Using a WM for the first time! (Sway WM)

13 March, 2025

2ish Months ago I decided to try a tiling window manager. There are so many options for tiling window managers but I decided on Sway.

Yes I know for Wayland its called a tiling Wayland compositor but saying tiling window manager is just more simple.

What is a tiling window manager?

Tiling window managers organizes your windows in a side by side tiling sort of layout. You are able to heavily configure them and control everything with hot keys. If you are using only a window manager then you will see some performance benefit. You are able to use them with desktop environemtns (For example i3 + XFCE).

Why Sway

Sway is a drop in replacement for the i3 window manager but for Wayland.

Originally I was going to write here how I had to use i3 instead of Sway since I had issues with Wayland many months ago on my Lenovo Ideapad Gaming 3 which uses an Nvidia GPU, but when I decided to give Bazzite, which used Wayland by defaut, a shot after my EndeavorOS install shitted itself and everything worked on KDE Plasma and Sway. I haven't tried it very much yet (I haven't even configured Sway to my liking yet) so I can't say for sure if it will work perfectly. Maybe Nvidia Wayland driver stuff has changed a lot in the last few months/year.

So yeah I guess I could have used something like Hyprland after all but I don't mind too much and I really don't need the extra features or eye candy that Hyprland provides. If I do need it I can always use SwayFX. Hyprland does seem very cool though and maybe I will try it one day.

The install + setup process

All I had to do to install Sway was install it via my package manager. When I logged into Sway for the first time it was pretty bare but is pretty usable out of the box.

Man that default background is really nice

I started to browse the subreddit r/unixporn to look at peoples dotfiles. Since I did not need a super advanced desktop and just wanted something simple and nice I was able to get away with using other peoples configs that I found.

I decided to use Waybar for the top bar and Rofi as my application launcher (You have to use XWayland in the config so it works). I do really like the default application launcher dmenu and is what I am currently using for now on my other laptop.

Issues

The main issue I have faced so far is my mobile hotspot keeps disconnecting. It feels like it happens way more often on Sway than it ever did on KDE Plasma 6. I am using the nmtui package to connect to it. I am assuming my hotspot is mostly at fault here though.

End Notes

Overall I have really enjoyed my experience on Sway. It really makes my laptop feel a lot smoother to use and it is really satisfying when you are able to just instantly log into a desktop when booting. I have recently started to enjoy using hot keys a lot more than using a mouse.