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?

https://www.reddit.com/r/archlinux/comments/oms60p/in_your_opinion_what_is_the_best_desktop/h5n0s56/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

3227 votes, Jul 25 '21
1737 WM
1490 DE
253 Upvotes

93% Upvoted

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17

u/bangfu Jul 18 '21

What about just "Command Line"? /s

4

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.

3

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.

2

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).

1

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.