sway

Sway is a modern window manager that organizes windows in a tiling layout—meaning windows are automatically arranged to fill the screen without overlap, rather than floating freely. It's built on top of Wayland, a newer display server protocol that aims to replace the aging X11 system.

Sway is particularly popular with users who want the efficiency of i3 (another tiling window manager) but prefer the Wayland ecosystem for better security, performance, and support for modern hardware like high-DPI displays. Configuration is done through a plain-text config file, typically located at ~/.config/sway/config.

Example: Users can split the screen horizontally or vertically with keyboard shortcuts, navigate between windows using keyboard commands, and launch applications from a terminal—all without touching a mouse. A typical workflow might involve pressing Mod+V to create a vertical split, then opening multiple terminals that fit neatly in tiled sections.