[shadeless]

i3wm is a pretty popular tiling window manager which supports what parent described - you can set a window to "float" (so it doesn't tile, you can move around it like in a regular wm) and you can also set it to be "sticky" (so it stays visible even if you switch to a different workspace).

[city41]

Yup, i3 is what I'm using. I admit my wm investigation wasn't that thorough, I mostly chose i3 because coworkers use it and I really liked it right off the bat. I also tried xmonad and awesome.

And not that anyone will see this now, but most people in this thread were responding to my "OSX and Windows don't offer powerful window management solutions" specifically in reference to my comment about floating windows. That's just one example of many things OSX/Windows doesn't allow the user to do.

Not to be too dramatic, but i3 has made me more productive, more focused and happier while working. I now fear ending up in an environment where using Linux isn't possible. It's really that good. But really, tiling window managers are that good.