Tiling window managers tend to tear more than any other desktop out there. Especially on x11, where you're expected to composite your own desktop without any (!!!) synchronization primitives, it's extremely common to get halfscan output from your windows or status bar. dwm, awesome and i3wm will all tear by default because there is no dispatcher, internal clock or even adaptive sync support.

Now, you might not notice the tearing if you've got V-sync properly configured. But V-Sync doesn't stop screen tearing, it just drops torn frames and decreases your refresh rate until your system can keep up with demand. It's an ugly hack on laptop hardware and an even uglier one on the desktop.

Well, I guess ‘window tearing’ doesn’t mean what I thought it did — or rather that it’s more than I thought. I always thought that it meant the artifact when dragging a changing window, which of course doesn’t happen if one doesn’t drag.

I don’t believe that I’ve ever noticed or been bothered by static tearing, but maybe I’m just used to it because I’m old and displays have always had it?