This is a great example of the power of Awesome WM. Although I've used it for well over a decade, I never spent time customizing it (but did spend a lot of time fantasizing about customizing it :-) )
Using workspaces to toggle the network is brilliant!
Yup. I use the Awesome WM on Linux too and it's exactly what I do, since forever.
I've got for example one of the workspace in floating mode and it's using rules for app placement: only Emacs visible in that workspace? In the middle. Emacs+browser visible in that workspace? Browser on the right of Emacs. Emacs+browser+up to four xterms, Emacs and browser don't change size, but the xterms do.
I'm using a 38" monitor since 2017 and I noticed that the bigger the monitor, the more there'll be times when you need actual rules saying exactly how things should be laid out.
But I'm still using tiling modes in most workspaces.
As a bonus I do "funny things" when switching between workspaces.
For example I've got 13 workspaces or so: by default Awesome WM only gives you 10 btw but I added a few others, in addition to shortcut+0-9, which I access with shortcut+a/b/c/d [the shortcut key you actually use for that is ofc configurable too]). And out of all these workspaces, there's only one which is allowed to use the CPU at full speed: all my other workspace put the CPU governor automatically on "powersave" mode.
And it's only in my "dev" workspace that the CPU can ramp up to its full speed.
Now I'm toying with something else: per-user firewalling rules (I'm using several user accounts and I already have got rules for each user) but also per-workspace firewalling rules. For example when I switch away from the workspace with the throwaway user account that's used for surfing, the firewall shuts off Internet access for that user (even if the browser is still opened: so as soon as I get back to that workspace, the net works again for that user).
Because if you think of it: why should a non-visible browser even be able to emit/receive any networking trafic? Every single proper webapp (all the Google suite, my broker's webapps, my banks, etc.) all do handle network disconnect just fine. Arguably a webapp that cannot deal with the network going off is not much of a webapp.
So when I switch to a workspace that doesn't contain a visible browser: the browser(s) do believe the Internet just got cut off.
If I've got a browser that really needs Internet access even when it's not visible (for example because I'm downloading something huge), I can send it, using a shortcut, to a workspace which allows web traffic. Awesome WM has got shortcuts for everything.
It's really sweet.
And as it's Linux: it's rock stable solid. It may take some time to set up properly but once it's done, it's done and shall keep working.
The "CPU governor changing depending on which workspace I'm on" is working since years. The "firewalling rules changing depending on which workspace I'm on" is a recent addition.
P.S: as a bonus, upon starting, I've got my Awesome WM configured to "pre populate" all the virtual desktops with the apps I know I'll use (say I'll always have my browser linked to my professional email on workspace 1, while workspace 12 shall always be the "throwaway browser" that's reset everytime I reboot the system).