With my current workflow, I use tiling window managers less and less. I used to be a huge fan of them, to the point of refusing to use any floating WMs whatsoever (I actually initially switched to GNU/Linux because of the wide choice of window managers), but here are some issues with almost all tiling WMs:
- There is no alt-tab switching. This is an absolute necessity to me, as all other ways to window switching tend to be overly complex. It's the only way I know of to quickly way to switch between the most recent couple of windows, without any setup.
- Windows can't be minimized. Instead, you have to spread them all out among virtual desktops / tags / whatever you want to call them, and get perturbed as all your desktops soon become cluttered.
- Panels and dialogs tend to get treated as regular windows. Oftentimes, if you want to have something as simple as a clock that's always present, or a system tray, you'll have to spend a lot of time on configuration.
- Many cannot (fully) be controlled with the mouse alone (which is annoying if you're like me and you use one hand to eat).
- They are buggy as hell. Given, almost all GNU/Linux WMs are buggy, but tiling WMs are so especially.
- It's just a lot of fiddling in general. I've been switching back and forth between WMs for years now, I've tried almost all of them, including obscure stuff like clfswm and yeahwm, and I'm still not satisfied.
Not all tiling WMs suffer from all of the above problems, but they all do from at least one. If you're coming from a floating WM, the most accessible WMs are awesome and bluetile, which do most things right but, unfortunately, are both rather buggy (especially awesome). I've used notion for a long time, which is perfect in almost all aspects, but there seem to be memory leaks, at least in my experience. I might have misassessed, though. Some WMs that are sanely coded include i3, herbstluftwm, and ratpoison, but from here on you're giving up mouse control, the ability to minimize and proper alt-tab functionality, and you'll spend a lot of time on configuration (especially if you choose ratpoison). A lot of getting used to, in other words.
One last WM which I can recommend:
goomwwm. It's very straightforward, requires minimal configuration, and has all the features you're used to like alt-tab, minimizing windows, mouse control, and I believe it's compatible with panels like lxpanel as well. I can't comment on how buggy it is because I haven't used it too much, but judging from the programmer's earlier work on Musca, it's probably alright. Do note that you have to build it from source unless you're using Arch, though.
Math problems? Call 1-800-[(10x)(13i)2]-[sin(xy)/2.362x].