
Ask HN: Which Tiling Window Manager do you use? - arctangent1759
I&#x27;ve considering i3, xmonad, awesome, spectrewm, and any others you&#x27;re willing to suggest.
======
sdegutis
I wrote Zephyros[1] for Mac OS X, which is scriptable in pretty much any
language, and used that for a while.

Eventually my OCD kicked in about the performance of Zephyros's server/client
architecture on my laptop, so I forked it as Phoenix[2], which is only
scriptable via an embedded JavaScript VM. Now I use Phoenix exclusively.

Here's my current tiling config[3] for Phoenix.

But I'm currently trying to make the transition from Mac OS X to Windows 8. So
I plan to port Phoenix to Windows, and I'm naming it ZephSharp[4] (I'm
terrible at naming things). It's going to be written in C#, which fortunately
has ClojureCLR, so Clojure will be its scripting language instead of
JavaScript (hoorah!).

[1]:
[https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephyros)

[2]:
[https://github.com/sdegutis/phoenix](https://github.com/sdegutis/phoenix)

[3]:
[https://gist.github.com/sdegutis/7756583](https://gist.github.com/sdegutis/7756583)

[4]:
[https://github.com/sdegutis/zephsharp](https://github.com/sdegutis/zephsharp)
\-- Nota bene, it's not even close to working, I've only spent a few hours
prototyping some basic hard-coded stuff, so beware!

------
pcmonk
It doesn't quite count as a tiling window manager, but I just use compiz with
the grid plugin, and it gets me everything I wanted from a tiling window
manager without losing the ability to move a window around freely
occasionally. That plus the cube, no window decoration (that really helps
clean things up), and some convenient keyboard/mouse shortcuts makes for a
really efficient desktop without the restrictions of a pure tiling window
manager.

------
tbrock
I tend to like i3. But all the cool kids on arch are using herbstluft.

To me, Haskell and Lua are turn-offs so xmonad and awesome are out. I don't
want to have to learn a programming language to configure my window manager.
Straight up well documented C and old school configuration files are the way
to go. Plus the tutorial/intro video gets you going quickly.

~~~
iends
I've never heard of herbstluft. What makes all the cool arch kids drawn to it?
(the fact I've never heard of it?)

~~~
mjn
One thing that's interestingly unixy about it is that all
configuration/interaction is done via a CLI program, herbstclient, which
interacts with herbstserver, rather than via config files or an embedded
scripting language. So config and scripting is then typically done via a bash
script, or whatever other way you prefer to call a series of herbstclient
commands.

Otherwise its UI model is fairly typical for "manual" (i.e. not auto-layout)
tiling WMs.

------
brotchie
Heavily use xmonad.

I have a single xmobar on my primary screen showing active workspaces, max cpu
using process, max memory using process, cpu usage / throttling and network
traffic.

I do a lot of work across multiple VMs (OSX on vmware, multiple Windows boxes
on virtualbox). Having OSX running XCode full screen on one workspace, Windows
7 running Visual Studio full screen on another, Android Eclipse open on
another workspace, and Vim open editing some back end server code on another
workspace is invaluable.

    
    
        Meta-V Start Fullscreen Windows VM
        Meta-O Start Fullscreen OSX
        Meta-C Start Google Chrome
        Meta-E Start Android Eclipse
        Alt-Shift-Return Start Gnome terminal
        Alt-Shift-N Start a new Gnome terminal in the current Gnome terminal's working directory

------
killerbat00
I use dwm with dmenu on arch. The configuration is in C and it's incredibly
lightweight.

[1][http://suckless.org/](http://suckless.org/)

------
talonstriker
As a corollary question, does anyone use Tiling Window Managers on Windows? Is
the one you use good?

I've been using bug.n[1], but my experience has been subpar due to it's
bugginess (namely due to applications such as various terminal applications
such as cmd/Console2/cmder refusing to re-size themselves properly).

[1] [https://code.google.com/p/bugn/](https://code.google.com/p/bugn/)

------
frigg
It depends on what you'd like I suppose. If you want highly a configurable WM
then xmonad is great (I can't speak for the rest). If you want something very
simple with limited configuration but which allows you to quickly use it then
scrotwm.

You can find a lot of configs for xmonad/awesome/otherwm on github which you
can then copy and adapt to your liking.

------
bgar
I've tried xmonad, awesome, i3, dwm, herbsluftwm, ratpoison, etc. My favorite
was dwm for a few years, then I moved up to i3 because of multi-monitor
support. I see i3 as a good medium between the really minimal <2k lines tiling
managers and the larger ones like awesomewm.

------
stevekemp
I use bluetile, as it is a middle-ground between the default GNOME window-
manager and a full tiling experience.

As things stand I'm not likely to change any-time soon, because it does work
the way I'd expect it to.

------
whichdan
If you want some inspiration:
[http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=year](http://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/top/?sort=top&t=year)

------
fournm
Awesome was my introduction to tiling WMs, then I went to xmonad for years,
and I recently moved over to dwm as I realized suckless had taken over the
rest of my machine so why not.

------
asb
I'm using dwm with the flextile and systray patches.

~~~
juliangoldsmith
+1 for dwm. It's <2k lines, so it's easy to modify, and it's really simple, so
it's easy to get started with.

------
exelib
I use awesome from 2008. It's doing just two thing: order windows and start
console. But it's exactly what I need.

------
radoslawc
dwm with pertag and systray patches, and also I've changed active window
border color to red.

------
dmm
stumpwm. It's the sequel to ratpoison, implemented in common lisp. You can
hack while it's running. The multi-monitor support is top notch.
[http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/](http://www.nongnu.org/stumpwm/)

------
stevenrace
dwm.

[1] [http://dwm.suckless.org/](http://dwm.suckless.org/)

------
meerita
SizeUp on Mac OS X.

