[nicolapcweek94]

I never really understood TWMs. They look incredibly pretty after heavy configuration, and I get the appeal of that, but for daily use my workflow - on two 27' 4k monitor - is to keep a window maximized on each and alt-tab through them when I need something else, which will replace one of the two maximized windows with its own. Occasionally I "tile" two windows side by side for comparisons etc, but that is disappearing now that one of my maximized windows is Emacs and the other is Vivaldi, both of which offer window splitting features for this use case. Does everyone using these WMs usually keep 3-4+ windows side by side on the same monitor? Don't you find it incredibly distracting?

[pmoriarty]

I'm a heavy user of both i3 and emacs.

I would never use emacs as a window manager, because it's simply not stable enough for me -- it crashes and hangs quite a lot, and I have to restart it from time to time when I update my configuration and want to test it out from scratch, or when emacs get confused after running it for a long time.

i3, by contrast, has been 100% stable for me, and I almost never have to quit or restart it. So it's completely reliable, and I don't ever have to worry about it not working.

Regarding i3's config, it's really easy, and except for occasionally telling i3 the title of windows I'd like to float by default, I haven't touched my i3 config in decades.

As for how I use i3, I mostly have one full window taking up the entire screen, with other windows in the background, as tabs that I can switch to. That's 99% of my use. Occasionally I manually make a window float, when I want some odd-sized window or want it to overlap another window, and some windows I make float by default. These floating windows are all very temporary. Sometimes I'll also change my tiling configuration so that more than one window appears on the screen at the same time, but that's also pretty rare, but it's there when I want it.

Overall, I'm much happier with a tiling WM than with a floating WM, because with a tiling WM I don't have to manually fiddle with window resizing, stacking, or positioning. 99% of the time i3 just automatically does the right thing without requiring any interaction from me.

It would be nice to use emacs for this, but it's just not nearly stable enough or reliable enough for me.

[nicolapcweek94]

This makes sense to me, looking for stability both in usage and in configuration. Emacs has been that for me, but I do use it for nearly everything for a very extensive configuration. As I understand it the idea is to look for the familiarity and consistency of using the same environment in the same way for all uses, which makes total sense if you haven't been putting stuff in your init.el for years.

Thanks for the POV!

[p2t2p]

Right now I have two columns. Wide, left with Idea and right with 3 terminals vertically. I can switch to any terminal with single key press, without needing to look for it among other windows when alt-tabbin. I also have multiple tags and on other tag I have a similar arrangement for another project that I keep an eye on. On second monitor I have 3 fullscreen apps on separate tags - zoom, slack and spotify and each one of them has a dedicated shortcut.

When I was using mac, I had similar setup using snap and keyboard maestro, only I had to ctr-tab in iterm like crazy if I had several projects. Not anymore.

Overall I feel that I manage all of it way less and have to go through way less stuff to find what I need.

[nicolapcweek94]

This sounds similar to what I do with Emacs, having it fullscreen with a code buffer mostly full window with occasional split columns on the right for terminals, magit etc - also controlled by keyboard, obviously. Though I see how having a separate shortcut for telegram, spotify, vivaldi etc would be useful if I wasn't already using them within Emacs!

[doublepg23]

When I was using i3 I heavily took advantage of the robust Workspace feature. I would keep max three windows open, minus dialogs, and switch between Workspaces instead. Each Workspace would be organized into a given task like writing, browsing, or programming. Luckily this workflow migrates very easily to GNOME 3 and I’m quite happy with it there now. I learned this workflow from ChrisLAS of Jupiter Broadcasting (highly recommended their shows!)

[dijit]

It's a bit like vim.

There is a learning curve but once you've got it you feel like you can't go back.