I want the easiest to configure/theme wm and one that comes with sane defaults. Also I currently use cinnamon, and I’m not sure how to escape from that(everything in it is just so nice) but I want the speed of a wm
Disclaimer: I’ve used tiling window managers for all of 30 minutes in my life.
If you just want a faster cinnamon, you might consider merely switching to XFCE. Just change the menu to the whisker menu and you’ll be right at home.
WMs don’t typically come with “sane defaults” in the DE sense of the word; you have to make your own sanity. In order to find sane defaults, you’ll probably have to switch to a distro that has its own custom configs. (That being said, you can always copy the configs back to your original distro when you know what you want.) Maybe check out Mabox for some inspiration. I can’t speak to any other beginner WM distros.
If you like the relatively polished experience provided by a DE like cinnamon, you’re unlikely to enjoy a WM. It’s a much more DIY experience. Unless you have particularly unusual window layouts, you’re best off just learning the keyboard shortcuts already supported in your DE.
You honestly can’t go wrong with using i3. It’s super simple to use and has great documentation.
Isn’t i3 a tiling WM? If they use cinnamon that seems like a bit of a jump
Tried out sway which I hear is based on i3 and at least on NixOS it came with bare minimum config that didn’t allow me to use my laptop properly at all
Yes. Its tilling.Inn my opinion, if you wanna go the wm route, why not go the tiling route and get rid of using mouse alltogether (ツ)
You can still use your mouse. I3 allows using the mouse for moving Windows if you want it. Personally I manage Windows using shortcuts, but for GUI and some TUI apps I use the mouse anyway
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I like Hyprland
If you want sane defaults, try lxqt. It is still a huge improvement in performance after cinnamon, but you don’t have to manually configure everything like in WMs.
How different is that from lxde?
Same design, different technologies. LXDE was dropped in favor of lxqt. In terms of performance both are almost the same, but in the future, when all of old code will be dropped from lxqt, it would be lighter. Also lxqt looks more modern compared to lxde.
DWM
Yeah it’s customised by editing a C header but you don’t really need to know C to configure it, you can 100% just copy the patterns that are already there and change them up like you would with any other config format.
@ExplodeyWolf
You can install Xfce and change the window manager. You will need to install a compositor, picom for example, but you will have the xfce panel and a working DE. This works flowlessly with i3 and bspwm for sure. It’s a nice setup.But how do I do this? What stuff from xfce would I keep?
@ExplodeyWolf
I found this guide on endeavouros forum. Of course you need just the part where you kill xfwm and xfdesktop. It is for i3 but the principle similar for any window manager. And you need a conpositor, usually picom, because xfwm, that you are replacing, has its own compositor.
https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/tutorial-easy-setup-endeavour-xfce-i3-tiling-window-manager/13171
I don’t really need a task list on my panel, only for if I have an… Interesting alt tab implementation
Do you want a tiling or a stacking wm?
I would recommend using one with wayland compatibility if you can. Might as well not have to switch later.
I would recommend the opposite. You are limited in customizing Wayland WMs due to less amount of tools.
