Tiling Managers Are Life
Tags: tiling, system76, linux, popos
Published: 2021-12-30 15:56:33

---
title: Tiling Managers Are Life
published: true
date: 2020-05-02 03:37:29 UTC
tags: tiling, system76, linux, popos
canonical_url: https://baez.link/tiling-managers-are-life?pk_campaign=rss-feed
---

I can't believe I thought I could go back to the window manager ways.

I don't even know how I convinced myself to try to use a machine without a Tiling manager, but that was the case back when I first tried out [System76](https://system76.com/)'s [Pop!\_OS](https://pop.system76.com/). Before I get to the why for Pop, let me give a little back story.

I been using Tiling Managers for almost a full decade. It all started with an obsession of a small, but definitely strong, embedded language called [Lua](http://www.lua.org/).

Since the moment I learned of the language, I became absolutely obsessed with it. So much so, I wanted my whole software suite to be based on Lua. Everything from what I wrote personally, to what I wrote professionally, was in this language in one shape or another. It became such a large part of my way of being, to this day, Lua is the first thing I have installed on every machine that I can install it to. Be it work, home, servers, or things that compute, Lua is always there ready to help.

So when I was looking for some sort of desktop environment using the language, I learned of a tiling manager written in Lua; [Awesome](https://www.rust-lang.org/). The Awesome tiling manager is what would happen if you tried to mix ease of use with customization you can die for. You end up being in a place where you can make your desktop experience actually function as your desktop experience. A truly custom tailored tiling manager to your precise needs.

I was happy with Awesome. But being a polyglot by nature, I became in love with a different language in the coming years; [Rust](https://www.rust-lang.org/). Very much like my fascination with Lua, I ended up having a Rust written something, **everywhere**. Thus, when System76 announced Pop!\_OS, they also announced it would have parts of its internals written in Rust. Nuff said. I ended up installing it on my machine and wait for it... actually _like_ Gnome 3.

With the new love, my heart still ached from missing the tiling manager life of old. Ended up trying all the Gnome tiling manager extensions, but they just didn't feel right. Still, I stuck with [gTile](https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/28/gtile/) as the extension of choice for imitative Tiling management on Gnome 3.

However, with Pop's new release of 20.04, a full integrator level extension to gnome 3 has been made by the lovely lovely team in system76 for [tiling management](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fltwBKsMY0). Now it's not like Awesome, but I mean how could it be? Awesome is awesome for a reason. No, this released extension for Pop!\_OS is based on [i3](https://i3wm.org/). But boy is it outstanding. I definitely have a home with System76's work for years to come. Still learning the key bindings and tricks, yet you can very much see there was so much thought put in the tiling manager work. For crying out loud, the crazy team are even [making a keyboard](https://blog.system76.com/post/612874398967513088/making-a-keyboard-the-system76-approach) designed slightly different to augment the tiling manager use with their [keyboard shortcuts](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqj0cRTZaVE). I'm absolutely sold.

If you still deciding whether you want to run a Tiling manager or not, stop what you doing. Install Pop!\_OS. You'll Thank me later.

[#100DaysToOffload](https://baez.link/tag:100DaysToOffload) [#Day7](https://baez.link/tag:Day7)