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Comment by bradknowles | Hacker News Reader

My understanding is that tiling window managers went out with the first versions of MS Windows back in the early 90s.

I’m truly confused. Why would anyone want tiling window managers in the modern era?

The main difference of note is virtual desktops (typically 10). While it may seem like a large limitation to not have overlapping windows (aside from modern tiling managers also having the ability to have floating windows) having multiple workspaces automatically partitioned into useful layouts that can be called instantly (rather than tabbing through windows lists or otherwise selecting something with a mouse) can be beneficial to some people's workflows.

It's not the end all be all of how you can use a computer, but some people manage to make it quite effective and fast to have a keyboard driven tiling wm.

Other commenters are speaking to the ability to have them auto-configure to specific layouts, which is indeed useful for some people. I also find they provide easier window management/navigation on laptops. Rather than using gestures, task view, or alt-tabbing to find your window, you typically have specific groups of windows on specific virtual desktops which are bound to predictable hotkeys. So you might have something going on like:

Desktop 1 = WinKey + 1 = Browser

Desktop 2 = WinKey + 2 = Email application + WIP Reply

Desktop 3 = WinKey + 3 = Multiple Chat Apps

Desktop 4 = WinKey + 4 = IDE

Desktop 5 = WinKey + 5 = Debug Window + Documentation + Another Browser

I don't really have any hard and fast rules for what goes where, I just let things develop organically and don't restart my computer that often. For me, I find the ease/convenience of this makes working on a laptop 10x better. It sounds crazy but I almost prefer working on a laptop screen with a good Tiling WM to docking it with multiple screens.

On a larger/multiple screens, I find it's less necessarily to have the full features of a tiling WM. Something like FancyZones in PowerToys is good enough.

Virtual desktops and tiling are orthogonal.

You're right they are different features and you could have one without the other. But imo it's the implementation of them together you see in most linux wms (i3, bspwm, sway, etc) that makes my example scenario work so well. When I try to use virtual desktops on windows without tiling/hotkeys, I just get confused about what windows are on what desktop. And if I had tiling without virtual desktops, I would just run out of space, or be forced to use the i3 "tab mode" which I'm not a fan of.

I disagree. While it's possible to use them separately, in my experience virtual desktops don't make sense without tiling, and tiling doesn't make sense without virtual desktops.

Similarly, I use an app like Alfred to bind specific hotkeys to activate any app I want. But I use this without any kind of workspace construct.

I find it impossible to do programming work on a large monitor without a tiling WM. With one, it's a delight. No alt-tabbing, just switching between many desktops.

the bigger monitor, the more important tiling windows manager is

I'm not sure what was the use case back then, but today plus-sized 4k+ screens or ultra wide screens are commonplace. There's simply too much real estate for a single application window.

It's not a binary choice between tiling applications and just one at a time. Overlapping windows are a thing, and arguably were the thing in a lot of windowing systems for approaching four decades now.

I did not make myself clear, yes it is not a binary choice. Yes overlapping is one of the solution. Hand-managed layout (where you just place a window wherever you want) is one too. And so is tiling, which counters the point the original comment made (no use case for tiling WM in modern era).

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