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Comment by the_gipsy | Hacker News Reader

I would like to know, coming from a traditional tiling window manager, how does the shortcut workflow look like?

For me the number one thing is having fixed shortcuts á la Super+[0-9] to go to specific windows / workspaces / essentially a specific program. If I can have that, and additionally solving the "worskpace management" problem as TFA described, I'm sold!

Does it make sense to use "workspaces" like this with Niri? For example, one workspace with the browser, one with the editor, one with several terminal columns, and so on. I would need to "switch" (immediately, without animation effects, please) e.g. from "browser" to "terminals".

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Yes, Niri still supports numbered workspaces in the same was as WMs like Sway. It's just that now you can scroll them horizontally too.

The one caveat -- and it's a big one -- is that Niri numbers workspaces dynamically, and won't let you have an empty workspace (except temporarily).

You can have named workspaces now, I have ones dedicated to terminals, and browsers. They always have the same numbers.

Oh, perfect, thanks! I've been using Niri for less than a week, hadn't got to using named workspaces yet, and missed the bit in the docs where it says they can be empty.

I tried it and I'm completely sold!

I find I use Niri in a similar way to other tiling WMs, but instead of having one application per workspace, it lets me keep accessory applications clustered with the main ones. For example, my password manager lives in the same workspace (usually off-screen) as my browser. Whenever I need to generate a password or something, it's right there. Same with whatever accessory terminals I need in addition to my text editor.

You can also try out niri (really paperwm) like tiling in sway (papersway) or hype (hyprscroller). I'm using the later, and it works essentially the same as regular tiling (you can have named workspaces). That said, I notice that I have a lot of muscle memory due to previously working within the constraints of traditional tiling (i.e. You need a new to switch to a new workspace if you open more than 3 terminals, at least on my monitor). I therefore often switch to a new workspace when I really don't need to and get somewhat confused by where things are. I sometimes think a clearer break from my previous way of working might be easier.

That said I really like the approach to tiling from niri and others. It eliminates pretty much all downsides of tiling WMs IMO

Been using i3 for the last year and I feel all of the pain points from this article.

Overall, I deeply prefer i3 to gnome but the "everything gets resized" pain point is very real. Particularly when getting on a lot of calls with Zoom and the "notifications" seem to bypass the build in notifications on the system, instead treating each Zoom notification like it's own window...amplifying the problem.

I'm going to have to give Niri a try.

# for floating windows

default_floating_border none

# make sure pavucontrol is floated; use xprop (cli) to get window title/class/etc

for_window [class="Pavucontrol"] floating enable, resize set height 512, opacity 0.3

# https://faq.i3wm.org/question/61/forcing-windows-as-always-f...

Thanks! I'll try that.

for the super+X use case, if on mac, I can also highly recommend rcmd!

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