I also have Vim-colon syndrome1. Just moments ago, I was planning to recording a video about skippy-xd with Fluxbox, because it didn’t work with my dwm. I quit dwm and switched to Fluxbox, just as I was proud of myself for being able to recall how to bring up application menu via the shortcut key I set up more than a couple of years ago. All of sudden, I asked why the terminal window isn’t fitting into the screen?

Oh, right, this is Fluxbox, not dwm. Sure thing, I’d just maximize it by myself, so I typed in Win+Shift+Space to set a floating window to non-floating. I asked again, why isn’t it working?

Oh, right, this is Fluxbox, not dwm. Sure thing, I’d just use the key if I could remember. Which I couldn’t and I might not be even set up one for Fluxbox long time ago. Alternatively, I clicked the maximization icon at top-right corner of window. Done!

For next few minutes, I experienced a continuous frustration, and kept maximized every brought up window. In order to make a good visual impact video with skippy-hd, I resized some windows, so they would look different in Exposé-like view.

At that point, I felt resizing is really not my thing for managing windows, feeling it’s just wasting of times. Resizing, moving, adjusting. Even with hotkeys for maximization on minimization, time is still taken for those actions.

Now, come to think my time with Fluxbox, even I really liked it at the time, after two years with dwm, stopping messing around the windows. I come to a realization, of how in-efficient it could be for me to use a window manager which requires you to manage the windows. You may think it’s not many tasks you need to do, but once you convert to tiling, and come back to use a stacking window manager for just a minute, you will see how much time you have wasted and it will drive you crazy!

It’s hard to believe that only a couple of years, someone, who used to stacking WM since Microsoft Windows 3.x, now is unable to use stacking WM efficiently and comfortably. More importantly, not willing to use. I am now hard-wired to tiling, my fingers press the keys on their own, but most of times, they are just switching to another tag, not to moving or messing the windows.

But what’s this “TWMS” exactly?

Once you go tiling, you’ll never go stacking.

[1]You tend to type :w and/or :q to save or quit a program which isn’t a Vim instance.