tiling window manager users are insane

Being I mentioned i3 and Sway in my last post, I wanted to talk more about tiling window managers. People who use them are insane.

You may have heard that some Linux users are anti-mouse. True? Yes. I know I am. But then again, I've been anti-mouse ever since the Windows 3.1 days. More on that in a bit.

Modern tiling window managers hearken back to DESQview. Yeah, that shell from 40 years ago that BBS sysops used a lot because it gave you true multitasking in DOS. That was good. For vintage PC peoples, DESQview is the most tiling manager-esque thing you could use. So if you were ever wondering, "Can I tile (more or less) on a PC with just an 8086 CPU and DOS?" With DESQview you can.

But let's talk about the insanity, because that's the fun part.

The deal with using a tiling window manager can be summed up in three major points. Avoid the mouse, do everything possible in text mode, establish as much of a distraction-less computing environment as you can.

My insanity started real early with Windows. I learned how to operate Windows 3.1 completely mouse-less, then carried that all the way to XP (with help from Launchy). After XP, you really couldn't use Windows mouse-less anymore for 100% of the environment. Not comfortably, anyway.

The way I do a lot of mouse-less stuff in Linux is with both keyboard shortcuts and keyphrases using xdotool and AutoKey.

I still use the mouse, but I never double-click anything because I hate double-clicking. My mouse wheel click is my double-click. Back when I used to use Windows, the Microsoft Intellipoint control software had the option to assign the wheel click as double-click. When I discovered that, oh yeah, awesome. I've been using my mouse that way ever since. When I used a non-Microsoft mouse, I used AutoHotKey and this was in my configuration to get back my wheel-click-as-double-click:

MButton::
KeyWait, MButton, t0.1
Click, 2
return

While this wasn't perfect, it worked mostly well.

In Linux, registering wheel click as double-click is this first:

xbindkeys -d > ~/.xbindkeysrc

Second, edit .xbindkeys and add this before "End of xbindkeys configuration" and save:

"xdotool click --repeat 2 1"
b:2 + Release

Third, do this:

xbindkeys --poll-rc

Done. And it always works.

The mouse I'm using these days is the Microsoft Basic Optical Mouse. Three buttons (left, right, wheel), wired, works. Thankfully, other basic wired optical mice are still available. Logitech, Dell, HP, etc., the standard fare.

Something I know all too well is that a big reason why some nerds are anti-mouse is because mice keep breaking, and truly good business class mice don't exist anymore. They're all dopey "gamer" mice now. What to do? Purposely buy cheap mice and use keyboard shortcuts instead, that's what.

As for tiling stuff, I have that available to me in Linux with Konsole:

...so it's not like I need to change out my entire window manager to get it.

I absolutely do not want my graphical windows tiled because that distracts more than helps. Whenever I launch a web browser, I have two keyboard shortcuts to do two very specific things. First, resize the window to 1600x900 with CTRL+ALT+9. Second, exactly center it in the middle of the screen with Super+C. I can't stand having crap to the left and right and need it floating in the center. In addition to 1600x900, I have CTRL+ALT+1 for 1024x576, CTRL+ALT+2 for 1280x720 and CTRL+ALT+8 for 800x600 (which actually comes in handy more often than you'd think).

Back to Windows for a moment, the utility I used to exactly center program windows with a very specific window size using keyboard shortcuts was Sizer. Absolutely brilliant little program. No such thing (that I know of) exists for Linux, so I had to figure out another way and found one. A custom keyboard shortcut resizes the window first with xdotool, then a KWin script Move Window to Center is used with Super+C to center it. This isn't elegant, but it absolutely works.

Where the insanity truly begins...

...is trying to use a modern web browser mouse-less.

No, I'm not talking about Lynx or w3m. I mean using a full graphical browser with no mouse.

Firefox, amazingly to this day, does still have caret browsing:

...and that's as close as you'll get to using a modern GUI browser mouse-less.

Unless somebody has invented another way to navigate with solely the keyboard in a GUI web browser, caret browsing is how you can mostly navigate any web page keyboard-only... except for video sites and social media.

I actually tried caret browsing with YouTube, and... it did not go well. Didn't even bother trying it with other social media, because I'm pretty sure caret browsing would be just as much of a train wreck there too.

Even with a tiling window manager, the web browser dictates that fully committing to the keyboard 100% just isn't doable. You need a mouse when using a desktop web browser and that's just the way it is.

Oh yes, I totally do keystroke everything I can in the browser. I've been CTRL+L'ing to open web addresses, CTRL+T new-tabbing, CTRL+PgUp/PgDn tab switching, CTRL+W closing tabs, and up/down arrow-keying when reading pages for years. But I can't do everything in the browser with just the keyboard. Could if I would, but can't.

While web browsing mouse-less is awful, I can't even imagine how tedious it would be trying to edit video mouse-less. Sure, it's technically possible with FFMPEG and probably HandBrakeCLI (the CLI is already included with the graphical HandBrake), but that doesn't mean it's a good idea.

Next level batshit insane

There's that thing dwm users do. What do they do? They quite literally edit source code to customize dwm, because it's designed to be customized that way.

Yeah, that means actual programming.

I'm not doing that.

But I can appreciate why programmers like it. Programming is required just to customize dwm, so there you go. If you can't program, dwm is not for you.

dwm, put politely, is not what one would call a casually approachable tiling window manager. Yeah, it's tiny and insanely quick. But make no mistake that in order to customize it, code must be compiled and recompiled several (if not many) times to make it do what you want. I'll pass on that.

Will I ever switch to a tiling window manager?

There are plenty of other tiling window manager choices besides dwm that I could easily get along with. Even so, I seriously doubt I'd ever use one because the fundamental thing it does annoys me, which is tiling.

Again, I absolutely can't stand having other stuff to the left and right, and prefer to have whatever I'm working on front and center, literally.

Yeah, I could have a floating window front and center with other tiles running other stuff in the background. Nope, don't want that. I'd rather have a desktop.

See, the deal is that I actually use my computer desktop like a desktop. If I have something I'm working on, I make a desktop folder for it. Then once I'm done, I put the folder away elsewhere or get rid of it if no longer needed.

A floating window manager makes the most sense to me because it's akin to how real life works. If I have actual real folders with paper documents in them, I don't tile them on my desk. I stack them, maybe fan them out, whatever. At no point would I ever physically place folders of documents in a grid.

I also legitimately do like a computer desktop that I can dump whatever I'm working on there until I'm done with it. My use of a computer desktop somewhat acts like a to-do list. Whatever is on the desktop is a not-done.

And yes, this means I keep my desktop clear of program launcher icons. The only two I have as always-there is a link to script I wrote to restart the shell (rarely used), and a Linux notes text file that's my own self-documentation on how to do Linux stuff. I started that text file when I first switched to Linux 2.5 years ago and it still gets updated periodically. Other than that, everything else is to-do stuff. I don't even keep the Trash shortcut there since it's already in the file manager.

I also like the taskbar. A lot. But only when I can keep it skinny/thin, which is easy in pretty much all Linux window managers. Some people hide the taskbar. I don't, because I use it for its intended purpose, which is to show me what's open. And I have a tray area with a few icons and a clock. I like that too. Yes, I know a tiling window manager can also do this, but still, tiles... I don't like tiles.

What's the sell of a tiling window manager?

If you couldn't tell from some of what I said above, I use KDE Plasma, which in itself has a ton of tiling capability baked right in, albeit it's nowhere near as keyboard-driven as a true tiling window manager. But I can tile as the day is long whenever I want. I just don't.

There are three things that sell (as in convince one to use) a tiling window manager. Far less system resource used, the most screen real state given to programs, and heavy emphasis on being keyboard-driven.

Love the keyboard stuff, no question. But I hate the tiling.

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Published 2026 Jan 22