Are Desktop Environments And Window Managers Really So Different?

A lot of arguments on Linux are about are about meaningless nonsense and none more so than the question of whether window manager or desktop environments are better? What I wanted to talk about today was why I think this question doesn't really make much sense and in the end we're all just users of the Linux desktop.

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🎵 Ending music

[humm]

“You can build a whole car around a window manager.”
—Brodie

[BrodieRobertson]

If anyone says that click bait doesn't work there absolutely lying to you, also sorry for the bad audio. Videos like this are fun to make from time to time, I like the software reviews but just rambling about pointless Linux topics can also be entertaining as well.

[homelessrobot]

it makes perfect sense. And you can go even farther down this rabithole by recognizing that the role of a 'window manager' isn't really a native x11 concept. Different concurrently running programs can handle different sets of window management functionality without stepping on each others toes. So you can break the concept down even further into 'mapping managers' 'focus managers' 'input managers', etc. Quite often I don't use any 'window manager' at all, and just use an 'input manager' (hotkey daemon) to engage things like xdotool for organizing windows on a display, and moving focus between them.

[raphk]

Most WM and desktop environments don't matter, I can live in either the paradigm changes but you still accomplish the same tasks the efficiency you can from window managers are very minimal once you know the desktop's key bindings. I use BSPWM, Qtile, GNOME and KDE almost daily, so talking from experience

[ffkkinos]

i really like gnome workflow and i can get it to work pretty quickly, so it's my daily driver today, i was using bspwm sometime ago and like it but i'm not really into building everything from scratch

[ChimbzZ]

For some people, I would recommend the standard or network (if you have an ethernet connection) edition of debian. It comes with an installer which makes the installation process quicker compared to arch, void, Gentoo, etc. It's still a minimal installation. It comes with very little programs. Doesn't even come with Xorg.

I had fun setting up my setups with debian :)

[EasonTek]

I'm a desktop env with a tiling wm person, I like the simplicity of setting default apps, all in one settings, etc but the beauty of a tiling wm.

[recarsion]

Honestly I couldn't live without either. I love configuring stuff the way I want and having a minimalist solution and all that, but sometimes I need stuff that "just werks". And honestly as far as efficiency, both are great (except Gnome, I avoid that shit like the plague). So I have my arch bspwm setup on one drive and a Mint installation with Cinnamon on the other, and use whichever best fits the current task.

[Sircarxalot]

My biggest concern when it comes to video length for ads: don't artificially pad out a video so you can reach the mioestone. That is, keep the fluff down. I'm not the one putting the effort into the videos (so who am I?), but I really dislike a 10 minute video to convey 5 minutes of information (or less).

That last 30 seconds explaining why you're stalling is interesting: exploring more of the YouTube algorithm would be interesting, or how those all come together, or how they find what information they do in the first place would certainly fit in for time (or another video)

[thesynalice]

The only normal video out there explaining the difference between WM and DE. Thx!

[AtomToast]

Yep, pretty much have the same opinion on this. I even thought of a similar analogy of a car and an engine

[anlofdeath]

A windows manager is like a kit car and the WM is chair, everything else is bolted on and configured by yourself.

[anasouardini]

DEs saves you from dealing with lots of quirks and essential dependencies like polkit, wireless stuff, etc.

Tiling window management and packages are a part of the story, but these hidden dependencies that very few people talk about are the most annoying part of making your own minimal DE.

Your computer working env turns to a full time job for a while, that's why WM suck, but I'm way beyond this point now, I know these little quirks, but new people should't be lead to using WM without knowing them, that's so misleading.

[fuseteam]

window managers are chassis of the car, DEs include everythings else.

[thgeremilrivera-thorsen]

Regolith is a Linux distro that runs i3-gaps plus a bunch of Gnome services... May count as a WM-distro.

[mikel]

Enjoyed the video Brodie. I've been using Debian with a tiling window manager and it has been fantastic.

[RobertMurphySeattle]

I never thought of desktops vs window managers in this way as all seemed more a kludge (all OSes) than anything else. But, at least I know why I always come back to arch (Awesome, i3, Plasma, trying bspwm now) since I first started using it back in 2006 or so. Great vids, btw, and most enjoyable!

[atps]

I didn't know it was possible to replace kwin. Sounds interesting.

[wacesferpit]

Yee, I use KDE Plasma with bspwm as my window manager, I'm not fan of KWin and I like the custom functionality you can have in bsp but I still use stuff like KDEConnect, the Plasma theming, et cetera

[____-gymq]

Umm.. window managers are an integral part of desktop environments??