[hombre_fatal]

Something I realized after spending a few months in sway (i3) and then niri is that I only care about a few windows (code editor, terminal, browser, apps I use moment to moment).

All the rest I'd prefer to just summon as-needed and then dismiss without navigating away from the windows I care about.

sway/niri want me to tile every window into some top-level spot.

Took me a while to admit it, but the usual Windows/macOS/DE "stacking" method is what I want + a few hotkeys to arrange the few windows I care about.

[aquariusDue]

Yeah, I came to the same conclusion a few months back. Sadly I had to ditch KDE for GNOME due to an issue[0] specific to NixOS but after going through the gauntlet of tiling window managers and PaperWM/Niri over the years I've also settled on a traditional DE.

[0]: https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/issues/126590

[yepguy]

I'm surprised to hear that niri didn't work for you, I feel like it's a really good middle ground between tiling and floating window managers. It handles a lot of window resizing and arranging for me, without being too rigid. Windows can have any width they need without having to evenly divide my monitor.

[hombre_fatal]

Niri is a great system for spawning windows.

But it answers the question of:

"Alright, whenever I want the $app window, I just go to column X of workspace Y"

Which isn't something I want for 99% of the windows I have open.

Most of my app interactions are transient where I prefer "summon $app from the ether without navigating anywhere".

For example, here are low priority apps I have open: calendar, discord, whatsapp, notes, journal, database gui.

Niri would make me find a place to put these apps in the top level and then navigate to them which doesn't match their transient nature.

[yepguy]

Makes sense I guess. I mostly work with a few long-lived applications, and I hate having to do any manual window management myself.

I'm fairly sure you could use scripting to come up with a Niri workflow that worked for your use case. Maybe something like niri-scratchpad (https://github.com/Vizkid04/niri-scratchpad). But I sympathize if you don't want to spend a ton of time experimenting with your tools when you already have something that works for you.

[opan]

In sway, put the lower priority windows in another workspace, or the scratchpad, or in tabs/stacks. You can bind keys to focus specific programs by their appid/class also, so even if they're on another workspace or monitor it'll jump right there.

It sounds like the scratchpad may be especially close to what you want.

[hombre_fatal]

Your sway solutions are hacks around the MRU stack of a stacking desktop environment though.

I don't want to leave the workspace nor go find which tab/stack I've put Spotify just to use it. And scratchpad is no better since I'd have to do an explicit summon/dismiss cycle between workspace and scratchpad just to recreate behavior I already have on a normal desktop env.

[cluckindan]

Maybe awesome-wm would be better for you then.