I’ve been using tiling WMs for some years now (mostly sway, but also tested cosmic a bit). I really love them: you theme workspaces and organize everything into them, and no window is ever hidden, which makes finding them trivial. But the cost of having every window displayed in that workspace is that they start getting way too small when you have a lot of them. This is usually not a big deal, since you can create tabs or just open new generic workspaces.
But what has been bugging me are windows that need to be big, otherwise they are unusable (like gimp, kdenlive, libreoffice, sometimes firefox). Tabbing them in fullscreen messes with the workspace layout, and if you dedicate an entire generic workspace for them, you surely will lose it.
That’s where scrollable WMs enter the scene. They respect window sizes at the cost of their visibility.
niri.gif
NGL, this is not a good idea. It’s easy to lose windows that are off-screen. But what if you only use it sometimes? Think of it as a regular tiling WM, but when you need it, it creates more space off-screen.
To achieve this, I’ve been using Niri with the tilemod script. It helps make Niri behave more like a regular tiling.
tilemod.gif
It’s been a good experience over the last week. My workflow is mostly unchanged, but when I need to work with a window in fullscreen, it’s always a relief that I’m using Niri.
Has anyone else here tried scrollables? I’m in this excitement phase so I want to read more about it (even from people who tried and didn’t like them) :)
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I’m using Niri daily for 2 months now and it’s pretty good, especially using it with laptop much better than normal DE or WM
Niri + Noctalia FTW
I used sway with configured dots for the better part of a year, and as soon as I tried out noctalia + niri, I switched basically immediately
Came here to say this. Simply the most intuitive way to interact with a computer.
I have KDE installed as a backup, and use the whole KDE software suite, but Niri is GOATed. Especially since KDE trackpad gestures are so terrible.
I’ve been using Niri for a little under a year now on both my desktop and laptop, I like it a lot compared to regular tiling window managers (I used QTile for 2-3 years on my desktop and Hyprland on my laptop for about a year until I found out about vaxry).
Personally, I usually group my workspaces by app category (e.g. browser, system-related, chat windows, games, etc.) which works really well with a scrolling model since you can have multiple “fullscreen” apps per workspace, or a fullscreen apps and half-width app like a file explorer for dragging files over to the main app. It also works well for me since I am unlikely to have more than 2-3 full-width apps in the same category.
I like organizing things that way because it makes my hotkeys consistent for the thing I’m trying to do. For example, if I have a chat window open, my hotkey to get there will always be meta+3 regardless of what app it is and how many other chat apps I have open.
Anyone using it with multiple screens? I haven’t tried it out because it didn’t look like it would be great for that.
I want something really lightweight where I can assign things to workspaces and then pull workspaces easily onto any one of my screens.
XMonad was my favourite, but I’ve moved to Sway and I’ve got it set up pretty well now. Workspaces still have a home screen so it’s a bit more clunky to move them around between screens.
Niri works fine on multiple screens, you can configure it pretty well. AFAIK it does not let you drag whole workspaces onto a screen – each screen has its own scroll of windows and set of workspaces, and you can move windows between them, but not move whole workspaces.
I use it and I like it. For me, I use a second monitor just to keep an app open constantly so I can use my main monitor for the interactive stuff. If I’m feeling fancy I make a second workspace on the second monitor to keep a split screen of my music player and messaging app.
I don’t remember the default way that workspaces are organized with multiple screens, but for me I prefer each screen to have their own workspaces, and I use them sparingly and that works great for me.
From my experience niri works well.
niri dank material shell (dms) is nice for that too. But yeah if you want something super lightweight you may just want to just config base niri yourself.
I have it on my 3:2 laptop that I occasionally plug into my 21:9 monitor and it generally just works; though the trackpad navigation is what really makes it for me.
I’ve used it ever since riverwm had its 0.4 update or whatever it was.
Someone described it as objectively better than i3-like tilling because every window can be full size or tiled more traditionally with the same ergonomics, and they were right.
Hmm but sway can do full screen apps in a workspace too with tabs. I think the title of the window is arguably more important than showing a little piece of the window when navigating
Is that navigated with the same commands as focus window up/down/etc, not a separate tab command? I’ve used sway more recently than i3, but it’s been a while.
And for me it’s not about showing a piece of the window necessarily, but how it can feel like it gives you an invisible 20% extra on either side of your monitor. It’s a lot like how tiling wms in general feel like they unlock something in laptops. Kinda hard to explain.
Yes, mod+arrow in tabbed mode which is the same for focusing in tile mode. It feels very ergonomic
I use tabbed mode for my laptop as well because of limited screen real estate.
I’ve gotten used to using the noctalia-shell dock to unify my on-screen and off-screen windows / tiled window groups. Even if a window from my dock is active in a different workspace, clicking it in the dock from any other workspace switches to it immediately. Fundamentally it’s similar to managing floating windows. But now having different workspaces for different tasks makes sense to me for the first time. It lets me maximize space for groups of tiled windows. My whole life I’ve just disabled that shit immediately.
Me also a tiling guy, and since a few years I switched to KDE and use an extension called Krohnkite to tile windows automatically. I personally don’t like the idea of endless scrollable desktops. To get a taste, I tried a scrollable window manager extension for KDE, just to see if the workflow would click with me. To me it doesn’t feel different from (classic) floating style of managing windows. Why? Because I have to scroll and search for the window.
To me it doesn’t feel different from (classic) floating style of managing windows. Why? Because I have to scroll and search for the window.
This is precisely the same feeling I had when I first tested Niri. It only changed once I started treating it as a tiling that sometimes expands when needed.
I have to say, I would like to have a “layout” that expends like a scrollable type. I mean by layout the tiling logic (Quarter, Monacle, BTree and so on). I think there is a use case for having that, but I don’t want to lose the tiling worklow as it is right now. You know what, I got curious again and will try that extension again.
Edit: Sadly it was bugged for me. (Edit in Edit: Turns out Karousel extension does not support multi monitor.) Had to use the TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F2) to disable that Karousel extension. I remember when it worked, not sure what happened. Seems to dislike something about my current setup. I’m not ready to switch to an entire different window manager yet, but I’m also quiet happy anyway. Maybe its because I have two screens now, and it does not support multiple screens.
Sadly it was bugged for me. Had to use the TTY (Ctrl+Alt+F2) to disable that Karousel extension.
Ouch. Sorry about that :(
I’m not ready to switch to an entire different window manager yet, but I’m also quiet happy anyway.
100% fair. I only changed because my last setup was annoying me
Hey, I just wanted report that the extension Karousel in KDE works only with single monitor. It was bugged because it does not support multi monitor, as I thought. I’m trying it out now and wanted mention this here in case someone wants to use it too. How do you deal with if you need all windows appear on a single screen at the same time? In example for certain use cases I want to split in a quarter layout. Does Niri support two windows tiled bottom half and top half?
[ ] [ ]Edit: Found shortcuts that enable this in Karousel. Hmm, I start digging this now. I really don’t want to switch off KDE, but if I do, Niri might be a contender as next option. Need to see if this workflow works for me. :-)
How do you deal with if you need all windows appear on a single screen at the same time?
For 4 windows in one workspace, you can create two columns, each split in half. Something like this:
If you want more windows, you can shrink a column to 25%, then add a new column at 25% as well. Like this:
Does Niri support two windows tiled bottom half and top half?
Yup! That’s just a single column divided in two:
Thanks, I figured out how to do this in Karousel right after I asked you. Hmm, do you miss a specific feature from your previous auto tiling experience? What I really like about this setup is, that certain windows will respect their sizes. To be honest this was a bit annoying in auto tilers. Guess there is less need for application specific rules and handling.
Offtopic: I just noticed your “Show Sidebar” button is on the same place as mine in Firefox.
do you miss a specific feature from your previous auto tiling experience?
Well, autotilers are better for automatically fitting things on screen. If you want multiple windows to fit in screen in Niri, you’ll need to intervene for that (it’s pretty simple and easy, but it’s not automatic).
This is the only thing that keeps going through my mind as being objectively worse. Some small things are different, not necessarily worse or better. I think the column logic in Niri is super easy to understand, which is great, but it kinda limits tiling possibilities (not a big deal tbh, you just learn new ways to tile).
I had no idea these scripts existed, that’s awesome and i’ll have to take a look at tilemod in particular. I’ve tried niri a bunch of times but similar to you i feel like it’s too easy to lose windows. Not just on the same workspace, but i also wish other workspaces could be numbered so you can keep track of which workspaces have which windows on them. I know you’re supposed to use the overview for that, but i’m still not used to that type of workflow.
Another thing i would like is to have a more dynamic tiler style option where at the very least you can set it to have a window take up the full screen when it’s the only one on the workspace, and then split it side by side when two or more windows are opened. Mangowc’s scrolling layout supports this, and upstream niri could probably add this too, but it looks like this tilemod script can do the same thing.
i also wish other workspaces could be numbered so you can keep track of which workspaces have which windows on them
Do you mean static workspaces? You can configure something like that.
By default, Niri uses dynamic workspaces (they are deleted when empty), but you can create persistent ones.
My config file has this:
// Declare persistent workspaces workspace "1" workspace "2" workspace "3" workspace "4"This means workspaces 1 to 4 will always exist, even if they are empty. If I open something in workspace 3, it stays in 3 no matter what.
Now, if you do something like this:
// Declare persistent workspaces workspace "1" workspace "2" workspace "3" workspace "4" workspace "5" workspace "6" workspace "7" workspace "8" workspace "9" workspace "10"Then 10 workspaces will always be present (probably the only ones you’ll use). In this way, it may be easier to keep track of where your windows are.
This is my workflow too
Works on the laptop screen or docked on my ultrawide
Named workspaces and window rules to open application windows on a specific workspace
Then I bind super + 1 - 0 to switch between them
1 terminals 2 browsers 3 code 4 slack 5 teams (ugh) 6 discord 7 xfreerdp 8 empty 9 empty 0 keepassxc
When I boot up everything opens in the same place
The overview feature is great in Niri
I also use noctalia mainly for a bar at the top
Hmm, i might have to give this a try. One thing i’m wondering though is will this also allow you to have the workspaces numbered on something like waybar? Right now for my niri config i’m just using icons to indicate how many workspaces are open and which one is focused, but i’m not using numbers right now because of the workspaces not being persistent
I think they are numbered by default in waybar
Yeah i think that’s right, i just wanted to confirm that it works with niri when using persistent workspaces, cause i prefer to have them numbered and that’s what i use for my other compositors, but niri has always been an exception because of this issue.
I’ve worded it like shit before, but :
Standalone WMs are basically Gnome3 for neckbeards.
haha, not false :) I mean, in the end, I think Linux is mostly for neckbeards.
I started using window managers to reduce resource usage (I had a really shitty PC back then) and to stay organized. It worked for both. I really don’t like how much time you have to invest in configuring them (which is why I tried cosmic, it’s much easier to set up), but I think it’s worth it in the end.
Too much crap. My i3 configuration could be these 2 lines:
set penguin key as the mod
set $mod Mod4
Make Stacking the default
workspace_layout tabbed
