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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

#141

Post by tionis »

vanderZwan wrote: post #132

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…

On i3 there is autorandr which does something similar, but of course i3 being i3 you have to configure the outputs manually with xrandr the first time.

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

#142

Post by nvarsj »

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 can sort of see what you’re saying, but the cognitive management of what you describe sounds like a huge pain. I use PaperWM and it’s awesome. It just gets out of my way and let’s me manage tons of apps and windows with ease and 0 manual window management. The sliding window tiling approach is also much better imo than that of i3 style, especially on large/widescreen monitors.

As an aside, it’s interesting to me that it’s predominantly OS X users that “don’t see the point in tiling WMs”.

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

#143

Post by christophilus »

rawoke083600 wrote: post #73
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…

> really get the appeal of tiling window managers. There might be "levels" of appeal and value... I too a few years ago moved to i3. The "tiling" nature is not where I got the most value from. I got it from have "multiple dedicated virtual workspaces(vdesktops)". With the ability to switch to them fast. Example: 1) Terminal 2) Browser 3) Browser-2 4) Code (VStudio) 5) Code-2 (VStudio) 6) Files (File manager) 7) Gimp…

I do this with Gnome.

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

#144

Post by christophilus »

JNRowe wrote: post #39
christophilus wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

My experience with those was that they’d crunch the window down to a small rectangle which was hardly useful. I like having the browser and terminal be a reasonable size, even if hidden. Especially the browser; as I’m rarely testing mobile layouts when making changes.

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

#146

Post by kiawe_fire »

WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #115
stormbrew wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I don't see the cognitive load you are talking about. It's just windows. You put roughly where you want them when you need them to have what you want visible. They stack. If one is out of your sight and you need it, you use the list or expose to find it and move it where it will be useful. It's like manipulating documents in the physical world except it's always easy to find a window in your stack of windows. It's a…

I’ve been the same. I came from MacOS into Linux in the last couple of years, but gave Pop_os! a try early on with its tiling wm.

I found myself constantly planning layouts and positioning things. Nothing ever ended up feeling right, and it was exhausting.

“I’ll have my browser window take the full height and half the width over here. Then I’ll put my code editor over on the right, half high, then my Terminal below it.

No wait, that’s not enough height for the code editor, so let’s shrink the Terminal down… except now the terminal’s uncomfortably short.

Well, maybe the browser can be split with the Terminal and the code editor can be full height.

Except now the code editor feels too narrow and I don’t really need it this tall, it would be really nice if I could have the browser window full height instead.”

And then I’m back where I started.

And if I finally get used to a layout and whatever shortcut keys I have for jumping around, then !!! A wild Slack message appears!

Now I need to open a PDF viewer along with Slack along with my code editor but don’t need my browser but maybe need my Terminal, and I’m back to the layout drawing board for the next task.

With overlapping windows, every window can be the exact size and shape it needs to be.

I’m open to the likelihood that I’m just doing it wrong. I would also bet this is less of an issue if I were using multiple large, unscaled 4K monitors.

So I’ll try it again someday with a different setup, but for now I’m mostly happy with my 1440p monitor(s), and overlapping windows.

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

#147

Post by lewispollard »

jraph wrote: post #140
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…

> 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.

KDE + bismuth user, with dual screens. Terminal, IDE, window for the application I'm working on, browser for the documentation of the framework or tool I'm using. Sometimes an extra browser window for miscellaneous searching. Sometimes MS Teams is in the mix there too. Oh and as you mentioned, terminal is usually tmuxed into 2 or more panes.

And if I do need to focus down to one maximised window, meta+m to toggle "monocle" layout which maximises and removes borders.

But, I have ADHD and find that if something isn't visible in front of me, it's basically non-existent from the point of view of my working memory.

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

#148

Post by vanderZwan »

tionis wrote: post #141
vanderZwan wrote: post #132

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…

On i3 there is autorandr which does something similar, but of course i3 being i3 you have to configure the outputs manually with xrandr the first time.

Well, I wouldn't hold that against i3, since that is not really different from when I manually arrange my monitors in the display settings through a GUI the first time I plug them in. So good going i3 maintainers!

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

#149

Post by nachexnachex »

detaro wrote: post #37
jaimex2 wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

3.5.10 was the pinnacle of desktop experience. But plasma is now close to that

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

#150

Post by jhauris »

The author mentions how good KDEConnect is, but I don't think one can overstate how cool it is. Having a youtube video on my computer pause when my cell phone rings, and resume when I hang up; use my phone as a mouse on my computer from across the room, or use media controls on my phone to control whatever is playing; (the list goes on and on). It's the first technology that has made me feel like I'm living in the future in a good way.
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