Ask HN: What's your Linux window manager and/or desktop environment?
I'm curious what window managers and/or desktop environments the HN crowd uses, and favors - and why...
Now, if there would be a mature dynamic tilling manager like DWM or AwesomeWM under wayland I would switch to it (I'm gonna play with RiverWM soon I think).
A tip for those who may just be starting out: switch your LEFT-ALT and WIN keys. Also make caps lock act like ESC on tap and CTRL on long press. See xmodmap, setxkbmap and xcape for this.
setxkbmap -option altwin:swap_lalt_lwin,caps:ctrl_modifier
xcape -e 'Caps_Lock=Escape;Alt_R=Control_L|space'
- Tap Super key and type to open apps or select emoji
- Super+Left or Super+Right for simple side-by-side tiling.
- Workspaces on the primary monitor.
Lately AwesomeWM[1] with Lain[2] seem to provide the flexibility and easy configurability I like with the minimal overhead I love.
XFCE, open box, ratpoison, awesomewm, dwm
XFCE and open box are floating. You can set up some key binds to snap windows. Overall I think floating + snaps are superior to pure tiling. I use XFCE when i want a big fat desktop environment. Pure open box for something light.
Sometimes I want pure tiling. ratpoison (manual tiler) is my mainstay for that. Occasionally use awesome or dwm for a dynamic tiler.
I really don't like the idea of desktop environments. They aspire to control your whole computer, and replace all of your applications with their own - their own mail reader, their own media player, their own text editor, their own PDF viewer, etc. This has been my impression even since the 1.0 days of GNOME and KDE. They feel like a collection of shovelware.
Why? It just feels more like what I'm comfortable with and works closer to the way I expect things to work. I'm one of those people who thinks that Win95 era Windows defined a desktop UI that needs little improvement, and KDE gives me that experience plus pretty much exactly the improvements I would want - virtual desktops being foremost on that list. The "Activities" stuff is neat, although I don't really use that facility a lot, but it complements the rest of the system nicely IMO.
What I explicitly don't want is any of these desktop environments that try to do what I consider "weird" stuff like blocking you from putting anything on the desktop, or forcing use of a Mac style menubar at the top of the screen.
I'm tired of fiddling with OS bits. I just want to get work done. Pop!_OS is close enough to Ubuntu.
And their window tiling extension is fantastic.
I'm in the phase of slowly trying to learn Linux, and it's fun. But it also quickly becomes clear that there is no reward at the end. The endless different config file formats, man pages, shell mantras etc. don't really make computing any better in the end. They don't help one run CAD software, do CFD, write software, edit videos, make music, or any of the other things that are really what computing is about. Perhaps Ubuntu is the forever-distro after all.
I’d like to try Gnome 40+ with one more distro hop, but if that doesn’t stick, then I’m likely to head back to KDE Plasma (Manjaro) since that’s been the best Linux experience I’ve had so far. Sane defaults, yet still easily customizable wherever I felt the need to.
- ArcMenu: https://gitlab.com/arcmenu/ArcMenu
- Dash to Dock: https://micheleg.github.io/dash-to-dock/
- Lock Keys: https://github.com/kazysmaster/gnome-shell-extension-lockkey...
- Tray Icons Reloaded: https://github.com/MartinPL/Tray-Icons-Reloaded
I also change a few things using GNOME Tweaks; namely setting the application theme to Orchis-grey-dark-compact (https://github.com/vinceliuice/Orchis-theme), icon theme to Flatery-Dark (https://github.com/cbrnix/Flatery) and system font to Inter (https://rsms.me/inter/).
I've been using this setup for quite a while and I've been very happy with my computing experience, both in terms of aesthetics and overall UX. I tried tiling WMs for a while (first KWin and then i3 / Sway) but I found that I'm just a messy person who tends to be more productive with a floating WM.
The lightweight footprint that something like sway or i3 gives is really nice too. Now I like to start with a fedora minimal install, install sway & just pick and choose all the applications I want to use. It really feels like my OS stays out of the way and is just the way I want it. If/when I reinstall I just backup my .config folder.... everything is back to how I like it once restored. Very easy.
* I like being in direct control of a text file config.
* I don't use SystemD. (And before I get flamed, I think all alternatives suck too; I just use the default on Gentoo, but intend to replace it.)
* Using Awesome means that I don't have any extraneous processes running.
* Awesome is the closest to DWM (which has a design I like) while still being usable by mere mortals.
Kitty, VS Code, Chromium (Ublock, Bitwarden), Firefox, Typora, Logseq, Ohmyzsh
Took a lot of fiddling and trial and error to get it the way I wanted with a mix of tiling and floating windows depending on the app and such. Very happy with it though, and it has fulfilled my tiling window manager itch that I carried for a long time.
I'm setting up PC for my dad soon. Previously used the latest LTS of Kubuntu for non-power users, but considering trying Mint with XFCE instead and see how it behaves. (Use Arch for personal PC and Ubuntu for servers, so Mint and XFCE are new to me but think it will be a good fit for my familial tech support requirements.)
I'm fucking around with it on my ancient Surface Pro 3, and it's been a wonderful experience so far. I haven't even got XWayland. Helps that I'm only using it to use Firefox and write some code in vim.
Super happy with the Gnome experience. The whole OS feels very professional and polished - reminiscent of OSX, where you still have command line powers.
I have originally switched to Linux ~8 years ago because I was fed up with how Windows doesn't help in managing windows. I then spent most of the time with i3 and xmonad.
I love tiling WM and would.never go back to "floating" ones. It a bit ugly at first but so much more usable: windows don't change place, you can easily replace them using only the keyboard, etc..
If you want to try a WM don't go for dwm: it's "too" simple and you need plenty of other helper scripts (volume control, resolution change, ...), But use a more "advanced" (user friendly) one instead
I tried i3 before but it sometimes broke with certain apps and took way too much fiddling to configure.
The nice thing about Pop Shell is that there's no config, and when I'm confused or doing something simple, I can just turn it off and use a regular floating style WM. It lets me focus on doing stuff rather than learning hundreds of keybindings and the internals of a WM.
I sometimes try to set up cinnamon, gnome, xfce, i3 or similar using the same keyboard shortcuts I use in my bspwm setup, but I always return to bspwm.
Been using it for like 5 years now.
Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions. There are some distributions that provide binary packages though.I've started to use the new version 3 on desktop. But it still has got some problems when connecting/disconnecting monitors, so I use version 2 on the laptop where I need to do that.
No DE, unless you count LXQt as a basic session manager. I don't know why, but it seems things works more smoothly with a session manager instead of just starting fvwm from .xsession.
But I have to admit, lately - I run KDE
I've used a ton of minimal WMs and almost every DE. But I find Plasma much easier to get started with. Minimal tinkering and I can get going.
Multi-display setup.
I patched the source code so my side monitor retain its windows when I switch workspaces.