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KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

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Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#21

Post by cam_l »

rodgerd wrote: post #19
xiaomai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same way. I've tried the various tiling WMs over the years. To me the ideal is just letting me manage the windows myself, and then if you give me some keybindings to snap a window into a certain half or quadrant of the screen then life is real good.

For me, the PowerToys tools are the gold standard here ( https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzone... ), especially the Canvas mode: remember where I like my applications, and put them there, including whatever peculiar layout that I think is important.

Agree.. but if only we could stop windows from stealing focus.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#23

Post by brimble »

hbbio wrote: post #10
xiaomai wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm the same way. I've tried the various tiling WMs over the years. To me the ideal is just letting me manage the windows myself, and then if you give me some keybindings to snap a window into a certain half or quadrant of the screen then life is real good.

That's exactly how I feel too! For MacOS, I love Rectangle, which is both great and open source: https://github.com/rxhanson/Rectangle

Yeah, I'm still on Spectacle, which is basically the same thing. It's all I need as far as tiling-alike stuff goes and is the very first thing I install after Homebrew, on a new Mac. In fact, Homebrew, Spectacle, and using the Settings GUI to set my caps lock to an extra ctrl, is the entirety of my new-Mac setup routine, as far as stuff that never varies. I've tried "real" tiling WMs on Linux and don't really get it. I just need quick and consistent keyboard shortcuts for send-to-quarter, send-to-half, and maximize. That's plenty.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#24

Post by smallerfish »

One of the first customizations I make to any new KDE setup is to a) map win+1-0 to switch to desktop N; b) map shift+win+1-0 to move window to desktop N; c) set up 10 virtual desktops. I then run everything full screened and avoid alt-tab. Browser on desktop 1, terminal on 2 (with its own splits), IDE on 3, etc. Over time I found that I could get rid of the panel entirely since I know where all running applications are, and launching applications using krunner is just a win key away. System tray I ended up needing, but I added it as a widget on the desktop itself, and it works well enough there.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#25

Post by christophilus »

anyfoo wrote: post #5

I must be one of the very few "hackerish" minded people that does not really get the appeal of tiling window managers. Even in the early days of Linux I meticulously arranged my overlapping windows in my X11R5 window manager. For example, there are some terminal windows or similar with running logs (or chats) at some of the edges, partially obscured by other windows who make better use of the space they cover. But th…

I’m the same. Neovim fills the center of my screen. The web application I’m working on sits behind it, with enough exposed that I can see if my changes are working / breaking, and with another terminal partially revealed showing any build errors. Works well for me. I never liked the layout that WMs picked, because they always force me to look to one side or the other (on a 4K and 5k monitor). Maybe if I was solely running on a 13 inch laptop, a tiling WM would make sense.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#26

Post by indymike »

rrix2 wrote: post #16

Khronkite is another "honorable mention" for KWin tiling and I prefer it over the one mentioned in TFA: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite With KDE+X11 it's trivially easy to change the window manager away from KWin and still get the benefits of suspend/resume, multi-monitor auto-configuration, wifi, system tray, etc, by just setting the KDEWM environment variable in your profile. https://userbase.kde.org/Tutorials/…

I can second the Khronkite suggestion. It's extremely flexible.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#28

Post by karmakaze »

anyfoo wrote: post #5

I must be one of the very few "hackerish" minded people that does not really get the appeal of tiling window managers. Even in the early days of Linux I meticulously arranged my overlapping windows in my X11R5 window manager. For example, there are some terminal windows or similar with running logs (or chats) at some of the edges, partially obscured by other windows who make better use of the space they cover. But th…

I think it's related to the way people organize. I also like to have edges (maybe a few log lines) and corners of windows peeking alongside the edges that are small reminders of their existence. What others consider 'clutter' is 'context' to me. My physical desk area looks much the same--but worse with different layers for other projects.

What I really don't like is the swipe-the-entire-full-screen to an entirely new context when working on another part of the same thing.

Re: KDE: A Nice Tiling Environment and a Surprisingly Awesome DE

#30

Post by indymike »

eikenberry wrote: post #15
anyfoo wrote: post #5

I must be one of the very few "hackerish" minded people that does not really get the appeal of tiling window managers. Even in the early days of Linux I meticulously arranged my overlapping windows in my X11R5 window manager. For example, there are some terminal windows or similar with running logs (or chats) at some of the edges, partially obscured by other windows who make better use of the space they cover. But th…

I think it is people who use their laptop display exclusively (or nearly so). On small laptop displays tiling windows is nice and helps maximize the use of the display. I use the tiling features of mine WM a lot more when using my laptop display, but I still very much prefer 'floating' windows when using a large, external monitor.

I use an abnormally large ultrawide monitor, and find khronkite (another KDE tiling script) to be very useful. The three column layout works particularly well on the ultrawide, while the standard tiling layout works great on the laptop's built in screen. There is a little tiny hack to enable settings on the krohnkite github page: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite
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