Comment by bstar77
4 years ago
I've not seen anyone using a tiling window manage with 32" and larger 4k displays. It's just an awful experience.
I would use a tiling window manager (and have) on something like a chromebook or if I'm a youtuber that does everything in a VM at 1080p. I have a hybrid approach that I use with XFCE (aggressive window snapping with custom shortcuts), but it's hardly a typical tiling window manager experience.
Regarding Thunar, I don't have any issues, but if you are not using it in XFCE, you might want to try and see what plugins you are loading. Some expect XFCE and could be the root of your issues.
> I've not seen anyone using a tiling window manage with 32" and larger 4k displays. It's just an awful experience.
I'm using i3 / sway on both, my Workstation's 40" 21:9 (5120x2160) and my private 32" 16:9 4K displays, and see no reason why a bigger display, or one with a higher DPI, would make using a tiling window manager working worse, on the contrary, for me, it's all the more important to have good management if I got more "screen estate" to handle.
IME using tiling WMs on bigger/HiDPI screens is a fantastic experience.
i’m also enjoying sway specifically on large displays. 34” ultrawide (21:9) 3440x1440. i had gnome running on it for a while but i specifically switched to sway because it’s easier to make use of the ridiculous real-estate. i can have like 4 separate vertical splits before it gets cramped. no one wants to manually position 4 windows on a screen.
i also run sway on my 14” laptop simply because i share my OS config between the two machines. i like its workspaces and notifications and being able to tweak `waybar` exactly how i want it, but the actual tiling functionality is pretty useless. at _most_ i’ll do two panes per workspace — at which point you’re in territory any DWM would do well in.
When you have a single window in a workspace, isn't it too big? I feel like it would be weird having all my text on the left side of a huge monitor when I only have a single terminal in the workspace
Well I most of the time either split the screen into two halves, which is really nice if one needs to work with more than one application, searching some info on the right, pasting/writing it on the left) or for shells often use tmux and vim split views so that I can look at multiple files/source code lines and still have a ready to use terminal at hand.
For example, I most of the time use the following layout at work:
Example screenshot https://tlmp.it/d/scrot/sway-layout-workspace1.png
(note I recently switched workstation and while at it I tried to switch from i3 to sway, so the top bar config is really plain due to me having yet to find some time to port over my old i3bar one to waybar or the like)
Example screenshot https://tlmp.it/d/scrot/sway-layout-workspace2.png
Further workspaces are then for ssh windows for more complex real tests on some servers.
I use a lot of short-lived windows for terminal, browser, pdf-reader, ... and there the tiling window manager really shines, as I can effortless open those in some tens of milliseconds (MOD+Enter for terminals, MOD+D for my general window launcher), check what I need, maybe copy some text to the primary buffer by simply selecting it and then close it again With CTRL+D (EOF) for terminals or MOD+SHIFT+Q for any window.
For single terminal in a single workspace, I use gaps around the window to center the terminal window.
But usually one would need another terminal window by the side of it and that's when I get rid of the gaps.
I’ve never been able to make tiling work for me regardless of screen size. Windows constantly end up being awkward sizes that cause scrolling that would be unnecessary in a floating WM, and I’m constantly tweaking window sizes to try to make it less awkward. It’s very micromanage-y, and it drives me nuts.
But I don’t live in a terminal and/or text editor — my most frequently used programs are IDEs, VCS UIs, and graphics editors… stuff with lots of panes and palettes and such. Simpler apps get use too, but it’s skewed enough that popping some apps into floating mode in a tiling WM isn’t enough. My ideal environment is floating-first with light optional tiling, like macOS with something like Moom installed.
You could do floating for all windows or for specific app in sway, that I'm using now, with for_window directive.
Yep, most tiling WMs come with really solid floating window options. i3wm with floating windows by default is such a treat!
I could probably make it work, but I'm not fond of the ultra-minimal window chrome that's standard with tiling-first WMs. Much prefer more traditional mouse-centric window chrome with fancy styling like that of GNOME, XFCE, macOS, etc.
> I've not seen anyone using a tiling window manage with 32" and larger 4k displays. It's just an awful experience.
I do this. How is it a bad experience? If anything I get more mileage out of my tiling WM on my large screen than I do on my laptop, where I tend to just use a lot of full screen apps and change tag/workspace a lot.
Something like i3 would work great on a monitor like that. Something like dwm maybe less so.
I don't (because I have 3 24" displays), but at least two of my coworkers have 32" and larger 4k displays and use i3