niri is great on laptops
this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
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+1 for niri. Installed it on my 11" laptop, and it is as if it's made for that use case
With your constraints, it's probably going to be Sway. Bit more simplified than i3, same level of customization, and works with Wayland.
Niri
That's scrolling (not tiling) but yes.
Niri is a scrolling tiler. You do not even have to scroll if you really don’t want to.
I use KDE with Krohnkite.
E.g. I have my cake and eat it, as windows can get dragged around if I want. Anything weird is just windowed like normal KDE.
Works with mice, and works good OOTB!
I do KDE with Karousel, which is similar to Niri I think.
Yeah, I also recommend this. Particularly with laptops, it's good to have a full-fledged desktop environment, since you're more likely to need WiFi, power management, easy display configuration etc..
And KDE's RAM usage is very reasonable these days, especially if you opt out of some of the bells and whistles.
It was quite good for a while but I feel like it has crept up again. It is over 1.5G at start for me these days.
It used to be under a gig.
It makes a difference when you only have 8G on a laptop.
Look up RAM usage in btop, sort processes by memory usage. A lot it is random services you can disable in the system setting or uninstall with a package manager.
And yeah... it even matters on a higher RAM setup. Sometimes I have most of mine filled with a background thing, and 1GB vs 2 or 3 can make a big difference.
Agreed. That does not change what I said though.
For me, “baloo” is the worst offender.
Also, great to see another btop fan. I use it a lot.
Baloo can be disabled, it's just the background search indexer. So can kaccess (the accessibility service) and kde wallet (the secrets manager).
A lot of the widgets, effects and stuff take up RAM too.
Yeah, shout out to Krohnkite - really solid stuff. The shortcuts for all it's actions have become second nature now, amazing how I use the mouse so much less to get windows where and how I want them in a second
This is actually a great post. I've struggled with this and it feels like all those tiling window managers are for power users. They're a pain to customize and 0 intuitive (at lest for me). I share your question!
It is like vim or Emacs that one forgets or tends to forget key bindings and features that one does not use quite frequently. This has nothing to do with intelligence. It is just that the brain forgets stuff it doesn't see as relevant (and different brains work differently, here).
Oh yeah, nothing to do with intelligence for sure. I just meant that, for me, since I've always used mouse plus a good amount of keyboard shortcuts, was too much to learn. That and the config files (hyprland, hyprpaper, this and that). I'd rather have less options, but be it more "easy" on the learning curve. On my work pc I use a tiling assistant for Gnome (it runs on catchyOS) and I just have a few combinations to tile midscreen or to the corners, and that is enough most of the time. "It is just that the brain forgets stuff it doesn’t see as relevant " that is so true and infuriating now that I'm trying to learn some academic work... pretty irrelevant for me lol
They key is repetition, and this means it can be easier to go "all in" and learn, say, only six or eight keyboard chords from stumpwm than to use Xfce with mouse and i3 and more stuff, because the latter is ultimately more complex and requires more things that need to be memorized.
There is a learning program called Anki which is great for repeating learned stuff, it was made for language learning but I've used it also for a job where I had to learn like one hundred three-letter acronyms. It can be very helpful but it won't help if one does not use the learned stuff.
And that's why things like PaperWM or niri might be a good compromise on the spectrum between "powerful but complex" and "simple but limited".
And how much complexity is good for one depends also on the area of application. I use Rust for programming which is complex for sure, but when I have to scan a document, I use "simple-scan" which does exactly one thing, and very well.
I like paperwm or niri
I dunno about 'friendly', but my setup is minimal configuration and about as stable and unchanging as the terminal. Its xmonad with xfce in no-desktop mode. My xmonad configuration is extremely minimal because I mostly don't care about customization. I set terminal=alacritty and the thickness and color of the outline around the focus window, and that's it.
Because I have xfce backing me up, I get the benefit of monitor layout, mouse settings, the xfce session logout window, etc etc.
As for using xmonad itself. You're just going to have to pull up the keyboard reference on your phone until you can get around ok, there's no help and no explanation. When you boot into it you get a blank screen lol.
For launching programs, you windows-p and you get the dmenu program launcher at the top of the screen. Type the first few letters of whatever program and hit enter.
Honestly? I have more or less the same use case, and I use Gnome or KDE and just use super+left/right to do the half-screen windows, and super+page up/page dn to switch between workspaces for fullscreen windows.
Is is the most optimal TWM experience? No. But is is fast to set up, easily usable, and requires no keyboard shortcut configuration? Yes.
+1 for niri. Avoid hyprland, dev is a cunt
Niri is absolutely the best tier for a laptop with a smaller screen. It provides all the benefits of tiling without the tiny, cramped windows that tiling tends to result in.
On other tilers, you end up using workspaces for single apps to avoid splitting the screen.
Sway or Hyprland for compositor, Waybar for status bar, fuzzel for app launcher, swaync for notifications, wleave for logout menu.
Everything should work across Hyprland and Sway except for Waybar worskpaces, you need a different configuration for them.
keyboard first but mouse available
Sway works really well with mod+drag, but the configuration is nearly the same as i3. Plasma's new tiling features are really good, but unfortunately mousse driven.
I'd check out the COSMIC beta, might be a good middle ground.
I'm loving hyperland both on my desktop and laptop.
I've carefully reviewed your post, and I may have overlooked the reasons why some believe you're using Wayland, especially since you're currently using i3. Anyway, I'll talk about X11 ans Wayland options.
i3 is indeed capable of launching programs via keybindings and supports full mouse functionality. However, it does require significant configuration. To be frank, all tiling WMs necessitate customization. Additionally, many tiling WMs benefit from the installation of a separate tool to serve as a panel bar. Tiling WMs share the concept of shipping with a functional minimal configuration, allowing users to tailor their setup precisely to their preferences.
Here are - to my humble personal opinion - the "easiest" tiling WMs for X11:
- i3: you know it
- awesomewm: comes with a panel, menu, and widgets out of the box.
- bspwm: very lightweight and minimalist. Unlike others, it will require the use of sxhkd to define keybindings. The config is shell-script based, which may feel easier to some compared to lua. This was my preferred option before moving to Wayland and having tried awesomewm, i3, and dwm for years.
And for Wayland:
- sway: drop-in replacement for i3. It uses the same keybindings/config style as i3.
- niri: this one technically uses a “scrollable tiling” model (windows arranged in columns on an infinite strip) rather than the traditional tiling resizing. Due to this model approach, it could be intimated to you but it can achieve great things and may be just what you need for a 11" screen because you can have an infinite number of full/half screen windows that you can scroll horizontally or vertically (thanks to stackable windows and infinite workspaces number).
Talking only about tiling WMs I've used, but there may be great/better options out there. You can quickly check the list of features on their respective github page and watch videos to see what each of them can offer. Detailing all their features here would not be digestible.
Edit: except very few tiling WMs (I can think of two), they all fully support the mouse to click or move/resize windows.
I am using i3 as a backup interface at work when I can't use stumpwm, and it is quite good to use with its default Debian / OpenSuSE config. Especially since it has very nice web docs.
Also, i3 and sway have probably best Integration of all the little stuff that one gets normally from the desktop environment: Audio control, mounting of flash drives, session management, lock screen....
What I don't like so much about i3 is its complex nesting of windows that comes along with auto-placement. Stumpwm is much more logical to me. Also has better configurability and superb documentation.
I've carefully reviewed your post, and I may have overlooked the reasons why some believe you're using Wayland, especially since you're currently using i3.
Yeah, i3 has no wayland support - that's why sway exists. It is probably almost on par but worse documented.
Apart from that, there is a reason that mayority of tiling WMs still run on X11: Wayland requires the WM to implement much more functionality by itself. That can be done by libraries but these are not yet as complete and mature as the X11 solutions.
GNOME with paperwm extension might be nice for you. Controllable by keyboard and mouse, normal configuration and things like control panel for audio / bluetooth / network , good use of screen estate.
Myself I use stumpwm on a 40 inch 4K screen but that's because I am very used to the command line and also had vision problems for some time. Most tiling WMs give very little visual feedback and require sigbificant memorization. Which, like using vim, makes predominantly sense for continuous and heavy use.
I don't know if i3 can do this too, but in sway you can also move windows using the mouse. Just hit mod+the left mouse button and drag it around. However I usually just go with the Keyboard. Mod+shift+arrow is just faster.
I wasn't crazy about i3. I really like hyprland though. Been using it for about a year now.
The easier setup I found is Xfce with WM swapped for BSPWM. You can do every window manipulation with mouse (while Super key pressed).
I used to use a small laptop like yours. Now the smallest one is a spacious 13” so it doesn’t feel quite so constrained.
I ended up on lxqt with the bar on the left hand side and a bunch of virtual desktops. It can do everything you’re asking for and my use is keyboard first. Give it a shot, it’s good.
I like lxqt. What keyboard actions are you using and how did you configure them? On windows I do super+left or right to move windows.
I have it set up the same as the default macos shortcuts for desktops.
There’s two different configurations for keys, the window manager and lxqt itself. I’m using x instead of Wayland so my key config is split between xfwm the window manager and lxqt.
when I used an old laptop I relied on https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/ nowadays KDE is good enough for with its shortcuts (e.g. meta + arrows) and KWin scripts.
I use paperwm i think it pretty much defaults to what you want. the issue i had with i3 and such window managers is that they're lacking everything else about laptops. Energy mode depending on battery state, or even basic warnings for example. Bluetooth, wifi etc. all need to be set up and maintained by yourself. Which to me became to annoying so I switched to gnome with paperwm and that rolling desktop really is something. I have never looked back.
Use Windows key instead of Alt. Alt is used by some applications for some actions.
You've gotten suggestions for KDE; IME KDE is memory intensive, and while you don't mention memory, laptops often have less memory than desktops. Your intuition about a proper tiling WM is a good choice.
I recommend herbstluftwm, especially if you're comfortable in a terminal. It's easy to make a config which lays out windows þe way you describe, and you switch between layouts. Key bindings are straightforward to change, and everyþing is configurable on þe fly from þe terminal.
For a status bar, I revommend polybar. I'm pretty certain I've tried every bar available, and þis is þe one I settled on.
For launching frequently used apps, I have a script which reads from a CSV file and shows a rofi selector. It would be easy to make one which shows all .desktop applications on your computer, like a start menu.
hlwm has no GUI configuration tool, so "for dummies" is not going to apply.
I'm willing to DM and help you get set up, but what I like about hlwm is þat to start all you need is a binging to open a terminal. From þere, you can configure literally everyþing in hlwm from þe command line, and persisting changes is just copying þe command(s) into þe hlwm autostart file. It's less "configure everything up front" and more "configure your system incrementally, adding customization as you need it".