I have a laptop with an 11 inch screen and 768p display. Naturally, my usage breakdown is:
- 80% one window in fullscreen
- 15% two windows side by side
- 5% other
I’ve considered tiling window managers. I used i3wm on this in the past. It was a little complicated and I customized the bottom bar to show commands for dummies.
alt-Enter: term | alt-D: launch | alt-F: fullsc | alt-1: new workspace | alt-shift-1: move to workspace
That plus some battery, wifi, time info. I never got ‘good’ with i3 and would consult the cheat sheet regularly.
Is there a paradigm (tiling or otherwise) that would let me quickly and simply launch programs with the keyboard (like most distros these days) and switch between fullscreen windows? and set them side by side as needed?
My usage is keyboard-first but mouse-available. i3 didn’t seem tailored to mouse usage the way some other tiling wms are. and sometimes you’d launch a program like the wifi settings window and it wasn’t built to be resized for a twm, so it looked weird. (no floating window support.)
edit: Tried
- cachy+LxQt
- cachy+niri
- AntiX + IceWM
Couldn’t figure out how to remap keys in LxQt. Niri was cool but a bit overwhelming especially on a laptop with just kb+touchpad and it’s easy to back yourself into a corner (window wider than the monitor).
IceWM allows for super+arrows to move windows side by side like Windows. I don’t love it but it works okay. Performance is also a big concern and my idle RAM seems to be around 300M for AntiX vs 700+ for cachy+niri.
Niri is absolutely the best tier for a laptop with a smaller screen. It provides all the benefits of tiling without the tiny, cramped windows that tiling tends to result in.
On other tilers, you end up using workspaces for single apps to avoid splitting the screen.
I’m loving hyperland both on my desktop and laptop.
Niri
That’s scrolling (not tiling) but yes.
Niri is a scrolling tiler. You do not even have to scroll if you really don’t want to.
+1 for niri. Avoid hyprland, dev is a cunt
Honestly? I have more or less the same use case, and I use Gnome or KDE and just use super+left/right to do the half-screen windows, and super+page up/page dn to switch between workspaces for fullscreen windows.
Is is the most optimal TWM experience? No. But is is fast to set up, easily usable, and requires no keyboard shortcut configuration? Yes.
Use Windows key instead of Alt. Alt is used by some applications for some actions.
I use paperwm i think it pretty much defaults to what you want. the issue i had with i3 and such window managers is that they’re lacking everything else about laptops. Energy mode depending on battery state, or even basic warnings for example. Bluetooth, wifi etc. all need to be set up and maintained by yourself. Which to me became to annoying so I switched to gnome with paperwm and that rolling desktop really is something. I have never looked back.
when I used an old laptop I relied on https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ nowadays KDE is good enough for with its shortcuts (e.g. meta + arrows) and KWin scripts.
I used to use a small laptop like yours. Now the smallest one is a spacious 13” so it doesn’t feel quite so constrained.
I ended up on lxqt with the bar on the left hand side and a bunch of virtual desktops. It can do everything you’re asking for and my use is keyboard first. Give it a shot, it’s good.
I like lxqt. What keyboard actions are you using and how did you configure them? On windows I do super+left or right to move windows.
I have it set up the same as the default macos shortcuts for desktops.
There’s two different configurations for keys, the window manager and lxqt itself. I’m using x instead of Wayland so my key config is split between xfwm the window manager and lxqt.
keyboard first but mouse available
Sway works really well with mod+drag, but the configuration is nearly the same as i3. Plasma’s new tiling features are really good, but unfortunately mousse driven.
I’d check out the COSMIC beta, might be a good middle ground.
The easier setup I found is Xfce with WM swapped for BSPWM. You can do every window manipulation with mouse (while Super key pressed).
I wasn’t crazy about i3. I really like hyprland though. Been using it for about a year now.
I don’t know if i3 can do this too, but in sway you can also move windows using the mouse. Just hit mod+the left mouse button and drag it around. However I usually just go with the Keyboard. Mod+shift+arrow is just faster.
x11 or wayland - as you like
GNOME with paperwm extension might be nice for you. Controllable by keyboard and mouse, normal configuration and things like control panel for audio / bluetooth / network , good use of screen estate.
Myself I use stumpwm on a 40 inch 4K screen but that’s because I am very used to the command line and also had vision problems for some time. Most tiling WMs give very little visual feedback and require sigbificant memorization. Which, like using vim, makes predominantly sense for continuous and heavy use.
