I’m using the term “WM” loosely, as a more of a general term here.
And no, i can’t call a DE that adds a title bar to every window, has a huge-ass taskbar, and a limited amount of free space per workspace “best for limited screen real estate”. Something like Niri, MangoWC or Hyprland (with scrolling layout enabled) works much better and cleaner precisely in that regard, since they offer
a) a hotkey-first UX, meaning that everything usually represented by a UI button is moved to the keyboard and no longer needs to clutter the screen
b) literally infinite horizontal space.
I literally can’t go back ever since i gave tiling a try, any floating de/wm now feels clunky and awkward to me.
I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context. I have a large monitor, so I can afford to lose some pixels to my taskbar or window borders. That being said, if I did care, I can make the taskbar autohide and pick a slim/minimal theme for the window borders. With regard to XFCE, I said I make it Unity-like. As such, there is no taskbar. I have a slim panel at the top that shows stuff I want to be able to see easily (i.e., pinned background applications, battery life, date, time, etc.) My dock-like panel autohides, so it takes up no real estate. Maximized windows merge into the top panel like in Unity, so the window borders take up no extra room.
Any DE can become “hotkey-first.” For example, I launch terminal with CTRL+ALT+T. My application launcher is CTRL+SPACE, and it is text-based. Most DEs have default hotkeys for a lot of functions, and they are customizable.
Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is. I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling. Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it. Different strokes for different folks.
I’m using the term “WM” loosely, as a more of a general term here.
And no, i can’t call a DE that adds a title bar to every window, has a huge-ass taskbar, and a limited amount of free space per workspace “best for limited screen real estate”. Something like Niri, MangoWC or Hyprland (with scrolling layout enabled) works much better and cleaner precisely in that regard, since they offer
a) a hotkey-first UX, meaning that everything usually represented by a UI button is moved to the keyboard and no longer needs to clutter the screen
b) literally infinite horizontal space.
I literally can’t go back ever since i gave tiling a try, any floating de/wm now feels clunky and awkward to me.
I use KDE on my desktop because I don’t care about maximizing screen real estate in that context. I have a large monitor, so I can afford to lose some pixels to my taskbar or window borders. That being said, if I did care, I can make the taskbar autohide and pick a slim/minimal theme for the window borders. With regard to XFCE, I said I make it Unity-like. As such, there is no taskbar. I have a slim panel at the top that shows stuff I want to be able to see easily (i.e., pinned background applications, battery life, date, time, etc.) My dock-like panel autohides, so it takes up no real estate. Maximized windows merge into the top panel like in Unity, so the window borders take up no extra room.
Any DE can become “hotkey-first.” For example, I launch terminal with CTRL+ALT+T. My application launcher is CTRL+SPACE, and it is text-based. Most DEs have default hotkeys for a lot of functions, and they are customizable.
Of course, all of this comes down to how one’s workflow is. I don’t ever see myself wanting to scroll my desktop or deal with windows auto-tiling. Multiple desktops is another example. It’s something just about every DE offers, but I’ve never had a use for it. Different strokes for different folks.