Week 3: Window Managers as Worldview

Week 3, tiling against floating, and the ideology hidden inside a layout policy

8 March 2027

A window manager decides where windows go and who is allowed to move them. That sounds like plumbing. It is closer to a constitution. A tiling manager holds that screen space is scarce and should be allocated by rule, that the keyboard outranks the mouse, and that the machine, not the user, should do the arranging. A floating manager holds the opposite: that a desktop is a desk, that overlap is natural, and that a person can be trusted to put things where they want them.

Neither position is neutral, and this lecture treats the choice as the ideological one it is. When you pick a window manager you are picking a theory of work: how much you value control against convenience, ritual against improvisation, the satisfaction of a keybinding against the ease of a drag. The layout you end up defending in week 12 says more about you than the palette will.

In this lecture#

• tiling, floating, and dynamic managers, and the claims each one makes
• the keyboard-first worldview and what it costs
• gaps, borders, and workspaces as expressions of a layout policy
• why the manager you choose is the hardest decision to reverse later

Before next week#

Run a tiling manager and a floating one for a day each. Note the moment in each where you felt the software disagreeing with you.