I’m interested in TWMs for some while now.
Currently, I’m running Gnome with the Forge extension, which gives me a quite nice tiling with the full fledged DE experience I need.

Especially Hyprland is the project I have an eye on the most. The ultra-smooth animations are just out of this world! (I’m not only locked on Hyprland tho.)

My current setup feels a bit clunky, and I want something proper, without losing the comfort of a fully functioning DE.
My end goal maybe would be making my own uBlue-image with a setup that works sane out of the box.

Are there any setups and recommendations of needed packages?

How do Sway, Hyprland and other TWMs differ from each other?
Which one would you recommend for starters, and which one is “the best”?

What do I need to know before getting started? Should I just dive into it head first?

If I have to ask all these questions, would you just say I should ditch the idea for now, with my current level of knowledge and time?

What has your experience been? Any problems I may encounter?

Thank you for your answers?

  • pinchcramp@lemmy.dbzer0.com
    0·
    9 months ago

    Another river user here. I like river, but I wouldn’t recommend it (for someone who’s never used a tiler). It feels a bit bare bones and there’s not that much development going on (still active, but not frequent updates).

    Both Sway and Hyprland are probably good picks. You can always switch to a different one, if your first choice doesn’t satisfy you.

    • Guenther_Amanita@feddit.deOP
      0·
      9 months ago

      Thanks for your opinion! :)

      Yeah, I’ve searched for river a bit, but there’s not much content out there.
      For the start, I wanna stick to something more popular.
      I think Hyprland has a bigger user base.

      Sway looks a bit barebones/ old fashioned due to lack of animations.
      Don’t get me wrong, it certainly is “the default” and “ol’ reliable”, but it seems to be very limited, due to the constraint of just replacing i3.
      Stuff like smooth animations, dynamic tiling, and more, sound a bit needless for many, but for me, looks and smoothness is very important.
      I will try Hyprland in a VM first and then look for a pre-made uBlue-image or try installing it in Distrobox/ Nix.

      • Cyclohexane@lemmy.mlM
        0·
        9 months ago

        I think it is Hyprland that is the outlier in being animated by default, rather than sway being especially barebones. Compared to popular WMs on X11, sway is not minimal. Compare to dwm and bspwm for example, both of which are pretty popular yet more minimal than sway.