tiling window manager

Awesome, dwm, i3, ratpoison, ... are in Trisquel's repository (under these names). You can have several window managers installed and choose the one you want from the graphical login screen. You can make it the default for you, if you wish. So, you can install a window manager on top of Trisquel or Trisquel Mini.

> Is there a tiling window manager like i3wm for Trisquel?

i3 is in the Trisquel repositories.

$ sudo apt install i3

> Can you tell me about the various tiling window managers and a little
> bit about each?

I've tried three tiling window managers:

Enlightenment is actually a stacking window manager by default, but you
can change it tiling in the settings. I used it for a month or so about
a year and a half ago. I found it to be a little buggy, but that could
just be because I was using it on Arch. It's more beginner-friendly than
some other tiling window managers, in that it has a GUI for
configuration, and looks nice by default. It's also closer to a full
desktop environment than a standalone window manager in terms of what
other software it includes.

$ sudo apt install e17

to try it out.

When I got sick of Enlightenment I went back to MATE for a while and
then discovered i3. Configuration is done with text files, which might
be a little intimidating for beginners, but is really not too bad once
you take the plunge. By default it looks quite ugly, but it can be made
to look nice with some configuration. Here's what mine looks like
lately.[1]

I recently tried out xmonad. Configuration is done with Haskell, a
programming language, and the defaults are very bare-bones, without even
a status bar, so I wouldn't recommend it for beginners. I started to
configure it and it seemed promising, and I might switch to it in the
future, but I just don't have time to familiarize myself with Haskell
right now.

> Any recommendations?

For the last year or so I have used MATE, replacing MATE's default
window manager (Marco) with i3-gaps. See here[2] for why and how to run
MATE+i3.

See here[3][4] for using i3-gaps instead of i3. It's a drop-in
replacement, so you can just start with i3 and replace it with i3-gaps
later.

> I have mostly used Trisquel Mini up to now. Should I use netinstall
> instead now?

In general, if you don't want MATE (Trisquel's default) or LXDE
(Trisquel-Mini's default) on your system, I do recommend a netinstall.
However, if you go the MATE+i3 route you can just use the regular
Trisquel ISO.

[1] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/share-your-desktop-6#comment-134514
[2] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/solved-problem-lxde?page=1#comment-137343
[3] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/few-questions-installing#comment-131703
[4] https://trisquel.info/en/forum/few-questions-installing#comment-131710

Thanks guys! I installed i3. Would you tell me how to access wifi hotspots through i3 in Trisquel Mini, and how to shut the computer off in i3?

There's a nice tutorial on dwm.

http://ratfactor.com/slackware/dwm/

My favorite tiling window manager is ratpoison. It's a bit different than the others, like i3, awesome, or dwm, but it gives you a bit more control of the layout and you can save the layouts that you like. And like the others it's very configurable. I guess part of the reason I like it the best because I'm more used to it.

Since you're new to sysadmin/programming/etc and are using Trisquel Mini (LXDE) which uses Openbox, try this - build your desktop environment yourself, from minimal Openbox to LXDE with all the bells and whistles. I know it's not a tilling wm, just a suggestion.

You guys are so helpful; I really appreciate it. I'm pretty excited to try this out.