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A Tiling Desktop Environment

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Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#71

Post by INTPenis »

I know tiling DE followers have firm principles in my experience so please don't take this the wrong way because everyone is different.

My personal experience is that I used a lot of tiling DE back when I had a laptop with 256M RAM.

Lately my last three laptops have had 8G and more of RAM so I don't see the point.

Mainly because I use vim+tmux as an IDE. So I'm already using keyboard shortcuts extensively to quickly navigate through vim, vim tabs and tmux.

A tiling DE would add a third layer on top, that I don't feel I need.

Sure I'm a Linux veteran who has been using keyboard shortcuts for 20 years but there are limits to how far I want to push this. And I feel that vim+tmux is my limit. My DE is vanilla Gnome Desktop on Fedora and I'm loving it. (obviously with animations disabled it feels as snappy as Sway or Awesome WM)

Edit: Just to expand; after hours of coding my brain can do vim+tmux keyboard shortcuts without thinking. The short breaks within that time where I switch to other windows would only disrupt my flow if I had to switch to a whole new set of shortcuts.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#72

Post by tluyben2 »

I use i3 for battery friendly-ness; it gives me many hours (sometimes double if only doing dev) more on my Ubuntu machine. Vim as IDE (bunch of extensions, like OmniSharp for .NET Core dev) and so on. I have different systems for testing and trying things on like a Macbook, Windows 10 machine with VS etc, but nothing is quite as productive as my Linux setup and that is mostly because of i3/vim. You have to practice the keyboard shortcuts, but that does not take a lot of time.

I give other environments a go once in a while but this wins so far.

One point to make; I do personally not like large and/or external screens. I like small laptops and I move around a lot during the day.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#73

Post by Lewton »

opencl wrote: post #19
wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

Even Windows has had a basic level of built-in window tiling functionality for a decade now. You can resize windows to half or a quarter of the screen either with keyboard shortcuts or dragging the window to a side or corner. It works pretty well.

Say I want one window to take up all vertical space on the left third of the screen and another to take up the other two thirds, is there a way to do this without me having to manually resize both windows?

I switch between i3 at home and windows at work and that’s one of the things I really miss

Another thing I miss is having a detached window permanently on top

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#74

Post by therein »

INTPenis wrote: post #71

I know tiling DE followers have firm principles in my experience so please don't take this the wrong way because everyone is different. My personal experience is that I used a lot of tiling DE back when I had a laptop with 256M RAM. Lately my last three laptops have had 8G and more of RAM so I don't see the point. Mainly because I use vim+tmux as an IDE. So I'm already using keyboard shortcuts extensively to quickly…

It is really no different than using the Windows/Meta key + arrow keys to snap the current window to a corner, or using Ctrl + Windows/Meta + arrow keys to switch to another virtual desktop.

Just a matter of getting used to. It doesn't even take too much to get used to it.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#75

Post by KozmoNau7 »

mises wrote: post #18
gh02t wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I primarily just use i3, but I used to be a KDE guy. I used it for a while again just recently and I have to say, it's gotten really good. They've made it clean and tidy, while still being powerful and customizable.

The thing that originally got me to switch to i3 was using a serious potato for a few months. 2012 core i3 processor and 8g ram (upgraded) kind of potato. Plenty usable with i3, but had trouble with windows or heavier full desktop environments; i3 was great and snappy and I was able to use the computer just fine.

I use KDE on a ThinkPad X220i, so around the same specs as your potato (with an SSD, though). It absolutely flies, no slowdowns or issues at all.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#76

Post by krilly »

Lewton wrote: post #73
opencl wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even Windows has had a basic level of built-in window tiling functionality for a decade now. You can resize windows to half or a quarter of the screen either with keyboard shortcuts or dragging the window to a side or corner. It works pretty well.

Say I want one window to take up all vertical space on the left third of the screen and another to take up the other two thirds, is there a way to do this without me having to manually resize both windows? I switch between i3 at home and windows at work and that’s one of the things I really miss Another thing I miss is having a detached window permanently on top

There's probably a better way but I would put a window in each half using winkey+arrows and then drag the center divider to resize them both at once.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#77

Post by mjlee »

tluyben2 wrote: post #72

I use i3 for battery friendly-ness; it gives me many hours (sometimes double if only doing dev) more on my Ubuntu machine. Vim as IDE (bunch of extensions, like OmniSharp for .NET Core dev) and so on. I have different systems for testing and trying things on like a Macbook, Windows 10 machine with VS etc, but nothing is quite as productive as my Linux setup and that is mostly because of i3/vim. You have to practice t…

Which laptop are you using for Ubuntu? Are you happy with it?

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#78

Post by Lewton »

krilly wrote: post #76
Lewton wrote: post #73

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Say I want one window to take up all vertical space on the left third of the screen and another to take up the other two thirds, is there a way to do this without me having to manually resize both windows? I switch between i3 at home and windows at work and that’s one of the things I really miss Another thing I miss is having a detached window permanently on top

There's probably a better way but I would put a window in each half using winkey+arrows and then drag the center divider to resize them both at once.

Hmmm

Dragging the center divider doesn’t work in my use case (detached eclipse console window on one side) I have to resize both windows manually

to be clear: it works as expected with two browser windows, it’s the type of window eclipse creates when you detach a view that windows doesn’t seem to like

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#79

Post by tluyben2 »

mjlee wrote: post #77
tluyben2 wrote: post #72

I use i3 for battery friendly-ness; it gives me many hours (sometimes double if only doing dev) more on my Ubuntu machine. Vim as IDE (bunch of extensions, like OmniSharp for .NET Core dev) and so on. I have different systems for testing and trying things on like a Macbook, Windows 10 machine with VS etc, but nothing is quite as productive as my Linux setup and that is mostly because of i3/vim. You have to practice t…

Which laptop are you using for Ubuntu? Are you happy with it?

X220 with 9-cell battery, ssd from a broken macbook pro and 16 gb from the same macbook pro. Yes, it is the best laptop I have ever owned (and I owned many). I have several (bought for almost nothing from a company sale) for replacement; if I break one, I am up and running in 10 minutes again. I think I paid less than $250 for 5 pristine ones + 2 new 9 cell batteries new in box.

It is surprisingly fast for it’s age with i3. Besides ML or iOS compiling (which I just do remotely) stuff I do all my dev on it.

Edit: also, if you hate this screen resolution, you or someone on the webs, can put in a much higher res screen in. There is so much you can replace in these things and the keyboard is such a pleasure compared to modern keyboards. Imho ofcourse.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#80

Post by stevewillows »

wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

I started using Chunk a few months ago. I'd been using i3 for a few years and loved it, but my main OS is macOS.

I mapped my caps as HYPER (like most), but I really wish MacOS had a method to acquire a true native SUPER key. I'm currently using ctrl+shift+alt-arrows for resizing, ctrl+alt-arrows for movement, HYPER + arrows for selection --- but its just not as smooth as i3.

The more I use Linux w/ i3, the more I realize that MacOS is very much a cursor OS -- at least with window management. And in this respect, MacOS is way behind the competition.

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