With your constraints, it's probably going to be Sway. Bit more simplified than i3, same level of customization, and works with Wayland.

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!

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!

I like paperwm or niri

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.

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.

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.

https://regolith-desktop.com/

x11 or wayland - as you like

I'm loving hyperland both on my desktop and laptop.

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.

+1 for niri. Avoid hyprland, dev is a cunt

I wasn't crazy about i3. I really like hyprland though. Been using it for about a year now.

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.

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 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.

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.

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".

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.