Hacker News Reader

Comment by kstenerud | Hacker News Reader

I really don't get the benefit of a tiling window manager. I tried one and instantly felt boxed in. There's not enough room on the screen for everything I need to have opened and flip between, which is why I use an overlapping window manager in the first place.

View on HN

With a tiling window manager, every window you open has cognitive overload. Which workspace, which location on screen, is it okay if other windows resize, or do I have it float even? Every tile you add affects the other tiles in some way - at the very least a new tile (e.g. on a new workspace) consumes space that cannot be taken by other tiles. The reward for this additional cognitive load is that every action is concious - reducing a lot of the mess that can pile while using a comptuer. This makes them incredibly suitable for people whose computer use is predictable, organized and focused on quick parallel tasks. I understand why so many developers use them.

With a stacking window manager, the cognitive overhead of opening a window is much less. You open a program, get a window with focus somewhere. You can start doing your thing immediately without considering window management. Every new window on the stack doesn't affect the others you were using. Subsequently organizing the layout of your windows to be optimized for your current workload however takes more time. This appears to me to make stacking window managers to be more suited for people whose computer use is more dynamic or less organized - people can open and close stuff on a whim.

More organized vs. less cognitive load can be both a personal preference or a workload dependant thing. In case of tiling WMs it also doesn't help that they tend to have very low discoverability and depend almost exclusively on keyboard shortcuts versus GUI elements, only adding to their newbie-unfriendliness. I think that's also telling about the use cases tiling WMs are popular for.

I see a lot of people that respond to you by appealing to some objective superiority of tiling window managers, but there's advantages and disadvantages to both.

What I've been thinking is, why can't we have both? Imagine just two changes: a workspace's mode can be switched between tiling and floating, and additional workspaces are just windows. Now you can have any combination of floating and tiling that makes sense to you. You could, for instance, set your desktop to tiling mode and open two new workspace windows, the switch one to floating and run your GUI desktop stuff on the left side of the screen and several terminal tiles on the right.

I think AwesomeWM allows that

I used awesome for a few years and while I think you're correct to say it does try to do both, in reality it ends up doing neither very well, IMO.

This is the mode how I run Windows with WinSplit Revolution.

It doesn't change anything by default, but with alt-keypad I move certain windows to the upper left, upper right, bottom right, bottom left and so most open applications have their exact position, but everything else is floating.

I guess I'd use a full blown tiling WM if there was one, though, I don't really see any downsides once you configured it to your preference. So bad for new machines, good for regular use. (for me).

> With a tiling window manager, every window you open has cognitive overload. Which workspace, which location on screen, is it okay if other windows resize, or do I have it float even? Every tile you add affects the other tiles in some way - at the very least a new tile (e.g. on a new workspace) consumes space that cannot be taken by other tiles. The reward for this additional cognitive load is that every action is concious - reducing a lot of the mess that can pile while using a comptuer. This makes them incredibly suitable for people whose computer use is predictable, organized and focused on quick parallel tasks. I understand why so many developers use them.

This is not true, at least not in i3. When I don't want to think about how to position a new window I can simply switch to tabbed or stack mode, where all windows inside a determined workspace will be "maximized", and I can switch to them by changing the tab (mostly like browsers and web pages). This isn't really much different to Alt-Tabbing, except that I find more efficient (of course, this last part is IMO).

It is true that on my current setup almost all workspaces have a specific usage, however I have a "trash" workspace specially created to put those things that does not make sense in any other workspace. This workspace generally runs in tabbed mode thanks to above.

> With a tiling window manager, every window you open has cognitive overload.

I've been using a tiling window manager (XMonad) for ~3 years now; this is definitely true for the first few days (or weeks/months) until you adjust. After that, there is less overhead as you become more familiar with how the window manager behaves.

But this is also true for stacking window managers.

> With a stacking window manager, the cognitive overhead of opening a window is much less.

I think the level of cognitive overhead involved comes down (in the case of tiling window mangers) to what window rules you have, what kind of bindings you have set up to navigate between windows, etc., and how comfortable you are with those rules and bindings; the less comfortable you are, the greater your cognitive load will be when trying to use them.

Again, this is also true for stacking window managers.

> Every new window on the stack doesn't affect the others you were using.

Unless it "steals" focus and blocks the window you were working on. But that's expected behavior in a stacking window manager, so it's not much of a disruption. And it's one a user will certainly be aware of when opening a new window.

And this can (and usually is) be true for tiling window managers as well.

> I see a lot of people that respond to you by appealing to some objective superiority of tiling window managers, but there's advantages and disadvantages to both.

Right. There are pros and cons to each and really, but most people just don't really care that much about what window manager they're using.

I do want to add that one of the biggest pros to a tiling window manager (and a few stacking WMs) is the amount of customization available; if you're using a WM like XMonad, i3, Sway, bspwm, herbstluftwm, etc., you can configure the WM to do basically anything (including behave like a stacking WM), while many stacking WMs are fairly limited in how much customization they can have.

But that makes the assumption you're interested in customizing, which not everyone is.

I get the opposite feeling. I feel like I'm in a trash dump when I use an overlapping window manager, and have to sort through the pile to find what I need. Tiling window managers perhaps make more sense for devs or other professionals who use several of the same applications every day and know what window and pane they will be on, and can switch quickly with keystrokes. That being said, once you internalize the model and key bindings, it's not restrictive at all and can work for the general case as well, and actually feels freeing rather than boxed in. And there is always the option to break a window out from tiles and overlap if you so wish.

What I usually want to do is just click and resize to something that "feels right" for each of my programs, and then flip between them as needed, then resize again later as I workflow progresses. Often I want some important text from one to be visible while I'm working in another (thus overlapping), so I jockey them around until it feels right, and go.

You might like the minimal tiling present in CWM (and likely other window managers, too). Basically, it is a regular old overlapping window manager but with keyboard commands as the primary control. If you have two or more windows you want to see on the screen at the same time tiling style, simply press the hotkey for either vertical or horizontal (Super+v for me). When I want to open a terminal window on top of a browser, pressing Super+enter puts it at the mouse cursor, scaled to the application’s default size.

For many terminal windows or one Emacs and one terminal, I might use tiling, but I can still overlap whenever it makes more sense. Plus, the consistent keyboard controls (I use a config pretty similar to https://www.c0ffee.net/blog/openbsd-on-a-laptop/#cwm) make me more efficient than a mouse interface.

Funny enough that's precisely my use case for tiling window managers. I'm often referencing one app to do work in another, and often one is just a bit too overlapped to see what I need, and I also need to lay windows out every time I do this work. With a tiling window manager, you can be sure that your app is not obfuscated, and there are various adjustments you can make to pane size and layout to get the right amount of screen space and positioning for apps. You can also save and restore layouts for particulars workflows.

Tiling manager remove the need to resize. You use virtual desktop to switch between apps. If you need several apps side by side, tiling comes in place.

Tiling manager are often keyboard driven. If you use mainly your mouse/touchpad, it can be quite painful.

My feeling in floating window manager is that i soon as a window is hiding another, the one on top should just use all the available space, there's no point in seeing the one bellow. If you need information from 2 windows, it's much better side by side.

I think the key difference here is the use of multiple virtual desktops in the tiling case. In my setup I typically have one vdesk for browsing, one for docs, one split between code/terminal. I may have others open for chat and music, and I can switch between any with one key combination, or resize with another. I love that when I open a new window it will maximize the screen real estate of wherever I put it.

Granted, I've been using i3 for more than half a decade, but I do agree with sibling posters on how 'freeing' the experience is once you get used to it. There is no doubt a learning curve; but in my experience it's on the order of days.

I use tools that let me jump to an open window by typing its name. Spotlight on MacOS, equivalent tools exist on Windows.

I don't care how things are arranged spacially if they are just a few quick letters away.

Ideally you'd be using multiple workspaces, and only have 1-4 windows on a single given one.

I like to organize my workspaces by a category of activity. I'll have one per project I'm currently working on, then one for communications (Email, Chat, etc) one for web-browsing, etc.

I try to keep the non-project ones consistent, so at any point I can, say, tap Meta-9 and instantly be brought a web browser on Workspace 9.

I mostly switch between a full screen terminal and a full screen browser. The benefit of tiling is that when the browser opens a popup, or I need to look at my terminal next to my browser it's super simple. You just shift the browser to the workspace with the terminal with a keypress. Then when you are done you shift it back.

Tiling is simply more efficient it drives you into a keyboard based workflow that makes the most efficient use of your screen real estate. You can still have floating windows in Sway, or tabs for that matter as well when you need them.

I suppose it's a matter of personality, then. That kind of workflow would drive me nuts.

But there's nothing different between your workflow and my workflow except you have to manually resize your windows on each workspace. Sway just does it for me and I can save the layouts.

> But there's nothing different between your workflow and my workflow except for the fact that our workflows are completely different.

Is it so hard to accept that there are different ways of using a computer and your perceived increase in efficiency might not pan out for everyone? :)

I don't accept that it isn't immediately obvious that tiling is more efficient than dragging to maximize real estate on a single workspace. If someone wants to use an inferior method because that's what they are comfortable with that is fine. Just don't assert that the two are equal without some reasoned argument.

I wasn't actually the original poster :)

The thing is, we have studies that prove that mouse + keyboard interaction is faster than keyboard-only https://www.asktog.com/TOI/toi06KeyboardVMouse1.html - until you become super proficient with all the relevant the keyboard shortcuts.

So it's not about "inferior"/"superior", it's about your use case.

Another thing to consider:

Even if there were a significant difference one way or the other, it's rare to spend more than 1% of your time arranging your workspace and switching views & windows, so any optimization of that 1% will have minimal effect on your productivity.

> The thing is, we have studies that prove

"Originally published in the AppleDirect, August, 1989"

So? Do you think that users have changed so much in these past 30 years? If anything, things have regressed in some regards, as kids these days start directly with touch interface, single user, single application/windows OSes, basically, smartphone OSes (I know that technically mobile OSes are not like that anymore, but that's how they're used 99,999% of the time).

Some windows are more efficient to use when they are a certain size or shape, such as where text is made to wrap at a comfortable width for reading. Efficiency of screen pixel usage isn't the only factor affecting efficiency of the interface in practice.

You can resize, tab, and float windows in sway. You can also scale individual applications. There's nothing you can do with dragging that you can't do in sway faster with less presses and with saner defaults.

You can scale applications independently when they are floating. But that will affect the layout of other tiled windows on the same screen, as they will tile behind the floating window. So you would need to float everything. In that case it is not being a tiling WM

Funny, I feel the same way about overlapping WMs. I think it comes down to how different people perceive space. Vive la difference!

You know that there's multiple virtual desktops, right?

... which doesn't solve the underlying problem. I don't want to switch to a different desktop, such that my text editor window disappears and my terminal appears. I want them both on the same screen, along with my browser which points to a SO answer, in big sizes. In a normal window manager, this is accomplished by making them all big and then either overlapping them in ways that makes it easy to click on them, or just alt-tab. In a tiling window manager, this doesn't seem possible as far as I've been able to tell.

I can't tell if you were aware by your comments, but in a tiling window manager you don't have to have everything visible all the time. They all have modes that hide windows behind others and allow you to swap between them the same as alt-tab. Many of them also have the option to 'float' the windows as a normal non tiling window manager would.

But then I fail to see what benefit it's giving me to be a tiling window manager?

That's simply an option, because the devs recognize that not everything adheres well to a tiling workflow. It's not intended to be the primary mode of operation. I personally almost never use floating mode.

Better default window behavior. I do not need to use a mouse with i3.

That's another point of difference, then. I love the mouse! And the default window behavior is appealing to me.

So you want to go to an app. You just hope that some corner is peeking out of that huge unsorted pile of windows. You call that good UX or is it just a formed habit?

Precisely. I arrange them such that I can click in the corner I need to get what I want, and then alt-tab between them, or click for the specific one I want if I need to jump. Then I get big real estate, and easy access. I call that good UX because it works well for me.

I don't think it's "easy access" nor "big real estate". But to each their own.

You can enable tabbed mode for a split (or the entire screen) in i3/Sway with a single keypress-- it produces the same effect as what you describe, just automated.

edit: You can also use something like rofi to fuzzy search for windows and quickly jump to them, instead of alt+tabbing.

There are more ways than clicking a window to give it focus. Alt-Tab being the obvious once but also Win+{Nr} on Windows if I recall correctly.

Alt-tab works fine as "go back to last window", but that could just be a specific shortcut.

Using it to cycle through a pile of apps shown as icons or screenshots is terrible UX, IMHO.

> In a tiling window manager, this doesn't seem possible as far as I've been able to tell.

It's not and it completely defeats the purpose of it. Sounds like you shouldn't use a tiling window manager.

I love tiling window managers. I spent way too much time in non-tiling managers optimizing window sizes and so on - basically my 80% usage is to split the screen in half, one app on the left, one on the right.

This is basically what I do at work on a Windows system, using the drag-to-left and drag-to-right.

For your example case, I'd split the screen with my editor taking up the left half, the split the right half into upper and lower, with SO answer in top half and terminal in bottom half. That's the quick and easy split, I could also fiddle with resizing (using arrow keys) the split a bit left/right or up/down.

This gets the info all visible at the same time, without clicking or tabbing to bring one window at a time to the top.

The usage I described above is what I do on my work machine using i3. I'm gonna try out sway now that it's 1.0!

The one place where I prefer stacking window managers is that I can have a transparent terminal/editor floating over the docs. Stacking things on top of each other while being able to see all of them is pretty nice.

> I can have a transparent terminal/editor floating over the docs

Easily done even with a tiling WM. E.g. I have a keybinding which allows me switching between tiling and floating of a window.

a cool feature youll probably like is in tilling vms you can use stacked/tabbed views to get those benefits

Tried that, but then I can't have an important part of a SO answer visible while I work in my editor to play around with stuff, while watching the terminal churn away some stuff in a partially obscured window such that I can see when it finishes.

You can float windows in i3 if you wanted to do this. I also have a hotkey to make my window 80% transparent so I can reference docs while keeping my editor fullscreen.

But yeah, if that's your big use case, seems like you just prefer non-tiling workflows.

tiling wm is great when you have big screen with good resolution

I always code with two slightly overlapping windows, and quickly switch between them using alt-tab. I can't imagine a tiling WM to be an improvement, to be honest, because it will make my coding windows smaller. I'm curious about the other features, though.

It does require having the multiple desktop paradigm deeply embedded in your fingertips. I always used full screen windows and multiple desktops so switching to a tiling WM was natural and allowed me to use my available screen space much more efficiently.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com