As I’m about to start renewing and expanding the computer fleet in my house I decided I want to have a machine solely for my personal use, where I can use some solutions no one else will feel comfortable with in the house.
I’ve been wanting to try window managers for a while but after researching on it for a bit I’m none the wiser on which to choose.
There are a few distros out there that already deliver this kind of experience but I want to use the opportunity to learn and start from a stock Debian and build from there to where I want to get to.
I’m fully capable of setting up my computers as is but I’m aware WMs require a bit more involvement, so having at least good documentation is a must.
I’m also not averse to learn some coding, even more when considering I want to have a fully costumized conky, but I’ve never coded before.
The machine will be used essentially for writing, web surfing and email and, if possible, running Stardew Valley.
Any advice will be welcome.
Thanks in advance.
A bit controversial, but Hyprland has one of the most user-friendly manual I ever seen. And its very usable as is.
Yeah Hyprland is great and very easy. Just make sure you have kitty installed or change the default config to use your preferred terminal and getting set up shouldn’t take long. The Hyprland docs also have tons of recommendations for other good software.
Yeah, I made the mistake of running Hyprland on a fresh arch install and was super confused at the lack of terminal 😅
Sway has a pretty well commented default config. It’s pretty polished and mature, and since it’s Wayland it’s far more secure than Xorg.
$ sudo apt install sway swaylock swayidle
Check the example configuration file for the default terminal emulator (probably “foot”) and just install that as well for now. You can pretty much also skim that config to learn the most important keybindings or edit them to suit you better.
There’s a pretty good wiki page detailing its configuration: https://wiki.debian.org/sway
I’d assume you’d need xwayland for Stardew Valley?
i3
- Great for beginners
- Uses it’s own configuration language so no coding required
- One of the most popular window managers so documentation and such is plentiful
- Has a 1:1 Wayland fork called Sway
- Is a manual tiling window manager which means you specify where a window will appear when you go to launch something.
AwesomeWM
- Is awesome
- Configured in Lua
- Has a great status bar built in
- Great documentation
- Is a dynamic tilling window manager meaning it places new windows in accordance with a preset layout.
Qtile
- My favorite
- Has a 1:1 Wayland version built-in
- Configured in Python
- The best status bar I’ve used
- Great documentation
- Dynamic tiler
XMonad (Note: never used this so take this how you will)
- Configured in Haskell
- Has a lot of dependencies
- Extremely configurable
- Dynamic tiler
There’re many more window managers out there but these are the ones I’ve personally used (besides XMonad) and know the most about.
If you don’t like a built in status bar then you can disable it in the config and use another one like Polybar. Distrotube (on Odyssey or Youtube) also has really good videos on all of these window managers and more which I really recommend you check out if you haven’t already.
Personally though, I think Qtile will give you the best experience.
I personally use
i3 for X11
&
Hyprland for Wayland
I think qtile can do both. Im not sure tho.
If you wanna play around a bit: use KDE’s kwin window manager (the one also used by the plasma DE). That’s a floating window manager tho and i assume you want a tiling window manager?
[If i have some time im gonna put some WM’s here]
I don’t know how answer that question. If I happen to run more than one program at the same time - which is very rare - I usually fit each window mannualy, in accordance to which I need to focus most of my attention to the least.
I’m used to using floating windows, being a user of Mate.
do you mean tiling window manager or just window managers in general ?
i3 is the one most people use so you’ll find a truckload of support and documentation about it online, if you wand to be the cool kid try dwm, and if you wand to rise to the top of of c/unixporn get hyprland.
