 I've had a million people ask me what's the point of tiling window managers because most of you guys run traditional desktop environments. So those of you running Linux, you're probably using things like Genome or KDE Plasma, XFCE, Cinnamon. Many of you are not even using Linux, you're running Windows and Mac, and Windows and Mac have very traditional desktop environments. And then you see people like me running these tiling window managers, and you're wondering why? What's the point? I think a lot of you guys honestly just don't really see the point because I think the name confuses people. The name tiling window manager, I think a lot of people assume that the only difference between a tiling window manager and your traditional desktop environment is the fact that it tiles windows, right? I really do think that's the name that misses people up, and I think it's part of the problem is people like me, we don't really articulate the real reasons we use tiling window managers. For me, and probably for most tiling window manager users, the reason we use them is because of workspaces. That's really why we use tiling window managers is how they handle workspaces, how they handle workspaces on multi monitors especially. The problem with the traditional desktop environments, whether that be on Windows, Mac, or Linux, is you can't really independently change workspaces per monitor, right? You have three monitors in front of you, they're all on the same workspace. And if you change to another workspace, all three monitors change to that new workspace. And that's not efficient at all. That's actually a horrible way to use multi monitors and workspaces. Tiling window managers do this in a completely different way. Every monitor is on its own workspace, and you can change workspaces on each monitor independently of the others. It won't affect the others at all, and that's brilliant. Once you start using workspaces and multi monitors like that, you can never go back to the just horribly inefficient and slow way of using multi monitors the way they are on your traditional desktop environments. So let me show you this in action. I'm going to switch views here, and right now I'm recording all three of my monitors. Monitor one right here is on workspace one. Monitor two right now is on workspace two. Monitor three, I actually have on workspace eight. I have nine workspaces. And workspace eight is dedicated mainly to recording videos. So that's where I throw OBS on. But if I wanted to, I could go over here to monitor three, which is on workspace eight. And I'm just going to put that on workspace three for now. And let's say on workspace three here, I want to open up a couple of terminals. I'll open up two terminals. I'll run htop on one. And of course, tiling window managers, you know how tiling window managers work. They actually tile the windows so you can always see all of the windows that are currently opened if I wanted not to tile, which I often don't. I often want like my web browsers and my text editors to be full screen. I actually never want them to tile. Well, I have a hot key that will quickly just bring whatever window has focus full screen and by full screen, I mean completely full screen. There's no window decorations. There's not even a panel anymore. That's a binding that I added to my tiling window managers because tiling window managers are very configurable, right? You can configure your windows to do whatever it is you want. You can configure them per program as well. For example, right now I'm on workspace three where I opened all these terminals, but I'm going to run D menu and I'm going to launch Qt browser. Yes, I have a window rule that tells Qt browser to always open on workspace two, which currently is on monitor two, even though I'm on workspace three and the mouse has focus on workspace three. Qt browser automatically defaults to opening on workspace two, which I called www for my web applications. Now let me switch focus over to monitor one. So I'm on monitor three right now. I have a hot key that allows me to move focus. So I'm going to move focus over to monitor two, move focus one more time over to monitor one. And now I'm going to launch doom Emacs over on monitor one. And now let me show you what's really cool. You know, on your traditional desktop environments, all three screens and all of these programs would all be on one workspace. And if I wanted to switch to another workspace, all of these programs go away because they all change to a different workspace, but not on tiling window managers. So I'm on workspace one right now looking at doom Emacs, but I want to switch back to my workspace with terminals, you know, on workspace three. Well, let me do super three. And you see how the monitors basically swap places. So that's really cool. And this workspace swapping feature that so many tiling window managers has, that really changes the way you think about how multi monitors and workspaces should be handled. You could never go back to the old way. Say I'm on workspace three right now on monitor one. Now I want to go to workspace seven, which isn't being used right now. You know, it's just an empty workspace. So workspace three went away. Right now I'm on workspace seven. If I wanted to bring workspace three back. I just quickly bring it back with a hot key. If I want to switch workspace three with workspace two, you know, I can do that. And you see once again, the monitors change places. If I want to get the monitors back in the correct order as far as one, two, three. Let me do super one here to get back to workspace one. Then I'm going to do my hot key to move to the second monitor. And now that I'm on the second monitor, I'm going to do super two to get back to the second workspace. Then I'm going to do my hot key to move over to monitor three. And then while I'm on monitor three, I'm going to hit super three to get to workspace three. I'm already on three though. Now let me switch workspace three back to workspace eight, which has OBS recording right now because I also have a file manager here that's showing the files as I'm recording them in OBS. Say I want to open one of these files in MPV. Well, I have a rule for MPV. MPV has to open on workspace eight, which we're already on. But say I opened PC man FM on a different workspace. Let me go back to workspace three. I'm going to close all these terminals and launch PC man FM. I'm going to go find a video to play. So let me go into this folder here and I'm going to play the very first clip I recorded for this video in MPV. MPV did not launch on this workspace. It actually launched on the eighth workspace. If I move over to the eighth workspace, let me mute that video. So tiling window managers, it really is less about the tiling. I know the name has tiling in it. And I know when people show you screenshots, you know, you see the the tiling layouts like the master and stack layout and things like that. But honestly, I could use a floating window manager. I mean, I could use GNOME or Plasma or anything like that, because many of them have the ability to set up keyboard shortcuts to launch your programs and close your programs, which is mainly what you everything's keyboard driven and a tiling window manager. You can get most of that stuff accomplished in your traditional desktop environments as well, but what you miss in a traditional desktop environment and there's no way to get it is this workspace feature in tiling window managers, these independent workspaces independent of your monitors. That's the reason I don't like the tiling window managers, if you will, that are built into things like GNOME and Plasma. I know they have extensions that will make GNOME a tiling window manager, like the pop shell and the there's a few shells out there for GNOME. There's also two or three for Plasma as well, such as Cronkite. The problem is that still the underlying desktop environment doesn't allow for these independent workspaces. And until they add that feature, then they're really not a tiling window manager. Yes, they tell the windows automatically, but that's not really what a tiling window manager is. And I think it's something, again, people like me have never really explained properly, and I think that's why you have people that are creating these extensions for GNOME and Plasma and other desktop environments, saying, hey, we turned it into a tiling window manager. Yes, you made your windows now tile a little bit. That's not really what a tiling window manager is. You have to get the workspaces to act like a tiling window manager for it to really be one. So I hope that answered some of the questions I've been getting because it's really not all about tiling windows. Most of the time I'm not tiling windows because I have three monitors. Typically, I'm opening two or three different programs. I'm opening each on its own monitor full screen. Why am I only going to open it on one monitor and then tile it and have them be small windows? I'm not going to do that. You know, the only time if I have more than three programs open, that's the only time I really ever start splitting the screen up and tiling. But it's more and more people get into using multi monitors because I recommend using multi monitors. I know these days a lot of people are getting into the ultra wide monitors. They just want a single ultra wide, but that's going to that's still going to run you into the same problem as you're looking at one monitor, one workspace. Don't do that. If you're going to have a ultra wide that is the same as two traditional monitors, you're better off getting the two traditional monitors and then using a tiling window manager to independently operate each monitor. Now, before I go, I need to thank a few special people. I need to thank the producers of this episode. Epsi gave James Mitchell, Paul West, a commie, Alan, Chuck, Kurt, David, Dylan, Gregory, Heiko, Erion, Alexander, Peace, Arch, and Fedor, Polytech, Ray versus Scott, Steven and Willie. These guys, they're my highest tiered patrons over on Patreon. Without these guys, this episode you just watched wouldn't 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 just have you guys, right? I don't have any corporate sponsors. It's just me and you, the community. If you like my work, please consider subscribing to Distro Tube over on Patreon. All right, guys, peace. Yes, it was laundry day. That's why I'm wearing these clothes.