I’ve been using tiling WMs for some years now (mostly sway, but also tested cosmic a bit). I really love them: you theme workspaces and organize everything into them, and no window is ever hidden, which makes finding them trivial. But the cost of having every window displayed in that workspace is that they start getting way too small when you have a lot of them. This is usually not a big deal, since you can create tabs or just open new generic workspaces.

But what has been bugging me are windows that need to be big, otherwise they are unusable (like gimp, kdenlive, libreoffice, sometimes firefox). Tabbing them in fullscreen messes with the workspace layout, and if you dedicate an entire generic workspace for them, you surely will lose it.

That’s where scrollable WMs enter the scene. They respect window sizes at the cost of their visibility.

niri.gif

NGL, this is not a good idea. It’s easy to lose windows that are off-screen. But what if you only use it sometimes? Think of it as a regular tiling WM, but when you need it, it creates more space off-screen.

To achieve this, I’ve been using Niri with the tilemod script. It helps make Niri behave more like a regular tiling.

tilemod.gif

It’s been a good experience over the last week. My workflow is mostly unchanged, but when I need to work with a window in fullscreen, it’s always a relief that I’m using Niri.

Has anyone else here tried scrollables? I’m in this excitement phase so I want to read more about it (even from people who tried and didn’t like them) :)

  • lordziv@lemmy.nz
    1·
    1 month ago

    Every time I try tiling window managers, I get disappointed by the fact that I cannot minimize windows. I guess it’s 20 years of Windows usage that has ingrained it into me but I like hiding windows I don’t currently need open. Apparently this goes against the whole philosophy tho lol

    • someonesmall@lemmy.ml
      1·
      1 month ago

      In sway / i3 you can switch to tabbed layout (MOD+W) which shows “browser tabs” for all open windows

  • KindaABigDyl@programming.dev
    1·
    1 month ago

    I freaking love niri

    It’s easy to lose windows that are off-screen

    By default. They should really change the defaults, but in config, you can make it so if there is a window to the side hidden, a piece is always visible.

    It’s called struts.

    layout {
    ...
    struts {
         left 16
         right 16
     }
}

    It ensures a piece of the window is always visible

    Plus with a bar like from QuickShell or WayBar you can see all open windows anyway up there.

    To achieve this, I’ve been using Niri with the tilemod script. It helps make Niri behave more like a regular tiling.

    The things you show in the gif are already possible with niri via Super + [ and Super + ] (default bindings) for placing into columns

    It has limitations, but everything in the gif at least is already there. Niri actually has quite a bit of support for base tiling.

    I can’t go back to non-scrolling ever. I even use a similar setup on my work machine (a Mac) via PaperWM.spoon, tho it isn’t as well integrated (bc it’s a mac and you’re forcing it to not be a mac)

    EDIT: One tiling feature of niri I love is that with Super + W you can switch to a stacked mode like in a tiler. For KiCAD PCB editing, you have three windows - project, schematic, and pcb. It is essential that at the very least the project tab be stacked behind and out of the way imo, since there is no minimize

  • thingsiplay@lemmy.ml
    0·
    1 month ago

    Me also a tiling guy, and since a few years I switched to KDE and use an extension called Krohnkite to tile windows automatically. I personally don’t like the idea of endless scrollable desktops. To get a taste, I tried a scrollable window manager extension for KDE, just to see if the workflow would click with me. To me it doesn’t feel different from (classic) floating style of managing windows. Why? Because I have to scroll and search for the window.

    • SoftBun@lemmy.mlOPEnglish
      1·
      1 month ago

      To me it doesn’t feel different from (classic) floating style of managing windows. Why? Because I have to scroll and search for the window.

      This is precisely the same feeling I had when I first tested Niri. It only changed once I started treating it as a tiling that sometimes expands when needed.

  • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
    01·
    1 month ago

    I’ve worded it like shit before, but :

    Standalone WMs are basically Gnome3 for neckbeards.

      • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
        0·
        1 month ago

        well, here’s the shitposty thread I made last time I tried to voice the opinion and got got by gotchas in terminology :

        https://lemmy.world/post/51030053?scrollToComments=true

        Basically, some people are making interfaces for the operating systems that only have a windows manager, and isn’t a complete desktop environment, so it’s basically one step above a terminal. Things like i3 or dwm, as opposed to more fleshed out things like KDE or Gnome.

        Gnome3 basically encourages the user to launch their programs as fullscreen things and scroll between them. The WM based UIs also do this, but call it “desktops” and tile the windows you have in each desktop.

        I went through a craze of shoving different ones into VMs and felt that things like i3 and dwm behave similarly to the way I dislike Gnome3.

        • Zangoose@lemmy.worldEnglish
          0·
          1 month ago

          I feel like that’s by design. Tiling WMs generally make 2 assumptions and if they aren’t true for you then you’re probably better off with a regular desktop:

          • Most apps you use are one window and are either fullscreen or splitscreen with another app.
          • You have a lot of different Fullscreen apps open at once

          For a lot of people that makes sense because Workspace-based WMs let you switch between full screen apps a lot quicker than pressing alt-tab 10 times. e.g. when I’m doing work I’ll usually have these Fullscreen windows open:

          • browser
          • chat app (teams/outlook at work, discord/matrix at home)
          • IDE
          • window for whatever I’m testing/working on
          • miscellaneous things (file explorers, random text files, etc. which can all be splitscreen)

          For me at least, every extra second it takes me to move between apps snowballs because I have to pause my thought just to find the app I’m looking for in the alt tab menu or the task bar

          • Skullgrid@lemmy.world
            1·
            1 month ago

            Yeah, it doesn’t vibe with me because I’m constantly moving windows from one place to another, comparing shit side by side and needing one thing as an edit then as a reference, keeping some things smaller and etc. I am starting to be maybe interested in trying out transparancy in my dropdown console and maybe a launcher that’s more central instead of “windows like” coming in from the bottom left. But I like my taskbars, especially with having different ones for different physical monitors.