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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

#131

Post by tokamak-teapot »

selectodude wrote: post #42
whalesalad wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is all I need. I use an app on macOS called sizeup that let's me do this. I can center a window for reading text on my larger display. Fullscreen a window without using the actual native full screen on macOS. Snap left, snap right, up down etc. It can also keep track of hardware profiles, so windows will restore to their bigger sizes and positions when I plug my laptop into a display. https://s3.whalesalad.com/i…

Am I the only person left who still uses Expose? I feel like Apple is going to kill it off, they already rolled it into "Mission Control" and removed all the keybindings.

I use it and love it. I use three finger swipe up and hadn't ever looked for a keyboard shortcut. It seems to be set to ctrl-uparrow in the 'Mission Control' settings page. Or am I confused about terminology here?

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

#132

Post by vanderZwan »

So the author mentions that the reason for picking KDE was its screen management. I feel like KDE does not get enough credit for that. I'm on a laptop. I regularly switch between two external monitors at home, various projectors, and of course using no external monitor or projector at all while traveling.

KDE remembers each individual set-up, so once I have arranged my two external monitors, I know that the next time I plug them in they will automatically be arranged the same way. Once I have set up a particular projector to be virtually above or aside from my laptop screen, it will have the same arrangement next time I plug it in. This should be the default but back when I switched to KDE a few years ago none of the other environments I tried gave me this experience (I hope it's better now). And indeed, is was the main motivation for me to give KDE Neon a try

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

#133

Post by dsego »

brimble wrote: post #23
hbbio wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

It seems that spectacle is not being actively maintained anymore.

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

#134

Post by swaits »

numbsafari wrote: post #125

On macOS, with no native tiling WM, I’ve been enjoying using VSCode in full screen as essentially just that while coding/debugging/etc. Typically split into 3 vertical panes: nav, editors, terminals. I mostly just use one big editor pane, but sometimes further split one way or the other depending on what I’m doing. Same for terminal sessions, though more frequently using some kind of watcher in a lower split. Anyhow,…

I use Amethyst on macOS. Took some getting used to, but now I won’t go back.

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

#135

Post by tokamak-teapot »

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 sometimes keep 2 or three windows 'tiled' on a 34" monitor, but on anything smaller I tend to use 1 or perhaps 2 windows (like you, often with some overlap).

Perhaps eyesight is important here? I'm short sighted but find wearing glasses when reading a monitor gives me eye strain, so just keep a distance from my monitor where I can read without my glasses (about 1m). To tile windows in a way that is useful I'd need to have much smaller fonts, and I wouldn't be able to read.

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

#136

Post by Bolkan »

5tefan wrote: post #58

I'd love to experiment with tiling WMs but then, I'm on Win10 in corporate land with low res screens. My 'tiling' is a vertical split which is done easily with a shortcut and mouse follows focus. That serves me well.

This plus workspaces works well even on large screens.

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

#137

Post by cmrdporcupine »

stormbrew wrote: post #50
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…

Everything you're describing in this reply just exhausts the hell out of my brain. You're describing an incredibly large amount of cognitive load you hold in your head all the time about where things are and what they mean and how much of them are visible. Tiling WM are largely about just not thinking that much about windows at all. They're visible or they're not, they occupy precise areas on your screen, and moving…

Every time I try a tiling WM again the cognitive load of memorizing new key bindings and trying to get various apps to cooperate with this exotic scheme pushes me away again.

Also many apps have their own built in tiling or separation. I use emacs, I use CLion, irsii, etc and I use a web browser. None of them have agreement on how tabs/documents/windows can be broken up.

I like the idea. The practice of any of them has been less than desirable.

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

#138

Post by ahartmetz »

plq wrote: post #120

Sure, KDE is awesome, but "Surprisingly Awesome"? The author is surprised that eg. "The shortcut settings in KDE really work and are impressive. " or "I can put [the panels] at the top of the screen, the bottom, or even the sides!" Seriously? Isn't it weird that people can be impressed by keyboard shortcuts working or apps being able to put an icon in the system tray in the year of 2022? Disclaimer: I have been a KDE…

This article and the discussion are the first time that I hear so many detailed positive comments about the current KDE keyboard shortcut configuration that I created in, like, 2007 :)

Global shortcuts existed before, but the implementation was different, and the configuration UI for both global and app-local shortcuts was different. I talked to a UX designer and implemented the new thing. In KDE3, there was conflict detection with a short, hardcoded list of shortcuts that didn't necessarily correspond to the actually configured shortcuts. I made it work with the real data (global shortcuts, standard shortcuts like copy & paste, maybe app-specific shortcuts of the current app). As always, the devil is in the details. Other people made important improvements later.

One of the things that I added was a once-per-session component to remember and listen for global keyboard shortcuts, which, by luck, is exactly the right design for Wayland, where only a privileged part of system (either the compositor or a delegate) can snoop on key presses.

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

#139

Post by distances »

dagw wrote: post #92
cycomanic wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm confused, you make it sound like there is something unique to OSX here. But every Linux WM has had virtual desktops since ages ago and virtual desktops are a superior solution to just fullscreen windows (they can do the same for fullscreen windows+do the same for groups of windows... )

OS X also has normal virtual desktops. The 'unique' feature of OS X is that when you maximize a window instead of maximizing on your current desktop, covering any other windows you have open, it creates a new virtual desktop and moves the maximized window there. When you de-maximize it automatically moves the window back to its original virtual desktop and removes the temporary desktop you created.

So that's why maximize behaves so weirdly on Mac! I find it pretty jarring so I only use maximize now for some meetings and presentations if I have to use Mac.

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

#140

Post by jraph »

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 must be one of the very few "hackerish" minded people that does not really get the appeal of tiling window managers

Are we very few, or just non vocal?

I maximize the windows I work on. When I need to see two things on a screen, my window manager's ability to place windows side by side using the mouse or keyboard shortcuts is more than enough. I usually disable compositing to make shadows disappear when I do this, they are distracting.

Kwin (like more window managers I think) can place windows side by side (left - right or top - bottom), or one window on each corner of the screen. I can't imagine needing to see more than 4 windows at the same time. Seeing three / four windows is already more than distracting enough for me. My brain is too small for that. They wouldn't hold enough information anyway since I zoom text quite a bit, so I can be far from my screen and watch it for long hours without tiring my eyes.

When I notice colleagues tiling their terminal sessions with Terminator I feel claustrophobic. Konsole offers this now, but I've been sticking with tabs so far.

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