I want the easiest to configure/theme wm and one that comes with sane defaults. Also I currently use cinnamon, and I’m not sure how to escape from that(everything in it is just so nice) but I want the speed of a wm
DWM
Yeah it’s customised by editing a C header but you don’t really need to know C to configure it, you can 100% just copy the patterns that are already there and change them up like you would with any other config format.
One thing I just remembered that you might struggle with is applying patches which is how you install “extensions” in most suckless software including DWM. Do you know how to use Git or some other version control system? If you don’t know Git but have used Subversion or Perforce or something then it should be fairly easy to pick up but if you haven’t used version control ever then resolving conflicts between patches might be a little tricky.
If you like the relatively polished experience provided by a DE like cinnamon, you’re unlikely to enjoy a WM. It’s a much more DIY experience. Unless you have particularly unusual window layouts, you’re best off just learning the keyboard shortcuts already supported in your DE.
You honestly can’t go wrong with using i3. It’s super simple to use and has great documentation.
Isn’t i3 a tiling WM? If they use cinnamon that seems like a bit of a jump
Tried out sway which I hear is based on i3 and at least on NixOS it came with bare minimum config that didn’t allow me to use my laptop properly at all
Yes. Its tilling.Inn my opinion, if you wanna go the wm route, why not go the tiling route and get rid of using mouse alltogether (ツ)
Disclaimer: I’ve used tiling window managers for all of 30 minutes in my life.
If you just want a faster cinnamon, you might consider merely switching to XFCE. Just change the menu to the whisker menu and you’ll be right at home.
WMs don’t typically come with “sane defaults” in the DE sense of the word; you have to make your own sanity. In order to find sane defaults, you’ll probably have to switch to a distro that has its own custom configs. (That being said, you can always copy the configs back to your original distro when you know what you want.) Maybe check out Mabox for some inspiration. I can’t speak to any other beginner WM distros.
I like Hyprland