Tiling window managers are awesome! (easy guide)

Added: 2026-05-12

[00:00:00]I've used Linux for 7 months now, but there's something I haven't tried. A tiling window manager. A what now? Most operating system use a floating window manager. You open an app and you get a floating window that you can move around. If you open another, it's on top. The windows are floating indeed. A tiling VM is different. Instead of letting Windows float freely, it automatically places them into a layout.

[00:00:22]It tiles them. Cool. But why? Speed. The idea is that you spend less time dragging windows around with your mouse, and instead you use keyboard shortcuts for opening apps, moving between windows, resizing them, and switching workspaces. A popular tiling VM is Hyperland, where it tiles like this. But today, I'm going to try another one, Neri, which is a scrollable tiling window manager. Instead of only splitting the screen into smaller and smaller boxes, Neri arranges windows in columns that you can scroll through horizontally. So instead of fighting for space on one screen, your apps spread out sideways and you move through them like a timeline. Now I tried installing Neri with Arch, but that was rather overwhelming as you pretty much have to build everything from the ground up. So instead, I'll install Neri with Cachios, which gives you a basic setup right away. So if you're a Linux beginner like me and a bit scared of words like config files, stick along for it's actually not that complicated. And if you're a Linux wizard, I think you can pick up a few things as well. So, I flashed the Casio OS ISO to USB stick, booted from it, and ran through the basic steps, of course, selecting Neri. Can you guess my password? Install now. And a few minutes later, it was time to reboot. Welcome to Nocttalia. But wait, aren't we installing Neri? Yes, but Neri is the window manager. It controls how Windows move, tile, and scroll. Noctalia is the shell around it. It adds the desktop stuff, the bar, the launcher, notifications, customization options, and a settings panel. Seni handles the windows and Noctalia makes it feel like an actual desktop. There are a lot of different shells to choose from, but today we're sticking with Noctalia.

[00:02:09]Continue. Choose your wallpaper. Well, we don't have any yet. Ooh, appearance.

[00:02:13]So, we can toggle dark mode on and off.

[00:02:16]Use wallpaper colors. That is very cool.

[00:02:19]We'll look more on that later. Then we have some predefined color schemes.

[00:02:23]There are a few different ones here, but we'll just stick with the Noctalia one for now. Customize your experience. Bar position, top, bottom, left, right.

[00:02:34]Okay. Bar density comfortable. Yeah, that's fine. Interface scaling. Bar type floating framed. We'll do simple dimmed desktop opacity.

[00:02:47]Okay, cool. Drop shadows. Nice.

[00:02:50]Continue. Dock. Enable dock. Yeah. So, we actually have a dock down here. All done. So, this is the Casios Hello application where you can do some tweaks and install some cool stuff. But we're not doing that. No. Instead, I've made a list. And the first thing that we're going to do is a system update. Then we're going to look at some Noctalia settings. Install. Yay. Find a new wallpaper. look at and mess around with the config files, which is really how you customize Neri. I'll then show you and learn the shortcuts for doing different things as well as doing screenshots. I'll then show you Neri mod, which is a guey, so a graphical interface for doing all the things that you would do with config files. I'm then going to take you through a basic Neri workflow. So, how do you actually tile and float windows? How do you work with Neri? Next is installing a new terminal and customize that terminal. The same with the launcher and a new browser. I then need to connect this system to my NAS and HomeLab. And we're going to install my daily apps. So the apps that I use on Linux the most. And finally, we're going to look at Nocttalia plugins. And then bye-bye. To update the system, I'll open a new terminal with mod enter and then write pseudo Pac-Man- su.

[00:04:10]That was easy. Now we can cross that off. Let's see what we actually get with Noctalia now. So up here we have control center settings, session menu, close, uh, do not disturb mode, keep awake.

[00:04:23]That's actually very useful. Power profile, performance, huh, notifications, Nocttalia performance mode. What does that do? Oh, we just lost a wallpaper. Let's turn that back on. Bluetooth and network. Nice. And over here we have the launcher date and time and a system monitor. Seems that all three display the same thing. Oh yeah, and you can open the control center by rightclicking anywhere here on the menu bar. But let's actually go into the settings now. So settings, general, basics, profile picture. So we can set a new font. Cool. Monospaced font, default font size, monospaced font size, reverse scrolling. So if you're a Mac nor me like me, you can enable that. Smooth scrolling. Then we have some basic keybinds here. User interface. Woah, there's a lot in here. Show tool tips.

[00:05:19]Container outline. Always show scroll bars. Drop shadows. Nice. Blur behind.

[00:05:24]Cool. Shadow direction. Interface scaling. Container radius. Input radius.

[00:05:30]Disable UI animations. Animation speed.

[00:05:33]Nice. Color scheme. Dark mode. Nice.

[00:05:36]Templates. Oh, cool. So, we actually have custom templates for different apps. That's very useful. We'll have to check out that later. Wallpaper, enable wallpaper management, wallpaper selector, position, viewing mode, wallpaper folder. So, we have a designated folder. That's nice. Look.

[00:05:54]Okay. So, again, we have a lot of customization settings. I think you get the idea. Noctalia offers a very good settings menu where you can customize a lot of different things. Now, we can cross that off. Point. Next up is installing Yay. Yay is an Arch user repository helper, which basically means that we can use the Yay command after we've installed it to install all of the apps that aren't in the official repository. And to install it, we just write pseudo Pac-Man- say password.

[00:06:25]Okay, that was easy. I love these easy steps. So, let's cross that off. Next up is finding a new wallpaper. So, we can open a browser with Modb. Let's go to Waller Haven and search for dark purple abstract. Okay, this one is pretty cool.

[00:06:40]This one is also rather cool. I like that dark purple vibe that we're going for here. But h okay, this one is nice.

[00:06:47]Let's do that. So, save as. And there we have it. A new wallpaper. Nice. Cross that off. And now it's time to look at config files. I know it sounds scary, but config files are essentially just instructions as to how Neri behaves and what it looks like. And to make it easier for myself, I'm going to install VS Code. And I know I know I should be using NeoBIM, but I'm not ready for that rabbit hole. So to install code, we just write pseudo Pac-Man-S code. And to open our config files in code, I just write this command. So code, and then where we want to go. So the config files. Welcome to VS Code. Make it yours. Ooh. H. Let's do solarized dark. Continue. Build with AI agents. No thanks. So, here we should Oh, that wasn't right. Um, open folder config. Do you trust the authors? Yes, we do. And here they are. Nice. Over here, you can see the overview of the different sections of the config files.

[00:07:47]And when you're customizing, you're basically just changing the values in the different sections. So, let's just start with animations. Workspace switch.

[00:07:56]So, that would be this animation. Let's try to change something. So, spring dampening ratio. Let's change that to five. Ctrl S for save. Oh, so now it's very slow. Okay, let's change that back.

[00:08:09]Can we do zero? Nope, we can't.

[00:08:11]Stiffness, huh? Let's change that to zero. No, we can't do that. Let's try 5,000. Oh, so it's very snappy. Now, can we do 10,000? So, now it's basically instant. Let's just go with the default.

[00:08:25]So, a,000 or 500 maybe. Yeah, I like that. 500 epsilon. What's that? That didn't seem to change anything. Window open. So, the time it takes to open a window like this. Boink. Boink. Boink.

[00:08:40]Boink. Let's just try to set it to zero.

[00:08:42]Yeah. So, now windows open instantly.

[00:08:45]I'm not sure why you wouldn't want this.

[00:08:47]Huh. Window close. So, the time it takes to close a window. Let's try 100. Yeah, that looks fine. Horizontal view movement. Ooh. Let's try to open a lot of windows. Then that would be the time it takes for you to navigate through the horizontal view. The main feature of Neri. Again, you get the idea. Here in the display config is where you can make sure that your monitor is correctly set up. I'm filming through a capture card right now. But when I unplug that, I have to run Neri MSG outputs, which will show me all available modes. And up here, you can see what Neri recognizes the display as. So, HDMI A1. Now, to set up your monitor to match its actual specs, you then have to open the display config again and change this to HDMI A1.

[00:09:37]And down here, first the resolution, then an add sign, and then the hertz.

[00:09:42]Cool. Not so hard, right? Let's look at the input config. If you want to disable mouse acceleration, uncomment the lines below. Okay, definitely want that. Um, that didn't seem to make a difference.

[00:09:52]Anyway, then there's the keybind section where you can spend a lot of time.

[00:09:55]Again, if you want to change a keybind, you simply change your value. So here you can see that to open the stuck launcher, it's mod control enter. But I want to change that to mod space. So it's the same as on my Mac. Boom. Easy.

[00:10:08]I won't go through all keybinds, but an important change I've made is to change the focus window and move window keybind to be A and D instead, such that I don't have to take my hand off the mouse to move around. We'll return to this file later when we install a new browser, launcher, etc. There's pretty much no limit to what you can customize in here, but I'll focus on a basic setup today.

[00:10:30]Yet, there is one thing that I do want to change. See, when I open a new window on a blank workspace, it tiles to the left. But I want windows to open in the center instead. And to change that, we'll go to the layout config. And right here, I'll just write always center single column. Hit save. And now it opens in the center. Nice. And here I can also change the default size of columns and the space between windows and a lot of other things. But now I want to show you Neri mod which is a graphical interface for customizing Neri if you don't want to mess around with config files or actually let's first go to the Noctalia settings and set the color scheme to fit our wallpaper there.

[00:11:11]Anyway, to install it, let's go to GitHub and search for Nerimod. Run this command. Install Nimod and there we have it. Welcome to Nerimod create backup. So we have an input screen where we can change the cursor size and a few other things. Key bindings. So this is pretty cool. We have two views. We have a physical view. So you can just mod your key bindings right here or we can go to the list view where we have an overview of every single key binding. We can search for them and we can create new ones by pressing the plus sign here.

[00:11:43]There's an output section where we can change the resolution and refresh rate.

[00:11:47]So basically the modes that I showed you before. We can also set scale and a few other things. Nice. Then there's the appearance section where we can change a few things. So focus ring, that's the ring around our windows and we can change how large it is. So let's try to turn it down to one. Yeah, that's better. Active color. Oh, we should pick one that suits our purple theme. This one maybe. Yeah, that looks good. Enable shadows. Cool. Yeah, we want that. Save.

[00:12:17]Um, what else do we have here? A lot of different things. Animations. Ooh, global settings. These apply to all animations universally. That's pretty smart. So, we can toggle animations on and off, but we can also do a global slowdown factor. I guess this also works the other way if we wanted it to be faster. That's pretty cool. Window management, window open, workspace, interface. So all of the settings that we actually already looked at in the config layout, workspaces, window rules, startup, environment, gestures, and miscellaneous. And then we have the raw configuration file. Cool. So let's check off nerod and new theme. Boink. All right, let's actually go over the workflow of Neri. So how the scrolling and tiling features work. Are you ready for a bit of rapid fire learning? The first useful shortcut is mod shift escape, which will show you an overview of your shortcuts. And what's nice is that it adapts to your custom key binds.

[00:13:14]Nice. Next is mod enter, which opens the terminal. Mod B opens your browser of choice. Mod E opens the file explorer.

[00:13:23]Mod Centers the window. Modrl Fills the workspace with the window. I use mod plus A and D to switch between windows.

[00:13:32]And here you can see the scrolling part.

[00:13:34]Mod control A and D move windows to left and right respectively. Mod 1 2 3 etc focuses that specific workspace. Mod control and a number moves a window to that workspace. Mod scroll wheel up and down move between workspaces. Mod control scroll wheel up and down moves a window up and down. Mod minus and mod equal adjust column width. Mod shift minus an equal set window height. Mod T toggles between a floating and tiling mode like this. Mod F is full screen.

[00:14:08]Control shift 1 does a screenshot.

[00:14:10]Control shift 2 screenshots the screen.

[00:14:13]Control shift 3 screenshots the window.

[00:14:16]And perhaps the most useful one is mod plus O, which opens the overview. And what's nice in here is that all the other shortcuts work here, too. So I can just move around and move windows around. Oh, I also have hot corners enabled. So, if I just move my mouse up here, I get the overview as well. I really love this overview feature. Rapid fire. These were just the most used shortcuts. But of course, there are a lot more which you can see in the keybindings config file, but now it's time to install the new terminal and rice it. You know, make it look cool.

[00:14:50]And I'm going with the ghosty terminal, but we need a few other things as well.

[00:14:54]So I'll run this command pseudo Pac-Man- s ghosty fast fetch bub and then this jet brains monet font. Okay, let's try and open ghosty. Yeah, so this is what it looks like by default. And of course that doesn't fit our theme. So to customize Ghosti, we'll first make a new directory for Ghosty and then we'll create a config file which we'll open in VS Code. I'm then going to paste in this config file, which basically just selects the font, the font size, and then all of these pallet variables, which are just color codes. It also adjusts the background opacity, the cursor style, and a few other things. If you want to use this for your own terminal, I'll paste it in the description. I'll then hit save. And now we can open the terminal, and it should look rather different now. Yeah, this looks pretty good to me. Nice. Oh, by the way, do you want to see something cool? Bettop. Nice. Anyway, now we've installed the terminal. We've customized it. But now we need to go into the key bindings and set this as our default terminal. And right now you can see that it opens elacrity. To change this is very easy. We simply replace elacrity with ghosty. Let's hit mod enter. And there it is. Nice. Our next step is then to install the new launcher because I actually find the stock one to be a bit sluggish. It's not instant. And my launcher of choice is Fuzzle. So to install Fuzzle, we'll write pseudo Pac-Man- S fussle. And again, we'll make a new directory and a custom config file. But let's first try to open it and see what it looks like before. Yeah, this doesn't fit our theme at all. So let's customize. And again, I'm just pasting in this pretty generic custom config file. Hit save. And let's open Fuzzle again. Yeah, that looks much better. And like before, we now need to go to the keybinding section and switch out the stock launcher with fuzzle like so. Now let's hit mod space. And there it is. Very nice. Let's go up to our list again and check off both terminal and launcher. And the next step is now to install a new browser. I'm going with the Helium browser, which I've actually come to like quite a lot. So now we actually need to use Yay because Helium is not in the official repository. So, yay - S Helium browser bin. Let's open it with our brand new launcher, Helium.

[00:17:17]Meet Helium. Configure your browser just the way you want it or use the default preset with best privacy and comfort.

[00:17:23]Hm. Configure. This looks fine. Next, default search engine. We'll go with duck.go. Yes, make it my default browser. Let's go. So, obviously, we need to change the appearance here. And first, I'm going to change the browser layout because I actually quite like vertical tabs. and then get this bar over here, which I can toggle on and off with Ctrl S, just like in the Zen browser. Let's go to theme and then toggle dark mode first of all. And let's see if we can find a color that matches our purple aesthetic. This one. Nice.

[00:17:53]How about we go to YouTube folky? This keyboard video maybe that no one watched. I'm not sad. You're sad. And that's Helium browser. I'm pretty sure you can guess what we'll do next. Yes, we are going to key bindings again. And now switch out the stock browser with Helium browser. So here, open browser.

[00:18:11]Right now it says Firefox. Let's change that to Helium browser. Now let's hit mod and B. And yeah, it works. Helium browser. So we can finally check that off the list. And the next thing that we're going to do is to connect this mini PC to my NAS and Home Lab. And here I had a few issues. Trying to connect my NAS via the file explorer didn't actually work. So, what I did instead was to run this command, installing a few different tools, and then actually mount it directly from the terminal, which worked. Learning to code. Hm, wonder what that's about. The next step is to open Helium Router again and type in this IP to my homepage. And yeah, this is my home server. Not sure why it says API error. Anyway, now it's finally time to install the apps that I use the most. I won't go too much into depth here because well, just look out for next Friday cuz there I will be publishing a full video on all the Linux apps I use. But let's start with Obsidian. And I know I know Obsidian isn't open source, but you do save your files locally and it's in Markdown, so it's not actually that bad. Let's install a few apps in one command. So, pseudo Pac-Man-S obsidian local scent and blanket mod space to open launcher obsidian open folders vault. Choose an existing folder of markdown files. Yep.

[00:19:34]And here we need to navigate to my NAS folky storage. Learning to code. We'll select this one. Do you trust the author of this vault? Yes. Trust author and enable plugins. Let's first set it to dark mode. And here it is. Yeah, I use Excalibur together with Obsidian, which is very cool and very useful. Let's now open Blanket, which is really just an app that plays ambient sounds, so rain, wind, and you can add your own sounds as well. Next up is Local Sent, which is an app that lets you send files across your network on all sorts of devices. I mean, you can use Linux, Windows, iOS, whatever. If you have local send installed, you can share files. I use it to send files between my Linux systems to my Mac, which I use for editing videos. Next up is installing Only Office, which is my office suite of choice. So, let's run Yay-S Only Office bin. By the way, Only Office has sponsored the channel in the past, but they're not sponsoring this video. Okay.

[00:20:36]I just genuinely think it's the best open- source option. And their PDF viewer is actually really good. And you open stuff in tabs, which is very useful for organizing if you're like me who has a thousand documents opened at one time.

[00:20:50]And the final thing that we're going to install just for now is Manim, which is a Python library that lets you make pretty cool animations. And yes, I know that's very bark coded, but I genuinely think it's pretty cool. And I'm also in the process of learning Python. And it's a very nice way to actually apply the things that I learned. I'm not going to show you the whole process of installing it because it's not as simple as running a single command. But now that I have it installed and set up in VS Code, let me show you a cool little animation there.

[00:21:21]Nice. And with that, we can cross off daily apps. Now, let's check out some plugins. Yeah. So, no, we're actually not doing that. The recording messed up.

[00:21:30]And I think we've done enough for today.

[00:21:32]So, if you made it this far, thank you.

[00:21:34]I hope you found the video useful. As mentioned, I'll publish a new video next Friday where I show you all of the apps and tools I use on Linux as the fourth part in the open-source series. I'll spend more time going into depth with the apps. Oh, and I'm also planning the big I installed Arch from Scratch video.

[00:21:55]So, if you have any advice besides read the documentation, Folky, please let me know in the comments. Again, thank you so much for watching and a special thanks to Pepsi Max, Yen, Dustin, Lester, Afraris, Cal, and Justin, as well as the other members of the channel. You too can become a member of the channel if it's financially responsible of you. Right now, there are two tiers with different perks, but in addition to these, all members are invited to join a VIP channel in the Discord. Okay, bye.