I am potentially going to be able to put Linux on my work PC soon, have been using it on my personal PC and laptop quite happily with hyprland ontop of NixOS
Thinking of using NixOS for my work machine as well, however I don’t want to use hyprland or even Wayland as I need this machine to be stable and reliable (Nvidia GPU)
Is I3 still the best option for this or are there better alternatives? (leaning towards I3 ontop of KDE)
I’m also somewhat tempted to just go GNOME with the forge extension as it seems the most reliable, though the tiling on that extension is far from perfect
There is no “best WM”, only “best WM for you”. If you’re deep enough into this rabbit hole to install an alternative WM, at this point you’re the best judge of what’s the best, really.
I love hyprland, the question was more asking if there’s anything I’m likely to like that’s more robust and on x11 given that I like hyprland
Hyprland’s Dwindle layout is based on bspwm, so why not try that?
Might give that one a go I’ve heard good things
Not specifically about bsp but is there anything similar waybar on x11? I really like how waybar works so far and would appreciate a similar system on x
Waybar just looks like a Wayland port of Polybar.
As always there’s no such thing as a global “best” application. Building your system is a very personal thing. It all depends on your needs and liking.
My personal journey in the tiling WM world has started 20 years ago with awesomewm. Then I moved to i3 because it feels lighter to me while offering a configuration approach I preferred. After some times, I felt ready to “really” build my tiling WM and I moved to dwm.
I couldn’t be happier until I came across bspwm which is as suckless as dwm but EWMH compliant. I also love the nice approach of keybindings offered by sxhkd. What I appreciate the most is the no limit configuration power since you can integrate the very powerful program that writes messages on bspwm 's socket (bspc) in any scripts you can imagine. This let you create some crazy and very personal rules. For example, I designed one where bspwm is listening to my video player state and if not fullscreen it automatically resizes it to a given size and moves it to a specific position. I have another one that will apply borders only to 2 specific windows applications and use a different color for each one.
This is a very brief overview of what I’ve experimented. Your expectations and the time you want to deserve to your configuration may guide you on another path. Archwiki has a comparison of tiling WM may be a good starting point to help you in your decision.
You should check out XMonad. It’s the only formally verified tiling WM.
I got it working with NixOS and have my whole config online.
https://github.com/harryprayiv/nix-config/blob/intelTower/home/programs/xmonad/config.hs
I did some weird stuff with a custom Hue CLI Module for my lab. It’s a fun little, fairly kludgey example of something you could spin up super easily.
In Haskell (much of the time), they say if it compiles it ships! It’s a lazily-evaluated language which lends itself well to a config and it slots right into NixOS quite well since Nix is also a lazily evaluated purely functional language.
Ooh that is amazing thank you for the config will help me get started with it
Though I didn’t end up getting on with qtile using python for config, I tend to prefer configs being dumb text files
What do you mean by formally verified?
https://infosec.pub/comment/5743487
I linked a definition to that a few comments down.
I also run a community on XMonad: https://infosec.pub/c/xmonad
It’s the only formally verified tiling WM.
what does that mean? is it something to do with haskell?
Try HerbstluftWM. It’s quite simple but very flexible to configure.
+1!
For X11, BSPWM was my daily driver. (before I switched to Sway, then Hyprland)
Some of the X11 WMs are dwm, awesome, qtile, bspwm, etc.
Gonna leave here a link of a list of X11 WMs if you are interested.
Like some have said on this thread, there isn’t really a better wm, it all comes down to your own needs.
Try qtile, imo it’s the best and simple option for tiling wms
In a word - yes - i3 is incredibly productive and customizable, but it’s not for everyone. I’ve been using i3 with no DE or DM for about a decade. Every time I try to use a full DE like KDE, Gnome, etc, it’s just so slow and bloated, and gets in the way. And there’s 100’s of extra packages that get installed, and be updated, that I don’t use. I don’t need anything but terminals (of which I have about 40 open in 12 different virtual desktops), a browser, and an editor when vim isn’t enough. So for me, it’s perfect and simple. I don’t know what will happen when Wayland finally wins, but that’s 5-10 years away before it really wins.
I imagine once Wayland finally wins i3 users will turn into Sway users and that’s about it.
When Wayland is eventually ready, I will personaly look into river. At least that’s what I would do now but no doubts that by the time everybody move to Wayland there will be way more options to consider. Hopefully one will be a good replacement for bspwm.
Ehm, what would be a difference for you, if you install sway?
Wayland
It’s a good question - I don’t know, because I haven’t used it. If it’s 100% compatible with i3 down to its configuration and features, then sure, it’s palatable.
https://github.com/swaywm/sway/ still claims that sway is “i3-compatible Wayland compositor”.
I really liked awesomewm back in the day. Though everything was configured by arco Linux (arch fork), so have to idea how easy it is to get your configs up and running like in hyprland.
My personal favourite is qtile and it’s been my main WM for a long time. I3 is another good option. Wayland experience looks to vary from the other comments, but if you do use qtile and wanted to try wayland, you can get it to run using it (although I’ve never tried it myself).
I explicitly don’t want to use Wayland for my work machine because on both my laptop and PC (both Nvidia) and it’s not very stable/reliable
The work PC has Nvidia too so x11 seems like the better choice for that for the “it just works” factor
That’s fair, especially if you’re using it for work as well. Just wanted to point out the option!
Upopular opinion: Herbstluftwm.
I am curious about this as I’ve never heard of it however for this use case I’m looking for as mainstream as possible so it’s least likely to break in a way nobody’s seen before
Qtile is really good. I also recommend XMonad if you know Haskell, it is my main WM.
I have tried qtile before, never really got on with it myself, don’t really like using python for config personally
Try out LeftWM ! It’s a dynamic tiling window manager, and it’s a reamly cool project with a very nice community. It’s still a bit rough around the edges but it’s worth trying considering how much options it offers.
Unfortunately for this use case rough around the edges won’t do. If something doesn’t work instantly I get blamed for using nonstandard software so the most reliable is what I’m looking for really
For personal use I have no problem with rough around the edges (evidenced by my using hyprland on Nvidia lol)