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Comment by sph | Hacker News Reader

I've always (KDE, GNOME, niri) used a workspace per activity/project. I have a workspace with Steam open and a game wiki I was consulting earlier, another workspace with Emacs and browser with documentation, a third workspace with Godot and some gamedev apps open. The beauty of niri is that I never feel I need to close some apps because I've got "too many windows"; it's quite easy to compartmentalize

I never understood the point of per-app workspaces. I hate having, for example, a single Firefox instance open with everything mixed in, from work to leisure.

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This is the way. I see so many people using tiling WMs that have dedicated workspaces per app, even worse, are all full screen. What is the point?

Being able to have one window of Firefox per project workspace, with only tabs relevant to that project - this alone is a better than the myriad of ways Firefox themselves have tried to solve it within the app.

The point is to dedicate maximum screen real estate to the primary thing you’re working on.

I tile within one monitor when I legitimately want to see things side by side, but I certainly don’t want firefox permanently taking up screen space when I really only need to occasionally look at it. Usually it’s on a separate monitor in the same workspace, or in a dedicated workspace.

Maybe there’s some way I could manipulate stacks and zooms to achieve that within one workspace, but I’ve always found it easier to just have firefox on a separate workspace I can easily quickly swap to and from when needed.

If you are trying to maximize screen real estate to the thing you are working on, why not just use a regular floating window manager will all the apps full screen? I don't see how that isn't equivalent. You can even use multiple workspaces with them too.

Because sometimes I do want multiple things on a screen, and in that case I want the windows to tile, not float?

that's the beauty of xmonad-style switching without being pinned down per workspace or monitor.

i.e. if i have virtual desktops 1-2-3 on my 3 screens in order, I can switch out 2 for 4, but 1 and 3 stay put, so 1-4-3. if I want 1 to be in the middle now, I will switch 1 and 4, then I have 4-1-3. Now I can get 5 onto the left and have 5-1-3.

And it does not matter if I have a single big window, or whatever tling wm layout.

The point is that everyone can work however they want. When I use a tiling WM, half my screens/virtual desktops are fullscreen and half are tiled. sometimes 50:50, sometimes in other ways.

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