I use cascaded windows. It doesn't need a window manager and it's more useful & productive for me than tiled layouts. It looks like this:

  +--+--+--+--------------------+
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  |  |  |  |                    |
  +--|  |  |                    |
     +--|  |                    |
        +--|                    |
           +--------------------+

I generally put terminals and my note taking app towards the left (smaller windows), my IDEs in the middle (enough for split pane editing when needed), and my browsers on the right, where they are in square / portrait aspect ratio more suited to reading.