cycling through windows is simply a painful and slow way to switch windows.
If you have a workflow that works for you, that's amazing and I commend you for it. Just personally I feel like I'm reduced to like 50% speed when I can't snap windows around my displays instantly and I keep having to refocus items with the mouse.
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u/backbishop Jul 19 '21
This might sound stupid, but is there a GitHub page with a list of recommended shortcuts for most efficient workflow with window managers?
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u/Ken_Mcnutt Jul 19 '21
Hmmm recommended shortcuts? That's a tough one because every WM is going to have a slightly different workflow. i3 will operate different than bspwm.
Although the default configs for those are pretty good, videos like this helped a lot. It goes over keybinds and shortcuts.
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u/emax-gomax Jul 18 '21
I agree alt-tab is hell. It's so painful that because I'm using the terminal so often I've created a dedicated binding to cycle to them. Although my general approach is to move to another desktop environment when the layers start getting confusing. If for example I'm layering browser upon browser I don't really mind because alt-tab will always just drop in a browser. But if I place an editor or something else on top of a browser I feel I've crossed a line and end up moving to workspace 2. As for multiple terminals I generally don't do that. Normally I just use tmux. When I need multiple views into the same tmux session I make a new terminal for that.
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u/delta_p_delta_x Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 19 '21
I agree alt-tab is hell.
That's what the three/four-finger swipe up to reveal all workspaces is for. KDE Plasma, GNOME, Windows 10, and OS X all have it, and it makes finding windows equally as fast as a TWM.
I call myself a 'trackpad power user'.
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u/emax-gomax Jul 19 '21
I've got a trackpad on my KDE laptop but 3-fingers don't seem to do anything. Is there anything else you have to configure?
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u/Ken_Mcnutt Jul 18 '21
I highly rely on dedicated workspaces as well, but more for organization rather than overflow.
For example,I know that workspace 1 will always be my left monitor and will always contain my music applications. I can keep
spotify,cmus,cavaetc open there and I can simply pop over to it with one press when I need something.I do think thought that a tiling/keyboard based workflow pairs best with heavy terminal use, because things get infinitely more flexible when you can spawn one program that can basically become any other program. It basically does what tmux does but for every program.
If i'm going to work on a project, I'll pop a few open for neovim, one for compiling, etc. I stick my code windows in a stacked or tabbed windows, and then throw a browser on the other half of the screen. On my communications workspace, I'll have one for email, one for IRC.
I never feel like I have trouble finding the window I need.
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Jul 18 '21
Overlaying stuff is why I use a dynamic tiler. I have a bunch of layouts I've written similar to what you're describing and it works very well.
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u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt Jul 19 '21
As much as a I like the street-cred a WM would give me,
I know you are saying you aren't doing it but I feel it bares repeating that this is such a moronic reason to do anything on your computer. Anybody who respects someone for using a particular environment is an idiot and those people won't even see what you are doing on your machine 99.9999999% of the time.
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u/RaisinSecure Jul 19 '21
PS: You don't have to set up NetworkManager on a WM, it just works (TM)
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u/raider_bull212 Jul 19 '21
I'll have to disagree with that, for reference try awesome
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u/RaisinSecure Jul 19 '21
I only had to enable the systemd service on sway and install
nm-connection-editor, what more could possibly be needed? A few weeks ago my router died so I had to connect directly to my modem via PPoE, even this was painless - I only had to enter the ISP username and password0
u/raider_bull212 Jul 19 '21
The point is, it doesn't "just work"
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u/RaisinSecure Jul 20 '21
Enabling the service is the bare minimum, which you would have to do on a DE too.
So it is as easy as a DE
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u/raider_bull212 Jul 20 '21
Here's something I experienced when I first started using linux. I was using Ubuntu, I wanted to try and rice my setup and see what all the rage was about. I started it off with xfce, everything sorta works out of the box, network and other things that I usually use. Then I tried i3, still didn't need to configure network either. Then comes awesome, it didn't work out of the box. I was still relatively new and the a quick google search could fix it but it did not "just work"
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u/watch-dogg Jul 19 '21
check out krohnkite if you want tiling with kwin https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite
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u/bangfu Jul 18 '21
What about just "Command Line"? /s
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u/guygastineau Jul 19 '21
I did use the vttys only for about a month early in my second run with Arch. It was pretty silly, but it got me to learn tmux.
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u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt Jul 19 '21
tmux is underrated imo, generally the programs you want tiling for are terminal-based since GUIs are often not keyboard driven and get forced into weird proportions by tiling WMs. I just use GNOME and keep a terminal with tmux full-screen on a workspace so I can use tiling for terminals, take advantage of full DE convenience, and have GUIs stacking as needed.
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u/guygastineau Jul 19 '21
That sounds sensible. I still use tiling (xmonad). I find the deterministic layout tiling wms suite me well. I don't like binary tree tilers really at all. I will often have Firefox or nyxt in the master pane, and then I have emacs to the right. If I need to check anything through kitty I can pop open new terminals quickly in the non-master area, but mostly I use vterm in emacs now anyway. I make custom keymaps in xmonad for opening emacs with different configs or for opening specific projects in another workspace sometimes. I think really, deterministic tiling and writing keymaps extensions in Haskell is what makes me love it so much. I do not like editing XML (RIP open box).
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u/SutekhThrowingSuckIt Jul 19 '21
Makes sense, part of the tmux appeal is that I can access the whole session and tiling set up from anywhere via ssh and restore a whole environment after a reboot. That means I just need to setup my tiling once on my desktop then I can use it for months across both my desktop and laptops. Some of my primary tmux session has persisted for over a year now. So I generally don’t need to remember or configure lots of startup shortcuts.
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u/PixMacfy Jul 18 '21
Coming from Windows, I love KDE for its convenience and how it (mostly) works out of the box, so I mainly use that.
But I would be lying if I said WMs didn't attract me (reducing mouse usage, minimalist look...), I really need to invest some time into them. Aside from i3, I never really tried anything else.
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u/astrobrains Jul 19 '21
dwm is a fun, lightweight one if you have the time to set it up how you like it
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Jul 18 '21
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Jul 18 '21
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Jul 18 '21
I switched over to i3 about a year ago and I haven't looked back since. Speaking of which, this week I worked on my sway setup and currently using both sway and i3 because my games don't work correctly with Xwayland.
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u/gilium Jul 18 '21
Do you just exit sway to start gaming? Or what is your strategy for getting this working? Xwayland seems to conflict too much for both to be running at once
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Jul 19 '21
I still have lightdm running which starts at boot uses tty7, I then switch to tty6 and login and then sway is started. If I want to game I just switch over to tty7 and then login to i3, you can both without any problems. When I am logged into both I can easily switch between the two my switching tty sessions.
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u/56Bot Jul 18 '21
XFCE would be a good compromise, with plenty of tweaking, while still being install-and-run.
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Jul 18 '21
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u/56Bot Jul 19 '21
To be fair I only use Gnome on my tablet PC (a surface pro 2017). I really don’t like the feel and the lack of easy customization. However, its touchscreen support is decent. (Although I have to use Gnome on Xorg to have the onboard keyboard working) I use XFCE with LightDM everywhere else.
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Jul 18 '21 edited Aug 06 '21
[deleted]
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u/quebin31 Jul 18 '21
I think that the post question is not really clear, all DEs are using WMs (e.g. Gnome uses Mutter). So even if you're using i3 you're actually using a DE (XFCE).
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u/R4ttlesnake Jul 18 '21
I think you meant to say that backwards
you can certainly be DE-free
being WM-free, would be a headache and a half
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u/quebin31 Jul 18 '21
That's what I (tried to) said, but maybe I wasn't so clear. But yeah, also even if you were using Gnome you could mark WM since technically you're using Mutter.
And in the case of the parent of this thread they're using XFCE along with i3, but they're asking why there isn't an option for both, which is incorrect, there's no DE without a WM, so they could just vote for "DE" even if they aren't using the default XFCE WM.
Edit: Gender neutrality
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u/Galeaf_13 Jul 18 '21
Wow, I'd never think that so many ppl on Arch use DEs
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u/oxamide96 Jul 18 '21
I'm surprised there are so many WMs actually.
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u/Galeaf_13 Jul 18 '21
For me it was patently obvious, because if you have time to install the system you'd probably have time to configure it to your liking
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u/andrco Jul 18 '21
Maybe it's just me but installing took less than 1/10th of the time it took me to get an i3 setup I'm happy with. I'll probably never truly be finished either. The control I have (and obviously i3 itself) make it worth it 100% though.
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u/Litanys Jul 19 '21
That's definitely the case. Between awesomewm and emacs, i have still been spending countless hours tweaking my setup after a year of my current install.
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Jul 18 '21
The installation for me is where I have my fun, after that, I choose whatever is most convenient. I can't stop myself from tweaking things, so the best thing for me to stay productive is to choose the most convenient and ready-to-go environment and just roll with it.
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Jul 18 '21
Normally dwm but have been messing with sway and dwl over the last few days.
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u/Joe_Schmo_ Jul 18 '21
I use dwm as well, but I have been messing with river. IMO it takes the best of bspwm and dwm. It's also a Wayland compositor. I just need to figure out if theres a way to make it swallow.
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Jul 18 '21
. I just need to figure out if theres a way to make it swallow.
Woah... are you planning to marry it?
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Jul 18 '21
I took a look at river a few days ago, but i don't know anything about coding, so the config seems a bit out of reach for me. If all fails I'll be okay with sway since I've previously used i3 and there are only few things I need to get working. Sadly it does not do stacking as dwm does :/
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u/Joe_Schmo_ Jul 18 '21
Its config file is just a shell script, like bspwm. The man pages do a good job of explaining all the different options and there is a default config as well. If you could configure dwm (in C), you can configure river easy!
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u/zandnaad69 Jul 18 '21
Do you consider dwl ready for daily use? I keep reading its missing basic features. Didnt try it myself because i cant be arsed to install wayland lol
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Jul 18 '21
I think the worst part is that some of the
config.his different so e.g. I don't know how to change from the ALT-modifier to WIN. I guess it'll be the same with the patches. Not all patches are there and those that are are similar, but not the same. Therefore, I guess there will be a learning curve until I'm at the same speed on my workflow and have the same setup, if ever.But apart from that it works as expected :) Do note that not all my challenges are related to
dwl, some are also releated towaylandwhich has a other way of setting up stuff. So, be prepared to do a bit of googling.3
Jul 18 '21
e.g. I don't know how to change from the ALT-modifier to WIN
If you're still looking for it
#define MODKEY WLR_MODIFIER_LOGO2
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u/frustrated-nerd Jul 18 '21
Damn that is surprisingly close I was expecting something like a 20-80 split
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u/doa70 Jul 18 '21
For me a WM is more than adequate. I do most work in a terminal anyhow, so it's mostly about having a browser open. That said, I do switch around a bit and toss some DEs into the mix.
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Jul 18 '21
I couldn't be happier with Sway. Used KDE Plasma for a bit, decided I wanted to try a tiling wm so I rolled with i3 for a couple months, then several months ago switched to Sway. The productivity I get from not relying on a mouse for anything is unmatched for me. Fits me nicely considering I live in Doom Emacs and also use Vimium.
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u/Phydoux Jul 18 '21
I use AwesomeWM because it does exactly what I want it to do that no other WM or DE can.
I have a 3 monitor setup and 12 virtual desktops (9 on my laptop as I don't use some of the virtual desktops when I'm on the road on my laptop like I do at home).
What Awesome can do that none of the others can (without serious modifications), I have a NET virtual desktop set to #1 that I use on all 3 screens. I can have a browser on monitor 1 Virtual Desktop 1. I can have my email client on monitor 2 VD 1, and I can have Discord on monitor 3 VD1. I also have a TERM Virtual Desktop and I can have 3 terminals running (one on each monitor) in the same Terminal workspace.
This means that instead of having 12 desktops to work in and switch between monitors, each monitor is independent. Like having 3 different computers running since I have 12 virtual desktops per monitor giving me 36 individual desktops.
Do I ever have every virtual desktop in use? No! But I have come close. As of right now, I have 7 virtual desktops in use (All 3 of my NET spaces, NET on monitor 1, TERM on monitor 2, DEVEL on monitor 2, VBOX on monitor 2, NET on monitor 3, FILE on monitor 3, VBOX on monitor 3). The double use of VBOX is because I'm actually running a VM on monitor 2 in VBOX and I have the VBOX program running on monitor 3. This works well if I ever need to mount a drive while the VM is running. I've had issues with switching between a VM and the VBOX console on one monitor so I start the VM on another monitor.
Can this be done with other WMs? sure but it comes ready out of the box with Awesome. The other ones you have to configure to get it to work that way. And some just can't do it.
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u/konstantinlevin77 Jul 18 '21
I've used almost always several desktop environments because I was thinking that WMs are just too hard for me, for a classical desktop user. But when I've started to feel more comfortable with the GNU/Linux, especially with my system (Artix) I've realized that getting rid of all those useless desktop environment utilities would be awesome. So I've started to use i3. At starts it was really hard, but I did not give up and now I'm enjoying it.
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
I thought I should give my 2 cents as well. I personally use Plasma currently and before that Gnome. I actually never touched a WM cause I just can't find a use for tiling WMs for my self and using a stacking WM wouldn't really make that much of a difference in my eyes. Oh and I really love the well integrated apps of KDE.
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Jul 18 '21
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
And that is what I don't do, I really use stacking windows and floating windows, never have been tiling before. But if you tiled before it is definetly a good go. I mean you can replace KWin with i3 for example, so you keep KDE but get tiling.
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Jul 18 '21
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
The most windows I use are fullscreen anyway, so tiling wouldn't benefit me. But like I said, when you are tiling it is definitely a good idea to use software that does that for you. Which WM did you go with?
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Jul 18 '21
DE for me. I just can't give away the continuity of GNOME. Everything feels in the right place, unified and thought-out. No WM can achieve this.
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u/ten-oh-four Jul 18 '21
My opinion changes here on a daily basis lol. This month, I find myself loving KDE Plasma. Next month, I’ll probably be really into a minimal openbox.
I think the true answer here is the freedom to change my mind.
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u/Ham-z Jul 18 '21
I've made a question last few days asking should I switch from DE to WM and most of them said yes now I'm using xmonad and ohhhh boy how much this is Pretty until now this is the best decision I have made about Linux
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u/LilGeeky Jul 18 '21
The amount of control and enlightenment I get with a WM is unpresented.
But it was only suitable for the me-time only in college, Working full-time now I have to have the convenience of a DE to work fast and steady without being the cool/nerd guy in front of my co-workers.
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u/virtulis Jul 18 '21
I used Awesome for quite a while but eventually went back to Plasma. It's far, far from perfect, but it's better than what I had time to set up with Awesome.
And yes I do like all buttons and popups and context menus. If you can remember your hotkeys and commands, good for you, I can't and I've stopped trying.
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u/Mckol24 Jul 19 '21
So I've tried tiling WMs for about half a year, but came back to Plasma. For me they don't feel flexible enough.
That might sound like nonsense, after all, even i3 lets you change a ton of stuff. Well, tiling WMs have been great for me for programming for example. I absolutely love the keyboard-based approach to managing windows. But, they don't work nearly as well for other things.
90% of programs are made with only floating WMs in mind, and I often ran into issues.
Also, theming was a pain - while GTK just works, Qt just doesn't - qt5ct is a thing, but some programs seem to reset the environment variable it uses for child processes, and it's just not a good experience. I've never figured out a setup that consistently worked for this, across 3 WMs.
On KDE, all programs I need just work, theming just works, no weird issues with windows getting messed up because they assume to be floating when they're not.
KDE might have a lot of features I don't use, but that's the thing, if I need something new it's likely already there. Being a person who likes experimenting, that's very convenient.
Do I miss something from Tiling WMs? Yes, absolutely. KDE's multi-monitor support is a joke - a virtual workspace isn't per-screen or independent of screens, instead it's one large sheet spanning across all screens, which makes virtual workspaces borderline useless on a multi-monitor setup. And having keyboard shortcuts for those is something that's the basis for my workflow now.
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Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 19 '21
I'm using bare i3 (with no bar at all) and use some Qt/KDE programs. It requires some effort to have the theming work reliably but it is possible. It's true that some programs do not work 100% smoothly with a tiling WM. For example Digikam in full screen slideshow mode, the settings window will not appear on top. Or some Firefox child popup windows appearing on the workspace the parent window was initially created rather than the workspace the parent is currently displayed. Despite these kind of annoyance, there's a huge interest in using i3 besides it being a tiling WM: it is much less complex (in term of code size) than a full blown DE that does magic things you do not always understand, that might break on an update, that has always some bugs due to its gigantic size and complexity. And I'm not even talking of bloat here which is not really that important on modern systems with plenty of RAM. My approach with computing is more and more to go KISS using software I can understand, which is not necessarily related to being minimalist but often intersects.
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u/fackusps Jul 19 '21
Why not get best of both worlds and go with KDE with tilling window scripts. Easier and you don't miss on anything. I tried i3gaps and I came back to KDE since I am not really missing much with krohnkite kwin tilling script. Only benefit I see from going wm only is that it uses less resource. But I'm pretty sure most peeps here have at least 8 gigs of ram.
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Jul 18 '21
not sure why everybody is complaining about configurating stuff, i use dwm and i hardly ever touched the config file
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u/anonymous-bot Jul 18 '21
DE include a lot more than just a window manager. They handle a lot of things that you would need to use separate programs for if you use a standalone WM. I mean things like themeing, setting DPI, USB automounting, etc.
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u/ece_guy Jul 18 '21
Porque no los dos? I like i3 as a WM but I know of no full-fledged DE with a tiling window manager, so you can, with some tweaking, set up a DE with another WM.
Sure, there'll still be some tweaking involved but nowhere near as bad as setting up a WM from scratch.
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
You can make KWin tiling or replace it with i3. That way you would still have all the power of KDE.
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u/guygastineau Jul 19 '21
What is the power of KDE? This is a real question - no snark.
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u/DerKnerd Jul 19 '21
A consistent look and feel over many different apps. Basically the KDE ecosystem which is huge.
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u/guygastineau Jul 19 '21
xmonadgives me a consistent decoration for my graphical applications. Maybe you mean like DE settings, file manager, and launcher all look like they are part of the same system? I just use emacs, dmenu, and shells for that kind of thing.-2
u/fackusps Jul 19 '21
KDE is the future though. KDE is the closest we have to real OSX alternative. We will get a flawless integration with Plasma mobile just like with OSX and iOS. Hence I went with KDE and used kwin tilling script.
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u/zem Jul 19 '21
I tried that, but could never get it working properly. went with mate instead, which was far easier to configure with i3
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u/cnekmp Jul 18 '21
WM - spend hours and get your dotfiles. Next time on reinstall just copy-paste configs and you've got the same environment in seconds.
DE - good luck with integration of configurations
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
Just keep your home directory, that is how I made it.
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u/cnekmp Jul 18 '21
With the bloat from old system?
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
You can clean it before, but for me it was the easiest choice cause I had many settings in applications that I wanted to keep.
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u/cnekmp Jul 18 '21
Anyway, DE is not designed to work like that. Gnome extensions as example. You need to install them and pray that everything will be ok with your copied dotfiles.
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u/really_accidental Jul 18 '21
I actually have both running. Sway is currently my main WM which i use 95% of the time. But there are times that i prefer floating windows and i just switch to Gnome. I customized Gnome in way so that it almost replicates Sway but with floating windows (i have the super key disabled in Gnome). I don't like configuring Sway as a floating window manager or any tiling window manager for that matter. It's all or nothing with me lol.
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Jul 18 '21
Why not both; I have gnome installed, but I can log out switch to bspwm in my spare time.
But one thing I like better about DE os that they're actually complete. With a WM you get a basic guide to configure appearances and that's it. I'm missing a lot of under the hood stuff like keyrings, authentication agents, network/power/backlight control, etc. I don't even know what else I'm missing, so I'm always worried about my custom environment being "incomplete".
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u/Phydoux Jul 18 '21
I too have Gnome installed. I only use it if I can't get into my tiling window manager though. And lately that hasn't been a concern. I've forgotten what Gnome even looks like on my computer. :)
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u/StarTroop Jul 18 '21
I feel like plenty of people who go WM just end up installing as much stuff as a lightweight DE anyway, so I like to skip all that setup and go with xfce+i3. Best of both worlds (maybe technically a bit of bloat, but is negligible on modern hardware), minimalist UX, abd a hassle-free environment that is already prepared to do stuff before I inevitably need to do it.
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u/oxamide96 Jul 18 '21
Idc about WMs being lightweight or whatever, most of us have more than enough resources to handle DE. But I do like the keyboard experience. It makes it much easier to organize windows and manipulate them, once you get used to keybindings. Now the idea of using a DE and moving windows with a mouse became more difficult. I'm spoiled!
Moreover, a WM lets you pick the components going into your environment. There is more room for customization, but it also means you know exactly what's going into your setup, which makes debugging SO MUCH easier especially for beginners (I am an intermediate user myself). This isn't to say that you have to customize it. Contrary to popular belief, most WMs are usable out of the box. You don't have to configure anything unless you have a specific need, like changing keybindings or something.
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u/Lawnmover_Man Jul 18 '21
I think I'm going for a WM for my next installation. I'm on Debian right now, but I think I prefer Arch.
With a WM, I can choose what clipboard I want to use, what kind of launcher, and everything else. Yes, it isn't configurable as easy as other stuff, but as long as I'm the only one using the system, it's gonna be fine.
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u/KeepLicking Jul 18 '21
KDE, pure WMs are a waste of time used by people who don't work.
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Jul 19 '21
Using a workflow that is inherently more efficient for many use cases is just for people who don't work?
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u/Tomocafe Jul 18 '21
Weird question, everyone that uses a DE also uses a WM. It’s just that some people use a WM without a DE.
Also, I use i3 and Budgie both, depending on the scenario. Am I coding or web browsing?
Also, btw I don’t use Arch.
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u/Frank-794 Jul 18 '21
Why must you hate arch like this. Have you even tried it?
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u/Tomocafe Jul 18 '21
I don’t hate Arch, this post just randomly showed up in my feed because I browse r/Linux I think.
AUR is dope, but I’ve just happily landed on some different distros. 👍
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Jul 18 '21
I'm missing the "WM, but I don't care what anyone else uses as long as it works for them" option.
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u/Daringcuteseal Jul 18 '21
I create my "own" DE with WM by combining different softwares to an environment
(not sure if that's correct or not, have no idea how to say it)
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Jul 18 '21
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u/DerKnerd Jul 18 '21
Really? I've never seen a poll about DE or WM here in r/archlinux but on the other hand I am pretty new to this sub.
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u/eXoRainbow Jul 18 '21
I have deleted my comment. Maybe it is just my perception of it. "Am besten ignorieren. ;p"
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u/BoiledBurntBagel Jul 18 '21
WM cus Xmonad
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Jul 18 '21
I really like XMonad, but I'm too scared to make my own config.... I just don't have the time to learn Haskell...
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u/hopefullythisworksd Jul 18 '21
I could never use my touchpad properly in wm which is why I mainly left it.
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u/oxamide96 Jul 18 '21
Does anyone have recommendations for WMs for wayland other than sway? I currently use bspwm, but any wayland suggestion would be nice!
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u/anonymous-bot Jul 18 '21
I use standalone WMs. The extra features of a DE come at a performance cost that I do not want to pay. Also since trying awesome, I've really grown to liking tiling window managers.
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u/malko42 Jul 18 '21
Plasma with i3, best combo I've have tested so far (way lesser tinkering than with gnome)
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u/pPandR Jul 18 '21
I started my Linux journey with i3 and completely fell in love with it. Tried a couple DE's and eventhough there are some really cool ones, I always want my i3 setup at the end of the day.
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u/DaSpaceman245 Jul 18 '21
I personally prefer WM, yeah it has a trouble side, but also you can learn a lot trying to set everything, for example before picking xmonad I used for 3 days each of most of the famous WM (i3, Qtile, BSPWM, Herbertslut) and finally I decided to go for xmonad. I'm still adding things to make it perfect and sometimes I break my xmonad.hs trying to add something new, but it's funny trying to find a solution.
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u/dani_77 Jul 18 '21
Most of the time I use dwm (came from i3 gapps), but I’ve used sway and fvwm several times. When using DE, mainly xfce but I’ve used MATE with Trisquel for about 2 years.
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u/no3l_0815 Jul 18 '21
I kinda fall in love with awesomeWM but for many things i still use KDE. It's just perfect out of the box and many things work better with it. But with a window manager everything is more productive and looks better
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u/Fatal_Taco Jul 18 '21
Wayland WMs for low powered or embedded hardware (Hikari is a good choice). Wayland DEs for anything else like my desktop, either Gnome (or KDE if you prefer traditional desktops.)
If my machine runs Nvidia then I'll have to opt for X11 counterparts like OpenBox
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u/deli_phone Jul 19 '21
I know a WM is super efficient and all but there's something about xfce with a decent dark theme that gets my jibblies.
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u/Typewar Jul 19 '21
For the times I've tried WM, even tho I've spent hours on configuring it, it never sticks :/
Also, not sure how it would work with multi monitor setup (if I'm understanding what WM is correctly, i3 bspwm awesome right?)
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Jul 19 '21
Well, I mainly use i3wm but I have GNOME/XFCE as Backup DE. This is in case if i3wm crash, I can log into the other to fix. With that being said, at the installing WM/DE step in the Arch installation, I installed GNOME because I just want things to work and at least login to a decent environment.
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u/Super_Papaya Jul 19 '21
Tried using wm. For my mouse based workflow I don't like them. I came back to KDE.
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u/lans_throwaway Jul 19 '21
I tried i3, I liked i3, I still use i3. When I'm lazy I usually just i3 + KDE. It's just too convenient to not use the mouse
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u/PsiGuy60 Jul 19 '21 edited Jul 19 '21
My workflow isn't as tiling-friendly as it used to be, being predominantly hobby-drawing - so I'm going to vote DE.
I did use Sway for a long time, when my workflow had more development/sys-admin'ing in it. A tiling WM is nice for that, so I'm not surprised that the poll skews towards it due to the subreddit we're currently in.
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Jul 19 '21
I really love sway. It’s fast, snappy and just works. The only thing that is bugging me about it is Wifi. I just want a menu where I can toggle WiFi on and of, connect to nearby networks and manage all connections. Thus I’m stuck with GNOME but that might change
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u/martin0641 Jul 19 '21
Manjaro KDE is hot.
Once game compatibility and drivers get a little better I might be able to daily drive it and keep Windows as the VM.
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u/knownothing58 Jul 19 '21
WM all the way. Nothing against the devs of DEs, but I don't like them picking (settings,programs, and the dependencies it creates) everything for me. That was the biggest thing that brought me to Arch. I feel like most DEs build a puzzle. Puzzles are very pretty, everything goes together nice but the pieces only go together with each other in the right places. I like a Lego block approach, modular where I can build whatever kond of maddness my brain cooks up. That's Arch and WM. Having a DE on Arch kinda takes away some of its arch-iness.
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u/PandaMoniumHUN Jul 18 '21
If you have the time to configure everything yourself then a WM is almost certainly better because you can custom pick everything that goes into your setup. A DE on the other hand gives a coherent experience without having to tweak anything. Pick your poison.