I haven’t had this happen in years, maybe it’s my config? I’m using GPT on a UEFI system (in UEFI mode), with systemd-boot.
I do remember having tons of issues back when I was using grub on an MBR system using legacy bios emulation.
I haven’t had this happen in years, maybe it’s my config? I’m using GPT on a UEFI system (in UEFI mode), with systemd-boot.
I do remember having tons of issues back when I was using grub on an MBR system using legacy bios emulation.
Oh yikes sorry for the hostility, I definitely did mix you up with OP.
Someone has invested, the solution is tiling window managers.
As 217 people have told you in this thread, tiling window managers allow you keep all your windows full screen if you want.
Sounds like your screen is too close to your face.
Yeah, definitely a matter of workflow and personal preference. Nobody wants to convert anyone else, you just ask why people use tiling WM, and people are answering.
why tile windows at all
I can answer that pretty comfortably. There are two main reasons, the first is that it’s very common to have to look at two things at once. If I’m taking notes while reading something complicated, or writing some complex code while referencing the documentation, or tweaking CSS rules while looking at the page I’m working on, it’s just way too disruptive to constantly have to switch windows.
The second main reason (for me) is that a lot of the time, the content of a single window is too small to make use of the space on your monitor. In those cases, if I have something else I’m working on and it’s also small, I’ll tile them. It might be easy to toggle between windows with a hotkey, but it’s strictly easier to not have to toggle, and just move your eyes over. Peripheral vision means that you don’t entirely lose the context of either window. When you’re ready to switch back to the one you just left, you don’t have to touch anything, and you don’t have to wait for the window to render to visually locate where you left off.
If you’re only actively using one window at a time, that makes sense, but alt+tabbing through a stack of 8 open applications to go back and forth between something you’re working on and something you’re closely referencing sucks. If your primary workflow for a computer involves that, I honestly don’t understand how someone can live without tiling.
I like vimium, but qutebrowser is way faster for me. It’s my go-to for research or reading documentation.
You really hit the nail on the head here. Never having to take take your hands off the keyboard, while always having windows take up exactly the right amount of room, is the main reason I hate having to use non-tiling WM.
And your other point is spot on, too. Any workflow that you use in a standard WM you can also do in a tiling WM, except (imo) more easily. And there are lots of workflows that are agonizing without tiling functionality.
I want to read this book full screen. Hang on, didn’t that other book say something different about this? I want to open it. This is complex, I want to compare side-by-side. Oh, I get it, I should take notes on both of these. Hang on, I need to look at both books while taking notes. Okay I’m done with the second book but I still want to take notes on the first.
Slogging a mouse around to click, drag, click, drag, double click, drag, all while repositioning your hands to type, sucks so bad.
The case is even more clear when you consider that the concept of tiling WMs is just an extension of the game-changing paradigm behind terminal multiplexers and IDE splits.
It’s just better. There’s probably a bit of an adjustment when you’re first adapting to it, especially if they’re really used to a mouse-centric, window-draggy workflow, which is likely the only reason that people think they don’t like them.
Honestly, if you’re using 3 monitors, you’re kind of using a single display split into a minimum of 3 tiles.
Tiling window managers support a workflow with one large monitor that you can split into n tiles whichever way you want without touching your mouse.
I’m not saying it’s objectively better or anything, but once you get past the learning curve, having to manually size all of your windows is a chore. I love having my browser window open full screen, pressing a hotkey, and having a text editor open next to it taking up 1/3rd of the screen, with the browser resized to fit.
Mostly, things are full screen, and I love that my WM launches apps in full screen automatically, unless there’s another window open on the workspace I’m targeting.
And when they’re not in full screen, it’s all handled smoothly without me ever having to take my hands off the keyboard.
Do you have a small monitor?
In my opinion, on a >32 4k or 1440p display, the full screen is just way too big for a single window. Which isn’t a problem, because as easy as it is to switch between two windows, it’s even easier not to. Especially for things like having a web browser and dev tools, switching back and forth every time I tweak a CSS rule would be agonizing.
I’ve used arch for the past 10 years or so as my primary OS, and it only took 7 or 8 of those years to get the OS set up.
/s in all seriousness, I kind of get what you’re saying. But I don’t think that having a bad experience is the goal at all though. I think the goal is to provide an OS that lets users decide on exactly what collection of packages they want on their system, and to provide packages that are up to date and unmodified from their upstream.
Setting up your system additively comes with a cost, though. It’s way less convenient than just installing something that someone else has configured.
To me personally, I think the one-time upfront cost of setting up arch is less burdensome than dealing with configuration files that have been moved to non-default locations (transmission-daemon on Debian-based distros is one example), packages being seriously out of date and thus missing new features and bug fixes (neovim), and dealing with cleaning up packages if you prefer to use non-default software and don’t want a ton of clutter.
Definitely valid to prefer a preconfigured system, I just think it’s a misrepresentation to say that the point of arch is to be difficult, or that configuration takes a ton of time for users of arch. Maybe learning to use arch takes longer, but learning to use arch is just learning to use Linux, so it’s hard for me to see that as a bad thing. And it doesn’t take that long to learn, I was more productive in arch after a couple days than I’ve ever been on *buntu, Debian or Mint.
Only thing keeping on my disk is fusion360, so annoying to have to deal with booting into windows just to use a single piece of software.