Tiling or Stacking?

oui

Do you prefer a tiling wm or a stacking wm and why?

oui I guess, I don't need to answer this but, since you asked ...

Tiling, actually dynamic tiling, manual tiling just doesn't do it for me.

Some, may call it boring but, I just can't stand floating windows, or as I rather call them, clients. Moving things around it's really annoying and the worst is when they open over an already existing client, which somehow they nearly always do.

With a tiling WM, I don't need to think about it and if/when it gets crowded I just send a few of them to another workspace.
Usually, I have two or three clients open on one workspace cause I like to see things side-by-side.
Floating by default only the calculator, a tiled calculator is just weird, try it and you'll see.
Usually, I have my browser on workspace 6, a GUI editor on 4, spotify-qt on 3, and terminals on 10, 9 and 8. Other things go to the free workspaces. I tend to leave workspace 1 empty and since I don't have a panel/bar, I can always shift to 1 if I walk away from the computer. The only way to do anything is with keybindings. They are not a secret and you can find them on my git-repo but, most people wouldn't know what to do.

In the end, it all comes down to preferences.

nia

I used a tiling window manager for years, then realized I was basically running a single fullscreen window per virtual desktop and tiling just makes applications that open dialog windows more annoying

nia tiling just makes applications that open dialog windows more annoying

Sorry but, this is so not true.
Just configure pop-ups/dialog windows to open in floating mode.

nortonham

nia

I came to the same conclusion. I do like tiling mangers at times, especially xmonad, and especially on older hardware. But at a certain point you realize it's six of one half a dozen of the other

nia

pin Hmm

Mostly I use netbsd defaults to be honest, being able to use the default system productively saves a lot of time and energy

nia ok I see, I don't use mixing software but, I'd say that is expected behaviour.

Anyway, preferences.

JuvenalUrbino

Strictly speaking I like stacking windows (with or without titlebars), but I can hardly put up with popular desktop environments (but MATE, LXQt and WindowMaker).

I'm not really a fan of openbox either, while I did use fluxbox a lot in the past, alongside Afterstep and still do from time to time. My typical setup would have included fluxbox + idesk (desktop icons) + xfe (file manager) + xmms (music player) and Seamonkey as always as browser /mail client.

It's been few years now since my love slowly shifted towards the desktop paradigm of classic Unix window managers. First fvwm (following a guide user ILUXA@ had posted on FreeBSD forums), then ctwm when I started using NetBSD and discovered it was in base. What I like of fvwm and ctwm:

Powerful, Xlib/Xpm -based, EWMH -compliant stacking WMs, coming with a wide range of built-in functions.

Support for custom functions and bindings. I like being able to perform complex operations with a mix of mouse and keyboard bindings (modifier + mouse button). Moreover both fvwm and ctwm support basic tiling functions: by generally working on small screens and low resolutions, all the tiling I usually do resolves to having 2 windows vertically tiled. For example in ctwm you can do tiling with something like:

# Tile windows
"Right" = mod1 | s : all : f.rightzoom
"Left"  = mod1 | s : all : f.leftzoom
"Down"  = mod1 | s : all : f.bottomzoom
"Up"    = mod1 | s : all : f.topzoom

Extendible, with a built-in parser for various langs (fvwm) and macro preprocessor (ctwm). I learned a bit of m4 while playing with my ctwm config (e.g. m4 function to change theme in ctwm). Also, testing old fvwm extensions written in perl, often found in the remote corners of the Internet, is always fun.
Virtual desktops, visual pager, built-in icon manager, windows optionally minimized as icons on a dock area (in a NeXSTEP fashion, I prefer it over taskbars). Fvwm also supports thumbnails, allows writing dialog boxes with FvwmForm, and crafting buttons and widgets with FvwmButtons.
Ease at creating custom themes (config easily allows to change the appearance and the color of titlebars, frames, buttons); built-in Motif/mwm emulation
Extremely lightweight, ridiculously low memory footprint
Actively maintained, small but handsome community

My fvwm setup works as follow. This is a FvwmForm dialog, generated with an awk script I wrote a year ago to help me remind bindings as I switch from a device to the other (my 2 i386 laptops lack a Super modifier)

neubaer

On laptops tiling is a must for me because trying to manage windows with the touchpad is pain.
On desktops I've discovered I don't really care what I use, as long as it's not GNOME.

nortonham

At this point on bsd's and linux I use xfce or mate if I want a full on desktop environment. If i want something lighter I use icewm or windowmaker, or something like CWM from openbsd. I used tiling wm's for a long time, specifically xmonad. But at a certain point I realized the advantages of using one weren't so great, or that the advantages of using one didn't do much for me. I usually install a few different wm's and a DE and change around based on what I feel like using day to day.

oui

@JuvenalUrbino @nia Do you have a key binding to center windows in ctwm and or launch windows centered by deafult without having to manually set the geometry of the program?

JuvenalUrbino

oui Yes, I do have a script which does the trick, tough it uses perl and wm/wmctrl:

#!/bin/sh

if [ -x /usr/pkg/bin/wmctrl ]; then
  # window name
  wname=$(xwininfo -id "window_id" | perl -ne \
  	'print $1 if /"(.*)"\s*$/')

  # display resolution
  dim() {
	xdpyinfo | grep dimensions | grep -o '[0-9x]*' | head -n1
  }
  # window placement
  pos() {
	wmctrl -lG | grep "$wname" | perl -nle \
	\ '@a=split;print join "\t", @a[2..5]'
  }			

  dim | while IFS='x' read sw sh 
  do
	pos | while read wx wy ww wh; do
		wmctrl -r $wname -e 0,$(expr $sw / 2 - \
		$ww / 2),$(expr $sh / 2 - $wh / 2),$ww,$wh
		done
  done
else
  return 0
fi

Once invoked, this lets you interactively select the windows to center with mouse (left click) and warps it tothe center of the screen.

You can bind it inside ~/.ctwmrc as follows (I have it bound to Alt + g):

# scripts path
define(`bindir',`/home/logname/.bin')

# Center window
"g" = mod1	   : all : f.exec "bindir/center &"

rvp

oui launch windows centered by deafult

twm(1) has a UsePPosition "on" var. to use program-supplied positions. Should work as most windows (except xterm for some reason) will want to be centered. Not sure about ctwm.

bsduck

Currently using openbox (with LXQt). After adding a few keybindings I find it quite handy.

I use the following:
Win + Tab = maximise/unmaximise the window
Win + Esc = unmaximise and center the window
Win + Left/Right/Up/Down = move the window to the corresponding screen half
Win + Alt + Left/Right/Up/Down = move the window to the corresponding screen quarter

If anyone is interested in the config:

<keybind key="W-Tab">
  <action name="ToggleMaximize"/>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Escape">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>center</x>
    <y>center</y>
    <height>75%</height>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Left">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MaximizeVert"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>0</x>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Right">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MaximizeVert"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>-0</x>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Up">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MaximizeHorz"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <y>0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-Down">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MaximizeHorz"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <y>-0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-A-Left">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>0</x>
    <y>0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-A-Down">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>0</x>
    <y>-0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-A-Right">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>-0</x>
    <y>-0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>
<keybind key="W-A-Up">
  <action name="Unmaximize"/>
  <action name="MoveResizeTo">
    <x>-0</x>
    <y>0</y>
    <height>50%</height>
    <width>50%</width>
  </action>
</keybind>

JuvenalUrbino

rvp yeah, UsePPosition is a must on twm derivatives 😃

JuvenalUrbino

rvp Should work as most windows (except xterm for some reason) will want to be centered.

By the way, you can set UsePPosition to non-zero to prevent clients from drawing windows at the top left corner, while still allowing others to autonomously set their standard geometry and placement.

oui

Thanks everyone for participating in this thread and sharing helpful info 😁

oui Curious about the final decision 😉

rvp

oui Yer welcome. Oh, and in answer to your OP question: neither. I go a different route: virtual desktops with different programs in each.

oui

pin Curious about the final decision

Final decision is a stacking wm - I switched back to ctwm 😁

The appeal of a tiling window manager for me is the efficiency and ease of mind of not having to care or hand place windows. However, the downside imo is that a programs ideal size might not be the best fit to the tiling grid, and resizing one window affects all windows around. Though, a lot of tiling window managers does have a floating window feature for times like that, but same goes for stacking window managers which has actions/functions to teleport windows to the corners and expand them to the edges of the screen or another window giving a similar layout to that of a tiling wm (except for that you have more freedom for more exotic layouts when needed) - Admittedly, this is more similar to manual tiling which does require slightly more work and time compared to dynamic tiling.

My setup is actually very similar to rvp's and nia's, a single client centered on the screen per virtual desktop, and hence why I prefer a stacking wm where if I do need more than one client on the same virtual desktop, launching it will not change the flow of the already existing client.

oui

rvp neither. I go a different route

Since you're using evilwm, I would consider you to be on the stacking side of things 😉
Didn't know that you had shared your setup here. It's a cool setup, thanks for sharing.
I'm now being teased by mvp to see how the setup looks like, mind sharing some screenshots on the "Show us your screen thread"?

rvp Looks like a CentrePlacement hack (similar to RandomPlacement) to ctwm is needed.

Having windows automatically being centered when launched without having to manually specify the geometry would be awesome. Wonder why an easy way to center windows in ctwm hasn't been implemented yet..

rvp

JuvenalUrbino Yah, I saw that, but, the problem is that a lot of programs don't seem to set a position at all and leave that up to the WM:

$ cat ~/bin/wmsizehint.sh
#!/bin/sh

echo "Select window..."
exec xprop | awk '
/^WM_NORMAL_HINTS/ {
	start = 1
	print
	next
}
start && /^[[:blank:]]+/ {
	print
	next
}
{
	start = 0
	next
}'
$

Looks like a CentrePlacement hack (similar to RandomPlacement) to ctwm is needed. Maybe this weekend...

JuvenalUrbino

Don't mean to hijack OP's thread, but I don't think this really deserves a new one and may be relevant here.

@nia would it be feasible to import CTWM 4.* in base (before a NetBSD-10 formal release would come out), providing it enables EWMH WM_HINTS by default, has saner default options and includes new and very convenient functions such as f.fullscreenzoom, f.raiseorsqueeze, and f.rescuewindows, all of which I could hardly live without now (previously going true fullscreen meant writing the corresponding function).

I've been using it for some time now (the up to date version found in pkgsrc; need to specify the path to the correct executable at /usr/pkg/bin in ~/.xinitrc)

Overall ctwm 4 feels like a more modern and suitable desktop in this day and age than the 3.8.2 version currently included in base.

nia

JuvenalUrbino It is already imported in HEAD