Tiling window managers are almost a necessity if you log in to many applications throughout the day. When so many different apps come together on limited real estate, having them tile in different ways makes my job easier. It makes sense to do things other than just floating windows on top of each other. A window manager runs on your display server , on Linux that is Xorg, Wayland, etc.

Here is a screenshot of my 15.6in laptop screen right now:

WordPress 5.2.4, Linux Kernel 5.3.7, Chromium Web Browser, Terminator Terminal Screenshot

There are a few popular tiling window managers on Linux. Such as DWM, AwesomeWM, and i3.

I first tried an obscure one that no one has heard of called WMFS. That was a great window manager that I also used at work.

The trick to getting used to one of these is to learn the key commands to navigate with the keyboard. You can really take advantage of 10 fingers with all the things you can do quickly once mastery of the keys occurs.

How to install Awesome WM on Arch Linux:

pacman -S awesome

Select it at the Login prompt instead of XFCE, Gnome, etc, and you’re in!

Click Super + s to view the keybinds while you learn the ropes.