So Ive been using linux for a long time and mostly with gnome. I know about window managers and how using them will reduce the memory usage by system a lot because they are less bloated etc. I want to try a window manager on my nixos machine - this will be my first time trying one, I have good knowledge in programming so technical stuff wont bother me that much. Which window manager do you suggest? Customization is my priority.
Suckles DWM is amazing. No bloat at all. There is only 1 config file, and you edit it with pure C like a gigachad. Like all suckles software, it strictly obeys the Unix philosophy, and it has been the cause of the most lightweight set ups that are also cool hacker-looking
If you’re not into tiling, but still want several of the advantages of sway, it offers a couple of additional modes, stacked and tabbed. I really loved tabbed setting some things to be floating. It’s like it sounds, it offers a horizontal tab with all windows within per workspace, maximized below the tabs… Stacked is similar but it stacks the tabs vertically. If you’d tell me before a tiling compositor has such functionality I wouldn’t have believed it. I like it better than stacking compositors, :)
Wayland: SwayWM, River (the most customizable wm I’ve ever used).
X11: DWM (configured via C, a little bit of effort if you’re not a minimalist), xmonad (via Haskell, on par with River).
My recommendation for getting started is Sway, but the others are definitely more customizable, as they use PLs for configuration. BSPWM and i3 are also good for X11, and a good middle ground between DWM’s nerdery and xmonad’s Haskell barrier. Wayland offers a much better experience if you’re not using Nvidia though. Some will recommend hyprland, but I really don’t like (IMHO). There are also some controversies around it’s leadership…
One thing that has kept me on dwm for so long is that my patched configuration no longer needs any more changes and I take it with me wherever I go. it was challenging but rewarding.
Never an upgrade needed.
I eventually want to go to Wayland and River seems nice!
Also might want to give https://codeberg.org/dwl/dwl a shot for dwm in Wayland
Not really helpful if you are on another distro but gentoo has a
savedconfigflag for the package that lets you store a permanent header file for the DWM variables in with the package manager config files. It integrates really nicely.
gotta go with this one :D
I’m a happy i3 user, but that actually looks pretty enticing. Might give that a go the next time I’m trying something new.
I use xmonad (https://xmonad.org/) and Qtile (https://qtile.org/). I love them. Another interesting option would be notionwm (https://notionwm.net/)
Awesome WM is what I currently used with Debian. Works great. It was the first one I used.
I used Hyprland back when I used Arch. Runs really well.
Qtile, Openbox are other ones I’ve enjoyed as with.
I3/Sway seems to be popular, but I was disapointed when I tried them. I prefer Bspwm because windows are always spawned with a good height/width ratio. Computers are useful because of the automation capability, so it make no sense to use a WM without any automation.
How’s the stability of bspwm for you? It used to be my go-to but I think multiple monitors would make it crash when I used it years ago.
I never encountered bugs, but I don’t use multiple monitors.
Depends on usecase and Xorg vs. Wayland. I like Niri on my Thinkpad with touchscreen, using Wayland.
Enlightenment all of the features, gorgeous, and lightweight.
System76 I think does it on gnome now. I don’t use it but I’ve seen some components of it.
I feel like hyprland is really popular, or at least it’s the one I most often hear mentioned. It should be really configurable as well, so maybe it’s worth a look. I’m not sure you’re going to notice much of a performance difference though, unless the device has a really limited amount of RAM.
If you have a machine with decent RAM them don’t worry about RAM usage. You don’t really gain anything by dropping 4 gig RAM usage down to 2 gig RAM.
I liked using open box, looks pretty decent and user friends from the get go and uses fewer resources then most desktop environments. If you do use open box I would use the tint2 task bar with it. I hadn’t explored window managers in some time but that’s what I would suggest for getting a tip top performance out of any device. (maybe not the max but pretty close, while looking more modern like.
BTW, labwc is sort of the openbox for wayland, in case interested
Disclaimer: If you want to explore window managers then go ham! Linux is all about exploration.
Now, If you think the grass might be greener on a different desktop manager then stick with gnome. By no means am I saying Gnome is the best, but its more of a situation where it will devolve into the quirks you know vs the quirks you don’t know situation.
Personal Antidote, I started with Gnome and used Gnome for years. Got curious and started jumping around I tried KDE, I3W, XFCE, Pure X, Etc. There were things I liked about each one of them but the quirks of each deviating from my expectations coming from gnome was too much and I ended up sticking with gnome.
That being said, out of necessity due to system constraints I run XFCE when I need a light weight DE. A close second in that realm is LXDE But I don’t like its default aesthetic nor do I feel like customizing it since I do most of my computing in a terminal.
If you’ve been using gnome, you’ve already been using a window manager.
Unless you’re on a very limited RAM budget, I wouldn’t bother messing with it too much, unless you feel like breaking things.
