For most of my Linux journey, I've used [Qtile](https://qtile.org/), *a minimal, dynamic tiling window manager*. My philosophy was simple:...
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The original was posted on /r/gnome by /u/TuxTactician on 2025-05-04 17:38:08+00:00.

For most of my Linux journey, I’ve used Qtile, a minimal, dynamic tiling window manager. My philosophy was simple: install only what you need. Qtile worked beautifully for me, and to this day, I still consider it the best dynamic tiling window manager, as long as you’re comfortable writing some Python. Over time, I customized it deeply, created a small UI library, built custom layouts, and shaped it into a “smart” tiler. Qtile is incredibly hackable, and that’s what makes it so powerful.

In 2025, I decided I wanna a new desktop experience and Wayland Support. Since January 3rd, I’ve been daily driving GNOME, and after four months, here’s my take.

SIDE NOTE

  1. I’ve tried to convince several of my techie friends to try Qtile. Most gave up quickly. Why? Poor mouse support. For example, when resizing windows, Qtile doesn’t even change the mouse cursor to indicate what’s happening. For many users, that’s a basic feature. Ironically, I see it as a strength, it teaches you to ditch the mouse and embrace keyboard-driven workflow. But for people coming from full desktop environments, this feels unintuitive and limiting.
  2. Yes, I’ll be comparing Qtile (a niche WM for nerds) with GNOME (a mainstream desktop for an averager user). Apologies in advance if this feels unfair, but this is my perspective

GNOME’s Killer Features

Here are the things GNOME gets really right:

  • Sleek and modern UI – Thanks to libadwaita, GNOME apps look and feel consistent and polished.
  • Deep integration – Everything feels like part of a single, unified experience.
  • Distraction-free workflow – The lack of desktop icons, top-bar simplicity, and Activities Overview all help reduce clutter.
  • All-in-one “smartphone-like” environment – GNOME includes built-in apps for things I never used in my minimal Qtile setup, like a Clock app for alarms and timers, Digital wellbeing, Contacts, etc. Its feels more like a complete computing environment.
  • Wayland Support

My Favorite Feature

  • The Activities Overview is fantastic. Think of it like a *supercharged version of **rofi***, which I used in Qtile, but with a polished interface and visual workspace context. Just press the Super key, start typing to launch apps, and at the same time, you can see an overview of all your open windows and workspaces. It combines app launching, window switching, and workspace navigation into a single, fluid experience.

Worthy Mentioning

  • GNOME Help app - While this app may be seen useless, actually it really helped me. It walked me through features, introduced keybindings, and gave me a helpful tour.

Unpleasant Things

These are the features that just didn’t work for me:

  • Keyboard shortcuts – Too many use Alt + F[something] or Super + PageUp/Down/Home/End. I’m not used to these combinations. Do people actually use Alt + F4 to close windows? I suspect most just reach for the mouse. Personally, I’d rather have something closer to Vim-style navigation.

Will I Go Back to Qtile?

Right now? NO. I’ve tested several GNOME extensions that try to provide tiling features. Only PaperWM came close to what I’m looking for in a window manager:

  1. Use as much screen space as possible.
  2. Dynamic Behavior - I don’t want to “tile” windows, I want them tiled. Automatically. No pre-assigning windows, no mod-key dance.
  3. Smart Layouts - It’s about layout intelligence, not just dumb splitting. For example, dialogs shouldn’t be tiled unless they’re primary content. Keep modal dialogs floating and centered over their parent. If they’re the only window, tile them, but with sane max size. Also games and video player are also sensitive to what size they’re given.

Basically this is the only missing feature in GNOME.

As a backup plan, I’ve started learning JavaScript to potentially write my own small GNOME tilling extension, just in case …

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Distribution: Fedora Linux 42 (Workstation Edition) GNOME Shell: 48.1 Display server: Wayland PaperWM version: 48.0.1 Enabled extensions: