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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

#31

Post by LAC-Tech »

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 my ideal WM would me split the screen up regions, then I populate the regions with a bunch of apps. Where as in tiling WMs all your windows need to be visible.

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

#32

Post by uberduper »

LAC-Tech wrote: post #31
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 my ideal WM would me split the screen up regions, then I populate the regions with a bunch of apps. Where as in tiling WMs all your windows need to be visible.

This is basically what you get from pygrid (or Spectacle / Rectangle on a mac). I use a slightly modified pygrid to do all my window sizing and placement.

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

#33

Post by rawtxapp »

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 once you get used to a tiling window manager, like force yourself to use it for over a couple weeks, it's very difficult to go back. Somewhat similar to vim.

Personally, I have 2-3 external 32" 4k monitors and I want to maximize the real estate that's used, tiling wm (specifically i3 in this case) makes it very easy to move windows around, to switch between different screens, to move screens between different monitors quickly. Dragging a mouse across that relatively high screen real estate is a huge pita without i3.

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

#36

Post by markstos »

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…

Sway supports both tiling and floating windows and you can define the rules and defaults as you wish. For example a browser window tiled with an editor and a media player floating on top.

You could have one virtual desktop that defaults to tiling and another to floating. With a keyboard shortcut you can toggle a window between the two states.

I was aware of tiling window managers for a decade before I switched from Gnome to Sway. Now I don’t want to go back.

Tiling may seem chaotic, but with Sway you are in the driver’s seat, deciding where each window goes and whether it’s floating or not. There is also interactive window resizing with the mouse and as well as moving windows with the mouse via drag and drop.

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

#37

Post by detaro »

jaimex2 wrote: post #35
bhedgeoser wrote: post #27

Is it still unusably buggy? Not sarcasm, I'm just curious.

Was it ever buggy? I know Plasma had a rocky first few months but otherwise its been solid for years now.

early days of KDE4 (so ~15 years ago) weren't great

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

#38

Post by unsungNovelty »

The biggest productivity boost for me happened after I started using a Tiling WM (i3). I started out of necessity when I felt I have reached the maximum optimization with XFCE DE. I just didn't want to organize my windows manually again. Now browsers are all in 1st workspace. Text editors are all in 2nd. 4th is for chat apps. 6th for reading and documents like excel, pdf etc, 8 for image editing like GIMP, KRITA, Inkscape. 9th for entertainment! Makes your computing life predictable and easier is all.

A tiling window managers lets you:

- Map different apps to different workspaces.

- Open apps directly into specific workspaces.

- Tiling of apps to suit your needs.

- Utilizing maximum screen real estate (Uggghhh GNOME).

- Have peace with no more endless search for a window cos you don't know where the app is. Alt+tab Alt+tab Alt+tab Alt+tab Alt+tab Alt+tab!!!

- Have stable workflow cos they move slowly and less workflow breaks. Functional bugs could be reduced if you use old WMs like i3.

- Less bloat.

- First class citizen of the keyboard shortcuts workflow.

- There is one for everyone - https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Window_manager#Tiling_windo...

I also don't think Tiling WM's are for everyone though. If you use Also if you do get interested in using a tiling WM, don't just jump right away (in Linux). Use it with a DE of your preference. I used XFCE and it worked well along with i3wm. It took a couple of months to remove my DE in full and embrace Tiling WM life. But it was well worth it. :)

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

#39

Post by JNRowe »

christophilus wrote: post #25
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 ru…

Many tiling WMs support this type of layout; magnifier in awesomewm, centeredmaster in dwm, etc. The difference compared to manually performing the task being that you can cycle the arrangement through various states without extra effort or losing the previous configuration.

Of course, you can also just choose to float individual windows across background tiles in practically all tiling window managers too. I guess it depends a lot on whether the neovim use is an exception, or a layout style you use for other projects too.

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