I've generally been happy with tiling extensions for gnome/kde/macos/windows, though more recently I've been experimenting with niri (a scrolling tiling wm) on an extra device to see if i like it more. It is more work, but its also been fun. Jury is still out if it'll become my default.

Imo, the reason to move away from one of the traditional desktop environments like gnome/kde to sway/hyperland/i3/etc is if you arent happy enough with built-in tiling featues or extension/add-on tiling features. The wayland ecosystem has expanded options quite a bit, but any sort of diy setup around a tiling compositor will always require more work and come with fewer comfort features that youd be used to with kde/gnome/etc. But maybe you don't need any of those things or find tiling more important.

People who use tiling window managers are more likely to be power users and thus tend to be overrepresented in these spaces. No one is gonna talk unprompted about the mouse-centered built in window management that is fairly consistent across all operting systems at this point.

I've primarily been using PaperWM on Gnome for the last 4 years or so, and the main issues are awkwardness/conflicts where it collides with Gnome. Basically a "death by a thousand cuts" feeling that has built up over time. In Gnome's defense, it doesn't try to be flexible for alternate window management tools. I don't care much for KDE or the wider KDE software stack, but it tends to be more flexible by nature.

In an ideal world, KDE and Gnome would allow you to swap out the compositor layer for sway/niri/whatever, which would reduce the conflict points considerably. Cosmic has early support for this, as does LXQt, but there are legitimate project direction reasons for the devs to not do so, at least not any time soon. Wayland does make it much more likely to happen in the future, from an architectural standpoint.

(Addendum: I haven't used windows for many years, but Power Toys has a solid tiling window manager. Or at least, it did for windows 10. No idea if it got support for windows 11. Worth trying out if using windows and wanna try tiling!)

It's less about looks (at least for me), but about speed

Pretty much all I need, I literally have at my fingertips.
Opening a terminal just feels much more quick - don't know why it really is faster, but e.g. i3 is just a much smaller code base than KDE and they're not really in competition, as they focus on different things.

Re-arranging windows in different layouts with just keys is also nice - and fast as fuck.

I don't want to move windows around when I work, I want to focus on my work.
Just needing to move the mouse to position a window somewhere can sometimes break the flow.

But I have to admit, that with some layouts (split screen with one side tabs and vertical terminals on the other side, can be a bit frustrating, when I jump through the tabs and not into the terminal container.

But I think, I'll need to check the i3wm manual again, because jumping between containers is probably possible, without jumping through all tabbed windows.
So, I guess, that's on me and not a wm fault

All in all, it depends on the kind of work you do on your PC.
I'm often in terminals checking logs and stuff.
I3 just felt the nicest (on X11 - couldn't try sway or hyprland, because I need XForwarding and I'm not sure, if that works by now or ever will) and I stayed with it - for now

If you are tiling-curious just give it a try and you can see the difference for yourself.

It's never about being the optimal solution for everyone.
It's about being the best solution for specific workflows and so it depends on yours.

I also haven’t understood it because gnome can pretty much do the same thing

On KDE, you can use Krohnkite to get tiling window management.
It's easiest to install through the "KWin Scripts" page in the System Settings.

They're definitely not essential for every Linux user. I've been using i3 for over a decade now and I will not be parted from it because it lets me make tabs of terminals and then split windows with tabs of terminals and I can jump around between my tabs of tabs of terminals like a deranged monkey with all my fun hotkeys. I am not a well adjusted person. Most people don't want to spend the time customizing their window manager config to get it just so or learn a bunch of hotkeys. Most people like graphical file managers and graphical text editors. Most people should just use a regular ass DE. If you try a tiling window manager and you like it then welcome to the poorly adjusted people club. If not, then you are missing nothing because your brain simply requires a different workflow.

Definitely not essential in any way for general desktop usage. Its main selling point is that you don't need to use your mouse to control the windows as opposed to other window managers. For people who are used to programs that heavily revolve around keybinds, it makes the desktop completely usable without touching the mouse at all. Also these programs usually come with text based configuration with minimal defaults, and pretty much lets them to customise it however they want.

“Because I love being a pariah at the office.”

“I learn one ~~editor~~ WM, once, and use it for my whole career.”

“It fits like a tailored suit.” – customizable experience, and you can mostly customize “EVERYTHING”.

Hey, if KDE does it for you, just use it. I switch between xfce4 and i3 depending on what i'm doing. When coding or managing network devices, I3 it my way to go. Browsing, email, documenting : xfce4.

It's exactly like food...some like a burger, some love pizza, another eat caviar to be snobby.

I find that KDE's default keybinds make sense to me:

• meta + PageUp = maximize
• meta + Arrow Key = the active window tiles around the screen. (when done with multiple windows, they can be resized with each other!)

I have not tried used a tiling window manager. KDE fucks :)

I daily KDE for work with little customization and it does everything I need. Use what makes you productive with the least hassle, at least that's what I go for.

What’s the window with the acsii lines and what’s the window on the bottom right?