 One of the things that my channel is most known for probably is Tiling Window Managers, and as such I get a lot of questions about Tiling Window Managers from viewers of the channel, and recently I got a request from a viewer. He wanted me to create a tier list of all the Tiling Window Managers that I've tried, and I thought, that's an interesting video, so why not? So today I'm going to do a tier list of 11 Tiling Window Managers that I have used, and I feel comfortable enough, I feel like I know them well that I can give a pretty good ranking of these, or a tier listing of these in my opinion. Of course, a tier list is going to be an opinion piece, right? It's not going to be factual in any way, right? It's not definitive, you know, the Tiling Window Managers that I love, you may hate, and the ones that I hate, you may absolutely love. So again, it's an opinion piece, so let me get started. And of course, to get started with making a tier list, most people are going to use a tier listing program, something like tierlist.com, or there's proprietary software out there that most content creators use to make their tier lists. Unfortunately, those programs aren't available on Linux, and even if they were, they're proprietary, I wouldn't use them. So I'm going to use a free and open source program to create my tier list. And of course, the program I'm talking about is going to be GIMP. So what I did is I just quickly spun up this little image here. So I created this tier list here, and I'm going to have five levels. Let me zoom in 100%. And you can see my levels are going to be great, good, okay, meh, and yuck. So which 11 Tiling Window Managers will we be ranking? Let me get into the text tool here in GIMP. And I am going to be ranking the following. Let me make sure you can see all of this. I'm get the line spacing all wrong here, but I'm going to be ranking awesome BSPWM, DWM, EXWM, I3 Window Manager, left WM, Qtile, SpectreWM, or Spectrum, StumpWM, and Xmonad. Now, let me go ahead and merge that layer down. So there's not that weird line behind it. So let me go ahead and make the window full screen here so we can see everything because there was a little bit of a cutoff here at the bottom. Let's start with the Awesome Window Manager. So let me go ahead and GIMP. I'm going to create a new layer because Awesome is going to go into the great tier. So I'm going to make this layer name Great. And let's go ahead and add Awesome. Now, the reason the Awesome Window Manager is in the great tier is because it's very easy to use. It's very new user friendly in that when you install Awesome Window Manager, it comes with a panel. It already has like a floating mode enabled by default, it actually has title bars and window decorations. It looks like a floating window manager when you first launch into it until you configure it kind of to be a tiling window manager, which is really what it's designed for. So even people that have never used a tiling window manager can use Awesome. It's very easy to configure. It's written and configured in Lua, which is kind of nice. It's a DWM fork. So actually, I think the code base is actually written in C, but the configuration file is written in Lua. And you use a lot of Lua libraries to extend it. And because of this, Awesome is extremely customizable, probably the most customizable window manager bar none. And because of that, Awesome has to be in the great tier. Moving on to the next window manager is BSPWM. Let me create a new layer because it's not going to go in the great tier, but I am going to put BSPWM in a good tier. So now the reason I put BSPWM in the good tier instead of the great tier is because it's a manual tiler. And, you know, I prefer dynamic tilers like Awesome rather than manual tiling window managers like BSPWM. That's just a personal preference. So that's, again, it's an opinion piece. The other thing is I'm not crazy about the way BSPWM is configured. It's okay, but the way BSPWM is configured is you write a config file. And typically people write this config file using bash scripting. But literally, you could use any language you wanted to create this config file, because all this config file does is call upon command line BSP programs like BSPC and things like that that control the windows move windows move workspaces, things like that. So literally, you could actually write your BSPWM config in bash or Python. I mean, you could write it in, you could probably write it in Haskell if you wanted to. I mean, it'd be crazy, but you could do it. And while that's neat, I also find that a little weird. And I think a lot of new tiling window manager users might find that a little weird. And I mentioned that I'm not a fan of manual tiling window managers. That's why I didn't put it in the great tier. But as far as manual tiling window managers go, I think BSPWM is definitely the best one. I think some of the default layouts make sense. I think, you know, documentation for BSPWM is pretty good. The one thing I will say is like if you go to their GitHub and they explain how manual tiling works, you know, they start with like a tree diagram and it's confusing as hell. Like people that really didn't know anything about tiling window managers BSPWM, reading their documentation might be a little confusing. That's why I probably wouldn't recommend BSPWM to somebody that just started with tiling window managers. Moving on to the next tiling window manager on the list is DWM and DWM. I don't think I have to create a new layer here and jump for it because I think I'm going to put it in the good tier right alongside BSPWM. Let me make this a little bigger here. So why is DWM in the good tier? Well, the good points is that it is a dynamic tiler, which for me, I like. I like the master stack layout, which is the default layout for DWM. It's also the default layout for awesome being a clone of DWM. Actually, it's a fork of DWM awesome is. Now, one of the things about DWM is its suckless software, meaning that it has a strict lines of code limit that they arbitrarily impose on it 2000 lines of code. So out of the box, it is kind of sparse on features. Like you're going to want to patch this thing and having to patch software, meaning you go grab patches from suckless.org and use the patch command and hope it works. You know, the automatic patching, if it doesn't, then you have to manually patch it where you read the defaults and go place lines of code and specific files in the DWM source code and then recompile, not new user friendly at all, right? It's an even not. It's not new user friendly, but even for people that know what they're doing, people like me, I find that tedious, right? I don't want to do that. So even though I think DWM as far as just the function and feel of it is fantastic, it easily could be in the great tier. If not for the fact that you have to patch it because of that, I have to dock it down into the good tier. Next on our list is EXWM. EXWM is a Emax Tiling Window Manager. So it's an Emax program that you install. And then it basically turns Emax into a Tiling Window Manager, meaning in your login manager, you log into Emax essentially, right? People always talk about just booting directly into Emax that Emax is an operating system. Well, Emax can't really be an operating system, but it absolutely can be a window manager. Many people do use it as a window manager and I've experimented with it and it had some good points and some bad points. But honestly, I've got to put it down here in the yuck category. So let me create a new layer. So I'm going to create this layer, call it yuck. Even though I said, you know, it had some good points and some bad points, the bad points are pretty bad, honestly. So let's start with the good points. The good points is, you know, when you turn Emax into your window manager, if you know how Emax works, then you know how your window manager works because all you're doing with EXWM is just you're living inside an Emax window. And if you know how buffers and frames work in Emax, that's all you're doing to control windows is just navigating around buffers and frames inside Emax. So your Emax user, that's great. You know, it's not a big learning curve. Honestly, it's not if you're an Emax user. Now, if you're not an Emax user, obviously, you shouldn't even try this. The other thing with EXWM is that Emax, and this is a fault of Emax in general, not just EXWM, Emax is still single threaded. It's not multi threaded. So do you really want your tiling window manager to be single threaded? No, it's very limiting. I have found EXWM to be very slow. It would typically hang on me when I was doing big jobs. You know, I do a lot of content creation, obviously, with, you know, doing things in, you know, and Kate and live rendering videos and things like that, that are very resource intensive. And I found EXWM just really bad for that crashes all the time and things like things that I found completely unacceptable. I would never use it on my main production machine. I think it's a neat project. But as long as Emax has that limitation where it's single threaded, EXWM has to be in the yuck tier. Moving on is Herbst Luft WM. Let me create a new layer for Herbst Luft because it is going to go in the meh category. Herbst Luft is another manual Tyler. Again, I prefer dynamic Tyler's and Herbst Luft like BS PWM can be configured in any language you want. Typically people use bash scripting to configure it. But I mean, you could write your Herbst Luft config using anything. I just find Herbst Luft not as comfy as BS PWM BS PWM is a little easier to get into. If I'm being honest, like if I was a new user and wanted to try a manual Tyler first, I said BS PWM isn't, I wouldn't, it wouldn't be my first telling window manager, but it could be my second or third, right? Herbst Luft, I would say is a little more difficult, just a tad. There's some some slight differences with Herbst Luft and BS PWM as far as Herbst Luft comes with a panel, although I think I used Polybar with Herbst Luft. BS PWM doesn't come with a panel at all. Most people that use BS PWM use Polybar with BS PWM. I have actually experimented a little bit using Xmobar with Herbst Luft and that worked okay as well. One thing I'll say about Herbst Luft, they do have a website, they do have some documentation. I wouldn't say the documentation for Herbst Luft is great. I wouldn't say it's deep. It certainly doesn't compare with the documentation on some other window managers we're going to discuss. One of them we've already discussed also has great documentation. There's a couple we haven't talked about yet that have just fantastic documentation. And one of those that has fantastic documentation is I3. And I3 is another manual Tyler like BS PWM and Herbst Luft. And honestly, I don't think it's as good as BS PWM. There's some things about I3 that irked me a little bit. So you know what? I'm going to put it also in the meh category. Now I3WM, let's talk about the good. The good is they have a fantastic website with fantastic documentation. That is always a plus. But I mean, you really are supposed to have fantastic documentation, right? If the best thing I can say about a piece of software is, hey, it has really good documentation. Well, yeah, I mean, that's a given. Like if you didn't have good documentation, like we shouldn't reward people for doing the things that they were supposed to do anyway, right? Now let's talk about the negatives with I3 window manager. One of the things I don't like about this window manager is the default config. I know you can change it, but especially with new users, the fact that I3 window manager, unlike every other telling window manager known demand, there's dozens of these things and like hundreds of programs on our Linux systems. Instead of using HJKL, the VimMotion keys, they move over one key and use JKL semicolon and it makes this thing practically unusable for anybody used to the VimMotion keys. I can't use it. You guys have seen me try to use the default config and I immediately have to change it every time I do a base install of I3. I don't know why the devs are so committed to keeping those horrible key bindings, but that's a big deal. One thing about the config for I3 is it is written in a invented syntax just for I3. It's written in a new user-friendly syntax. It's not written in any programming or scripting language like most of the rest of the stuff is. So like awesome, you're configuring with Lua and DWM, everything is in C. BSPWM could be in any language, but typically it's bash scripting, right? I3WM has its own config file written in its own custom syntax proprietary syntax and that's okay. It's very new user-friendly, but because it's not a proper programming language, it is limiting in what you can do in that config, right? Where if you know some Lua, for example, you can configure awesome to do whatever you want or if you knew some C, you could do whatever you want with DWM. You can't really use that I3 config file to do that much. Now, I3 does have plenty of plugins and extensions. There's plenty of documentation. You can actually do a lot with I3. I will say as far as being new user-friendly, it is, along with awesome, probably the best for new users out of the bunch we've talked about so far. Next up is LeftWM. Let me create a new layer here because LeftWM is going to go in the okay layer, so LeftWM. And the reason LeftWM is going to go in the okay layer is because, to me, it's just an okay window manager. I don't love it. I don't really hate it either. I could use it. I actually think it's a fine tiling window manager. It's essentially a clone of another window manager we're going to talk about later, Xmoned. LeftWM is written in Rust, but it's not configured in Rust. Like I3, it has a simple syntax that it uses for its config file, a custom syntax. So, again, that limits the customization you can make with that config file. So, you know, you don't have ultimate power the way you have, like, with DWM because it's written in C. You have to go into the C source code and do everything, which means you can do anything you want to with whatever knowledge you have of the C programming language, but you can't really do that with LeftWM. Now, one of the things I like about LeftWM is it has the ability to have custom themes, meaning you set several different themes and you can swap between them and you can swap between using different panels, different panel themes and things like that because it has these scripts that come with it. I didn't play around with LeftWM that much when I tried it. This was the last time I tried it. It was probably well over a year ago, but I spent a couple of weeks with it and I thought it was neat and I got it working with Polybar, rather easy, because it doesn't come with its own panel. You choose a panel. Polybar works nicely with it for those of you that are already using Polybar because it's an Xmonead clone. Xmobar also works really nicely with it. I used Xmobar with LeftWM for a while too and that was fine. LeftWM is one of the younger window managers on the list today too. It hasn't been around that long and I'm sure it's going to improve drastically from where it's at, but already it's a pretty good tiling window manager. If it was the only tiling window manager on the planet and I had to use it, I'd be okay with it, which is why it's in the okay tier. Next up is Qtile and anybody that has watched this channel for any length of time probably knows where Qtile is going to go on this list. Qtile obviously, let me get to this layer here, the great layer, because I'm going to add something to the great layer. I'm going to add Qtile. Qtile is an Xmonead clone again. Instead of being written in Rust like LeftWM, Qtile is an Xmonead clone written in Python and the config file is also written in Python because it's configured and written both in Python meaning you can do whatever the hell you want to with whatever knowledge you have of Python in that config file and you can make Qtile do practically anything. So that makes it very powerful because it's written in Python, which is a language, you know, most people start out with if you're learning programming, most people can figure out a little bit of Python. I would say Qtile also is one of the more new user friendly tiling window managers to use. Qtile also comes with a panel out of the box, much like awesome. So again, that makes it new user friendly. Now, I've done videos on all of these window managers I'm going to talk about today, but especially Qtile is one I have done many videos. I've got a series of videos on how to configure and customize Qtile. So check out those videos if you're interested. Next up is SpectreWM or Spectrum if you prefer. And I'm going to put SpectreWM in the okay list right alongside of LeftWM. I am going to basically say the same things I said about LeftWM. Spectrum like LeftWM is a clone of Xmonad, except it uses a new user friendly syntax and config file, which is nice for new users. It makes these LeftWM and SpectreWM by using a friendly syntax and an easy config file. They make Xmonad or an Xmonad like window manager much more approachable, right? Much more new user friendly, but at the cost of you can't quite extend them to the point that you could extend something like Xmonad. I think Qtile really gets it right because it basically made a clone of Xmonad, but it still used a real programming language to do that and it's configured in that programming language Python. So that's why Qtile is in the great tier and LeftWM and Spectrum they have to be just in the okay tier. One nice thing about Spectrum is it does come with its own panel unlike LeftWM where you have to use a third-party panel. Spectrum has a built-in panel and it's pretty good. And there's only two more window managers left and I bet people that have watched the channel know where I'm going with these. So next up is SnumpWM and SnumpWM it really can only go in the yuck tier. SnumpWM is one of those window managers that I have just struggled with. I did a video my very first look at SnumpWM was probably two maybe three years ago and that video is very negative. Maybe a little unfair like usually when I'm going to trash a piece of free and open source software typically I try not to make the video. I just decide not to make it at all. But SnumpWM and it's frustrating. It's a frustrating tiling window manager to use. It's frustrating to config. It's configured in common lisp. It uses a lot of emacs like key cords, key bindings. So it's very similar to EXWM, right? But not really. EXWM is just an extension of emacs. So if you know emacs, you know EXWM. EXWM is much easier to get into. SnumpWM is tough and every six months or so I actually revisit SnumpWM. I still have a config. Like every six months I'll be like you know what? I'm going to spend a couple of hours in SnumpWM today. I'm going to spend a couple of hours with a config just so I can remember. Just so I can reevaluate to see if my opinion changes. And it hasn't you know in the three years or so since I first took a look at it. Again, about every six months you know twice a year I'll take a look at it again you know off camera for a few hours in a day. And every time I go back to it. I still have the same opinion. It's tough. It seems limited. One of the things that's crazy is I can't even change like the fonts in the panel. It comes with a built-in panel. They call it a mode line, very similar to like an Emacs mode line. But it comes with the font terminus by default. That's the default font of that panel. And I can't change it because it doesn't support XFT fonts, like modern font rendering and things like that. There is like a library, a lisp library. I think it's called quick fonts that should fix that. But it's no longer supported. Whoever was maintaining it. I don't know. It's just weird having a tiling window manager that comes with the panel. And the panel is kind of gimped. No pun intended. I would say as far as being new user friendly. Stump WM is as far from being new user friendly as a window manager can be. So I definitely this is something you know if you want to check it out and you know you've been around the block a few times or maybe you just like Lisp, Stump WM. You'll probably have a better time with it than I did. If you're a new user stay well away from it. And last but certainly not least Xmonad and of course you guys know where this is going to go. It's going to be in the great tier Xmonad. I shouldn't have to tell you that it's a great window manager because Qtile, left WM and Spectrum are almost exact clones of Xmonad. Why did they basically design their tiling window manager to function basically exactly like Xmonad? It's because Xmonad got everything right. The way it handles multi monitors and workspaces and it's dynamic. It uses a lot of the same dynamic layouts like DWM. It uses the master and stack layout by default. It's just a really comfy window manager. Now let's talk about configuration because when it comes to being new user friendly Xmonad is not new user friendly. It has great documentation. Fantastic documentation. The documentation is you go look up documentation about the Haskell language. Haskell libraries because it's written and configured entirely in Haskell. Now because the documentation is great you know that's important but you have to know a little Haskell. Most people are not going to be familiar with that particular programming language and that particular programming language tends to be a little more difficult to grasp especially for people that are new to programming unlike something like Python for example. That being said if you take the time to learn a little Haskell learn some of the Haskell libraries and learn some of the various extensions Xmonad is extremely customizable, extremely extensible. Probably one of the most extensible window managers out there. Maybe if I had to say it's a second place in extensibility to awesome. Awesome. It's probably ultimate as far as customization options. In many ways Xmonad is more suckless in nature than DWM and the fact that Xmonad does not come with a panel by default although most Xmonad users use XMObar which is a panel written in Haskell that's designed really to be used for Xmonad but it's not part of the Xmonad program itself so you don't necessarily have to use a panel which is nice because many telling window managers actually don't bother with a panel at all so that's nice that it's not built into it so you're not forced into using it or at least that there's not source code built into the program for functionality you weren't going to use anyway. So that's my tier list there. Once again let's cover the great tier. I put three in it and I think those three had to be there. There's no there's no way I could not put awesome Qtile and Xmodad in the great tier. Now some of the rest of them I could have placed them differently BSPWM and DWM I think they're almost great right like they're so close but yeah I can't you know if you got to split hairs here and if we're creating a tier list you know I've got to say BSPWM and DWM are just not on the level as awesome Qtile and Xmonad so they've got to be in that second good tier the okay tier left WM and Spectrum because they're just okay window managers like I'm okay with them I don't love them I don't hate them I'm just okay with them. The mad tier Herb's Luft and I3WM they're tiling window managers that I don't love you know I can use them but they're yeah yeah they're mad and the yuck tier now the yuck tier is a definite I wouldn't change either one of these EXWM and stump WM EXWM would be fantastic if it wasn't an Emax plugin right the fact that Emax is single threaded makes it extremely unstable and because of that EXWM has to be here stump WM for me has always just been a mess so that is my tiling window manager tier list I hope you guys enjoyed this maybe you want some more tier list because honestly I wasn't sure how fun this would be but I enjoyed actually doing this if you want to see more of my opinions on tier list rankings of various kinds of software let me know down in the comments below now before I go I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of the show Devin Dustin Gabe James Maximette Michael Mitchell Paul Scott West why you bald homie Alan Armand Dragon Chuck Commander Angry Diokai Dylan George Lee Lennox Ninja Maastrum Michael Yon Alexander Pease Arjun Vador Polytech Realiteats for less Red Prophet Steven and Willie these guys are my hot steered patrons over on Patreon without these guys this episode you just watched would not have been possible the show is also brought to you by each and every one of these ladies and gentlemen as well all these names you're seeing on the screen right now these are all my supporters over on patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors right I'm just sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work I want to see more videos about free open source software and Linux and telling window managers subscribe to distro tube over on patreon peace guys now go easy in the comments this was just my opinion