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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

#161

Post by michaelmrose »

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…

Keep in mind that to some degree workflows are inevitably a matter of taste and familiarity. That is we adjust over time to a certain way of working changing how we work to be in line with out our tools work and enjoy things whose workings are in line with our own mental models.

I think you may have misunderstood how one works with a tiling wm rather than fiddling with the arrangement constantly one hardly does at all. Certain applications can be automatically routed to certain monitors and in certain arrangements. 99% of the time the primary window management operation one does is simply to switch what a given monitor is displaying or change focus between applications with none of the sizing arranging exposing or alt tabbing through lists of windows. The most useful arrangement of windows on a per monitor workspace is either a single large window or 2-3 aligned horizontally or vertically based on the orientation of the monitor and the creation of the arrangement is by no other means than simply opening an application and having it pop into the arrangement.

This is increasingly evident and useful with multiple monitors and increasing number of windows. There is probably no meaningful difference in utility between any window management method that can be discerned with 3 windows on a single monitor but at some point between 3 windows and say 15 one really needs at least virtual desktops to break up the windows and switching windows is a 2-3 level operation switching virtual desktop then focusing the correct monitor and then expose.

Much worse if it it would useful at the moment to have an application from Desktop 2 Monitor 2 on Desktop 1 Monitor 1 and then back again in its original location. Especially if you need it to share space with an existing window because now one most resize both windows in addition to rearranging.

The cognitive overhead is in remembering which desktop one has which window however this is trivially mitigated by always using the same desktop for the same task. This ultimately microscopic amount of overhead is paid for by not constantly paying for windows arrangement amnesia by using overview and expose to find the window you were using 30 seconds ago.

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

#162

Post by michaelmrose »

kiawe_fire wrote: post #146
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 i…

If your future 4K monitors are the exact same physical size having higher resolution wont make you want to have more tinier windows.

The most useful arrangement for windows to be tiled into is 1-2 windows on a horizontal monitor with more windows accommodated by adding more monitors to your workspace instead of splitting a window 7 ways.

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

#163

Post by justemre »

onnyyonn wrote: post #123
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/…

You may want to have a look at Bismuth https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth . It's the successor to Khronkite.

I didn't used any of them before, is this any better than Kröhnkite?

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

#164

Post by michaelmrose »

cmrdporcupine wrote: post #137
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…

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 h…

I like the idea of meaningful sequences as bindings. o->t open terminal w->f workspace f r->f relocate focused window or windows to f y->f grab whatever is in f and put it in current.

Naturally you need a binding to start the sequence. Personally I like setting it up to produce a different binding if shift keys are pressed and released because this is much easier to press than a modifier key + key or a key which would require moving away from the home row.

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

#166

Post by GekkePrutser »

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 tiling is better, but to each their own. And tiling WMs don't mean everything is constantly changing.

I think you have a good point about the sidebars of webpages. A lot of webpages don't cope very well with being put in a narrow window like documentation beside a code editor. A lot of cruft, padding, menubars etc tend to take up unmoveable space. It would be nice if we could pan and zoom that kind of stuff out of the way.

But I personally use something in the middle. I have 9 virtual desktops (mapped directly to the numpad on my keyboard using KDE's shortcuts) with some static tiled configurations of the apps I use daily. This way I can quickly check an IM that comes in and snap back to my work stuff in an instant.

But like I said, whatever works for you! I don't think it's a matter of one size fits all.

The only thing I really miss about KDE is having virtual desktops switchable per monitor, not as a whole set of all monitors together :(

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

#167

Post by GekkePrutser »

deadbunny wrote: post #122
WastingMyTime89 wrote: post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 can't speak for everyone and I'm a multiscreen type, but for me I have things on specific workspaces. Workspace 1-4 Primary monitor (center, ultrawide, landscape) Workspace 5-7 Second Monitor (left, portrait) Workspace 8-10 Third Monitor (right, landscape) 1. Browser and terminals/vim for current project (ultrawide monitor = 4:3ish split) 2. As above if I need to switch to another project 3. As above if I need to s…

Yeah I do the same with virtual desktops, except I right now have only one screen. Because I hate the way KDE switches virtual desktops for all screens together, I would really want each screen to have its own separate virtual desktop. I have 9 of them and mapped my numpad to the virtual desktop because I don't like combo keys very much. And I don't normally use the numpad for anything anyway :P

How did you manage that? Or don't you use KDE but something like i3? (Especially because you call them workspaces).

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

#168

Post by GekkePrutser »

bayindirh wrote: post #83
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…

KDE has two solutions to these problems: Present windows and desktop grid view. Present windows also has a search feature, so you press a key combination, present windows open. Two or three letters for the title of the window, then enter. If you want to fast organization, showing all windows and desktop is also achievable. Open the view, drag and drop windows or desktops. For me, both views have their active corners…

Yes indeed, another thing I really like about KDE.

macOS used to have the grid view (with virtual desktops in a grid), along with Expose, basically like KDE has it now. But at some point (a long time ago) they decided I shouldn't want a grid view anymore, reduced virtual desktops to a horizontal line only and combined it with Expose, and called the whole thing "mission control". Since then my use of it reduced dramatically because it didn't fit my workflow anymore.

It was one of the many things they broke over time which built up and eventually caused me to leave macOS. KDE still gives you choices. Apple will just take away what you've been using and often gives something worse back in return.

For one, the grid view is really great if you're monitoring multiple things. I have 9 virtual desktops and I often use it to "zoom out" so I can see multiple screens at once. This is especially useful because I run my 4K screen at 200% scaling so even zoomed out it's still fairly readable (about 60% of normal pixels)

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

#169

Post by GekkePrutser »

xiaomai wrote: post #7
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 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.

This is basically what Windows 11 is doing now. It's a sensible middle ground IMO.

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

#170

Post by GekkePrutser »

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.

Is it still there? I thought they had already killed it. How do you open it?

I'm not on Mac but I missed the real expose too. Mission control is too cluttery for me. And I really really missed the desktops in a grid. In a line does not work for me, I just have too many and I want them to have fixed places, not to jump order when I maximise something.

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