this post was submitted on 19 May 2025
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I have to put in a plug for herbstluftwm.
It really depends on whether you like the keyboard and tiling widow managers, or if you like dragging windows around and resizing them. Tiling widow managers are popular, but they're definitely a taste.
hlwm and bspwm are a - "configurationless" breed - I think river on Wayland is the same. This has become my one requirement for a window manager. Every configuration is done through a command line client call, and it's game changing. The "configuration" is just a specific shell script hlwm runs when it starts up, and it's full of whatever client calls needed to configure the system. Every call in that script can be run outside the script; it's literally a just shell script. I run all sorts of things in that script: launching "desktoppy" programs like kanata, setx, autostart programs that start on a specific screen; one script lays out one screen in a complex 2x1 layout where each pane is tabbed and contains three terminals each, and then launches terminals that connect to various remote computers - that's my "remote server" screen, and it's all set up when I log in.
However - definitely for tiling enthusiasts. I used i3 for a decade before I found bspwm, which converted me to configurationless WMs, and I ended up with hlwm. It's honestly what's preventing me from giving Wayland a serious go, although river might do the trick.
See tabbed mode on sway. Not all tiling compositors are about just tiling, :)
Hm? Both bspwm and herbstluftwm have tabbed layouts. It's been so long since I've used i3, but it has them too, right? Sway's a mostly config-compatible, mostly client compatible i3 clone for Wayland, so I'd expect it to have tabs, too. As well as floating windows, which every tabbing WM I've used also supports.
I think I missed your point. What are you saying? Did I say something that made you think I thought tiling WMs could only do tiling?
What I'm opinionated about is configuration files. Technically, even a desktop could be configuration-less, although I've never seen one. I have become insistent that my WM have no configuration that isn't set through a client call. Sway still uses a config file like i3; mostly the same config file, unless it's drifted significantly. That was Sway's whole killer feature: i3 users could switch from X11 to Wayland with only minor configuration file changes.
Oh, I refered to that in your post. To me all WMs/compositors are a matter of taste, including stacking ones (on wayland from the stacking ones I only like labwc though it's xml config is not what I would prefer). And you already clarified, but it gave me the impression that it was implicit that tiling was a matter of taste, when those WMs/compositors also offer tabbed/stacked mode, which to me it's not tiling at all, and offers something really appealing not so easily to achieve on any stacking WM/compositor.
Regarding config, well yes, if one is looking for no config at all, and still get the WM/compositor to be useful and also to one's liking, then that's hard to find. But the config files once achieving what one likes and is productive with, then one barely looks at it again, and they are usually portable (usually not only across PCs, also across distros).
But I got your point, sort of "plug and play" as they said before, just install it and without any config be productive with it... I can't imagine that. I heard river is pretty close to dwm, but I can't tell much about it. The river idea of dynamic tiling, which seems to be the default doesn't really appeal to me, so I would need to do tabbed mode any ways, which doesn't seem to be the default, so at least for me it wouldn't be that configless... But maybe it would be to dynamic tiling people.
River is sooooo good when it doesn't break (it's stable, you just need to get it working in the beginning). The guile config is beautiful, always reminds me of xmonad.