 So a week or so ago, I got challenged to use X monad and I wrote about this in a blog post But I got distracted by Q tile. Yeah It was like I was aiming for X monad and I was like, I don't want to So I ended up in Q tile. I will end up I am going to start my X monad challenge here pretty soon That is for another video, but I wanted to talk about Q tile today because every time I come to Q tile I realize how really really good it is and Every time I go away from Q tile, I forget about how good it is and I go back to being an i3 fanboy now I still love i3 i3 is my favorite window manager and probably always will be There's just things about i3 that I adore like I seriously love the ability to have as many workspaces as I want Easily and I like the way that it signs it to monitors I like the way that they're dynamic and not created until you want them to be created, you know all these things really really good and I will always be an i3 fanboy, but there are certain things about i3 that I don't like right? I'm not a big fan of the scratch pad functionality Doesn't quite work the way that I want it to work But you know I lived with it for a very long time and I still maintain that i3 is the best beginners Window manager out there and I think that it is very good for Long-term users as well that being said every time I come back to Q tile like I said, I remember how really really good it is So today what I want to do is talk about the five things about Q tile that I truly adore the things that I really really love about Q tile Let's go ahead and jump in the first one and this is going to become as a surprise to absolutely nobody Scratch pads now scratch pads are not a unique featured Q tile. That's a hundred percent true I3 has them X Monad has them DWM has them BS PWM does not have them, but you can add them if you wanted to you name the window manager It probably has scratch pad functionality They all do them in a little bit different ways and that's really what differentiates Q tile is that Q tiles way of doing scratch pad is fantastic Now one of the reasons why it's so good is because it's very simple either you do have to import a Python library in order to do it But after that it's just a matter of setting the scratch pads and the key bindings. That's literally all you have to do There's no adding anything extra like you have to do an X Monad There's no rules that you have to set really In Q tile like you do in I3. It's just a matter of setting the scratch pad Telling of what size you want it to be and then set the key the key binding It's really that simple another reason why they're so good is because they're unkillable now That's not exactly true. You can kill a scratch pad on q-tile It goes away if you if you press your key your kill key binding It does go away, but it responds right and that's what's so good about it Especially in comparison to I3 whereas in I3 you create a key a scratch pad and you kill it You know the only way to get that scratch pad to come back is to restart I3 That's it has that's by far the worst part about scratch pads on I3 on q-tile If I were to kill one of my scratch pads, all I'd have to do to get it back is press the scratch pad Key binding it popped back up now. It wouldn't remember what was in that scratch pad prior to me killing it So it's not truly unkillable But the fact that I can easily get it back if I were to accidentally kill it that is so good to me And especially after using I3 for so long it stands out as one of those features that man, this is really good The second thing that I truly love about q-tile is the bar now I3's built-in bar is Not bad I won't go so far as to say it's bad, but I've never cared for it very much I always replace it with poly bar in I3 I've never made an exception to that like and well, I can't say never I think there was a like a small period of time that I wanted to be luke smith when he was using I3 and I3 blocks But then I realized that I'm not a crazy guy in the woods So I'm you know, I'm a fat guy in michigan. So, you know, there's a there's a difference. So Yeah, I've I've always used poly bar in I3 And that's just kind of the way that it's always been but on q-tile I've never had the urge to use a different bar because the q-tile bar is so good now One of the reasons why it's so good is simply because it is so customizable you can change the position of it very easily you can Make it have gaps you can change the width of it very simply And it has a lot of widgets. I'll talk about the widgets here a little bit more later But the q-tile developers have done a fantastic job of creating a ton of built-in widgets to the point where There's pretty much one there for anything that you could possibly want And if there's not it's very easy if you know a little bit of python to create your own Now I don't know enough python to create my own But I'm told from those who know a little bit of python that it's fairly easy. So Theoretically if I get my ass up and actually learn python I could probably do one fairly easily. So I like the fact that there are a ton of widgets that they have You know out of the box. They're included. You don't have to do anything special other than import them at the beginning of your configuration file And you can add them very easily to Your bar and on top of that each widget has a ton of functionality in and of itself Each one has different parameters that you can add to it to Make it behave in certain ways how it looks and feels and reacts to to click events and all this stuff It's very easy to do right inside the built-in q-tile bar And that's one of the reasons why I like it so much is because it's here You don't have to do anything to it To get it. It's just included now I understand like bspwm doesn't come with a bar xmonad doesn't come with a bar That's fine. And and I would always add bars to them And that's my point every time I come across a window manager that doesn't have a bar I always add one so that adds extra work for me to order to get it up and set it now I call it work. I enjoy it. So like I enjoy setting up all those things. So I don't mind it But it adds an extra thing to do And q-tile doesn't have that extra thing because the bar is here. I can just jump right into customizing so the bar is fantastic And I know I'm doing a lot of comparison between q-tile and i3 and that's just because i3 is the one that I've used the most So that's just kind of the reason why that's happening. So the the third one Is also not exclusive to q-tile. In fact, most window managers have this functionality But again, I'm compares comparing really i3 and q-tile and in i3 There are no layouts. It's a complete manual tyler Which means that you are going to be in complete control of where the window is going to spawn next and There's a part of me that still likes that way of doing things, but I also like layouts. So in i3 I would always download and enable auto tiling so that I'd have a Fibonacci like Layout And while that's not really my favorite layout it allowed me to not have to worry about where the window is Going to spawn I just opened up windows and knew that it was going to Go into a situation where I could actually use them instead of just Continuing on in one direction no matter which that we know direction that happened to be in q-tile, there's multiple layouts and It's very easy to switch between layouts and you can assign layouts to different workspaces So it gives you a lot of control over how your Layouts are you know functioning between workspaces and how you control them with key bindings and stuff like that It's very very good And like I said, it's not exclusive to q-tile X monad has multiple workspits or multiple layouts dwm can have multiple layouts Basically every window manager that has an amodicum of dynamic capability has different layouts You know even bspwm, which is kind of like a it's supposedly a manual tyler, but it's also a dynamic tyler It has a default layout right you can and you can add more layouts to it if you want to with scripts So I think the real reason why I like the layouts in q-tile so much is just because I'm coming from i3 And i3 does not have layouts very easily. So that's one of the reasons why I like it so much the fourth one on the list is one that I've Switched back and forth on quite a bit and that is the way q-tile does workspaces now I'm on record saying that I like the way that i3 does workspaces. I like the fact that I can assign them to monitors I like the fact that they're only spawned when I need them And I like the fact that I can have 20 of them if I want to now You can have as many workspaces as you want q-tile. I've finally figured that out. So I have 12 right now and that seems to be Mostly enough, even though I only have three empty ones right now, which is you know, whatever, you know, you guys know me in workspaces, but Uh, so you can have as many on work on q-tile as you want, but i3 does it easier Mostly because it's easier to assign key bindings because the the the names and the key bindings on q-tile are kind of tied together Whereas on i3 you can name them whatever you want and then assign them to different key bindings It's just a little bit different, right? But the reason why I've gone back and forth is because I do like the way Workspaces on q-tile can switch between monitors So right now I'm looking at workspace 6 on this monitor here the one that the camera is monitoring I have another monitor that's over here. It's my bigger monitor, right? If I wanted to move workspace 6 To this monitor all I'd have to do is have the focus on this monitor and then Just change to workspace 6 and it switched between them, right? It no matter where I am It it's very easy to move the workspace that I want to the monitor that I want it to be on Now you can do that in i3. There's a key binding to move A workspace from one monitor to another monitor. It's very it, you know, it's not even a hard key binding to remember It's perfectly fine but it doesn't work like that by default and I've found Over the course of the last two weeks of using q-tile and in my previous times of using q-tile That I kind of like the way this does workspaces better allowing me to switch Easily where the workspaces are on which monitor allows me to almost always point this direction, right? This is my bigger monitor. It's 32 inches compared to 27 inches And while I do still every once in a while turn my head to see what's on this monitor It's nice to know if I have to focus on something For more than just a few seconds I can switch so that the stuff that I want to focus on Is on the bigger monitor and I can keep my head and my neck this way instead of Cranking my head over this direction hearing my neck popping crazy nasty ways And you know having to focus on here for too long while keeping my you know my fingers this direction to keep typing on my You know my keyboard so the way q-tile does workspaces I really do like now again It's not exclusive to q-tile because I'm hearing the x-monad people in my comments. I can only like x-monad does that too True, but it also has haskell, which is a big downside So that I love the way q-tile does workspaces and it's it's really good So the last one on the list is a little bit more Wishy washy because I love it and I hate it So what I'm talking about is the documentation of q-tile now I will fight tooth and nail against anyone who says that i3 doesn't have the best Documentation i3 has the best documentation Bar none. It's not even it's not even to me. It's not even Close to any other window manager i3 has the best documentation out there now that being said q-tiles is also really really good and the reason why it's good is because if you are someone who understands just a modicum of Python you can get a lot of information from the q-tile documentation The downside to the q-tile documentation is that it's very technical and you do have to have some idea of how q-tile works in order to actually search through it, right? If you don't know what you're searching for in the q-tile documentation, it's going to be impossible to find Whereas with the i3 documentation if you wanted to search for colors or the bar or whatever You could do that very easily because it's all a non-technical speak Whereas in the q-tile documentation, there's a lot of code samples, right? It tells you how to do things inside a python inside of the configuration file And that's not something that i3 has to do So my love hate relationship with the documentation of q-tile is that it's very very in-depth It has all the stuff there that you want it to have but it's also a little bit too technical for a lot of people So I put documentation as the fifth one because it is very very good Not i3 good, but still very very good and of the of all the window managers that I've tried i3 and q-tile By far the best documentation. I guess not it's not even close. I know a lot of people again. I'm I'm I'm picking on the xmonad nad guys, but the xmonad guys love to say that Haskell and xmonad have has very good documentation and It's okay documentation, but again, you got to know a lot of Haskell To to have any clue what's going on with that documentation, right? It's very very technical in in pros and in in examples and stuff so And justifiably because you have to know Haskell in order to use xmonad. So that's not really a downside It's just compared to these two which are At least a little bit user-friendly in the case of q-tile and very usually user-friendly in the case of i3 It doesn't really compare after i3 q-tile and xmonad the documentation for basically everything else sucks dwm has no documentation whatsoever Like they're actually anti-documentation. They don't want new users to use dwm So they didn't do a good job of documenting things at all like patching and stuff has one page Actually, the and the hacking page on dwm is like one page completely. It's not just patching So dwm doesn't have a very good documentation at all BS PWM has documentation, but you have to know that it exists It's all in man pages, right? It's not online anywhere that I found unless it's online as a man page And so you have to know that if you wanted to Find the documentation for BS PWM. You have to go find the man pages for bspc Which is you know an abstraction that not everybody gets right? It took me a long time to realize that Hey, BS PWM does have documentation, but you have to go searching the man page for it So yeah that all that stuff is beside the point the documentation for q-tile is is really really good And especially in comparison to some of the others out there It's it's great. So those are the five things that I really really love about q-tile Probably the scratch pads in the bar are the two that I'm I'm most happy with right now I'm finding it really hard to leave, right? I have this x-monad challenge that I've been asked to do and some of my You know procrastination is because I don't like x-monad. I'm not a big Haskell fan. Okay. I like x-monad I hate Haskell. I should put that the other direction. I can't stand Haskell. So I'm I'm dreading that I've said I'm going to do it, but I'm you know, I'm procrastinating but a lot of my procrastination stems from the fact that I'm just having a fantastic time In q-tile adding widgets to the bar adding different layouts adding different themes, you know trying to make it so that the configuration file is a little bit pared down and things are sourced in different to different files and stuff It I've just been I've just had so much good I've had such a good time with all that stuff that I've you know, I kind of don't want to leave So that's it for this video if you have thoughts on q-tile, you can leave those in the comment section below I'd love to hear from you. You can follow me on mastodon or odyssey those links will be in the video description As always you can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the linux cast links for libera pay in youtube It will be in the video description as well if you'd prefer to support me on those platforms Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon. You guys are all Absolutely amazing without you the challenge is not be anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you so very Very much. I truly do appreciate it. Seriously guys just Constantly blows my mind that you guys support me and it's just amazing. So thank you so much for your support Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time