Terminal I use for sudo file management, man pages and running ddate, and that's about it. I use OO.org, GIMP/Cinepaint, Inkscape and Scribus a lot, along with Firefox and Thunderbird. Terminal-based apps work well in tiled environments. The most important thing, and one of the reasons I prefer Linux (and *nix in general), is to be able to create an environment that works for the individual end-user. Tiling is just not a method of window management that I find intuitive or useful except for very specific tasks. I can understand why some users might prefer and benefit from a tiling window manager, but I find them clumsy and restricting based on the work habits that tend to be most productive for me.įor me, it's not a 'bling'issue. I guess it depends on what feels comfortable depending on a users work habits. I think I'm going to give wmii another go, anyway :P However, I think wmii is so far the most comfrtable one compatibility-wise, even though I *hate* resizing the frames with the pointer, I think it's bloody non-sensical. So, in order to enjoy a better experience with the single apps, I decided to sacrifice automation, and I try to live with the limited tiling capabilities that Compiz offers me. However I reckon tiling WMs are spreading out lately, which is a good thing (especially for what I'm going to say).Īfter a long period of using wmii, Ratpoison, dwm, Ratpoison, Xmonad and Ratpoison I finally went back to Gnome, just because it seems that most (if not all) of the apps are designed to work with the 'standard' manual WMs, so you get annoying problems of compatibility. So, I guess the majority of people don't even know or think about the possibility of an automatic window manager. Unfortunately, the classic 'grab, move and resize everything manually' is the de facto standard nowadays.

Shouldn't the primary function of a window manager be to manage windows in whatever way the individual user deems most useful?

Tiled window manager