Tiling vs Floating Style Window Managers and How Each Mode Can Help Us Be More Productive
There are 2 main styles of window arrangement, tiling and floating, both of them can be very powerful. Floating window managers are similar to the ones windows and macOS uses, they float each open window on top of each other and with focus arranging which one is on top. Tiling window managers evenly divide the screen’s space between the windows, there is no overlap. There are window managers for each style, and some that even blend both.
The floating style window managers are very simple to use and become productive to a good degree. In this modality, users use their mouse to click on the window they want to focus, or select the focus with alt — tab on their keyboard. Each window has decorations around it, that is a frame that surrounds the window canvas, the frame has buttons that maximize, minimize and close buttons. Floating window manager users often use only 1 workspace to house their windows as they can minimize the windows and bring them up when necessary.
The tiling window manager approach is quite different. Tilers already arrange the windows we open for us, automatically, all of the windows are visible at the same time as the since: Why would you open windows you don’t want to see? If you don’t want to see them, move to another workspace. Tiling window managers have 9 or more workspaces, they act like virtual screens, they house windows inside and can be shown 1 at a time. For instance, I keep my audio player and telegram open in another workspace instead of minimizing them and switch to the workspace as necessary. Tiling is instantaneous and extremely space efficient, although it requires learning how to use it. Tilers are commanded through keyboard shortcuts that at first, can feel weird to new users but after some time, they regain that time lost in productivity.
