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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

#11

Post by godshatter »

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 was going to say the same thing. I set things up a particular way with an eye to easily clicking on partially hidden windows, and I usually have specific empty areas on each virtual desktop in the same place because you can place the cursor over the background and use the scroll wheel to change virtual desktops. Each desktop has it's own layout, but they all respect that one area is to be blank so I can easily put my mouse there and rotate between the desktops. It's silly, but it's incredibly useful.

But everyone is different, which is why I go for configurable over programs that expect you to work a particular way. KDE is very good about this.

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

#12

Post by zamalek »

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 purely based on you workflow. I'm a "maximizer," 99% of the time things are maximized on my desktop. A second tile (browser) is usually extremely temporary. Other stuff goes to other desktops.

So I general, my layout is highly consistent: just one tile.

For what it's worth, hiding the unimportant details in a web page can also be accomplished by zoom/scroll - but that's definitely not to say your approach is wrong. Different things for different people.

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

#13

Post by [deleted] »

zamalek wrote: post #12
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 purely based on you workflow. I'm a "maximizer," 99% of the time things are maximized on my desktop. A second tile (browser) is usually extremely temporary. Other stuff goes to other desktops. So I general, my layout is highly consistent: just one tile. For what it's worth, hiding the unimportant details in a web page can also be accomplished by zoom/scroll - but that's definitely not to say your approac…

[deleted]

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

#14

Post by aspaceman »

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.

IMHO it's like your actual desk. Some people like it clean and organized - others have a cluttered mess of objects.

My desk is a tragedy, but I much prefer tiling window managers and rigid, well-organized computing environments. Great to see the variety of options provided by KDE. I'll have to give this a try.

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

#15

Post by eikenberry »

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.

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

#16

Post by rrix2 »

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/Using_Other_Window_Manage...

But with things moving to Wayland, etc, this simple swap out method isn't possible right now, so I've been keeping tabs and playing with Khronkite and KWin-tiling every so often for when I inevitably swap over to Wayland. It's basically a perfectly serviceable tiling WM OS without having to deal with any of the screen locker, systray, R&R, that Sway et al force you to contend with yourself. Most of the setup is in unbinding system defaults + rebinding window management shortcuts in to better "places".

I still use KDEWM=/usr/bin/i3 equivalent for now.

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

#17

Post by [deleted] »

aspaceman wrote: post #14
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.

IMHO it's like your actual desk. Some people like it clean and organized - others have a cluttered mess of objects. My desk is a tragedy, but I much prefer tiling window managers and rigid, well-organized computing environments. Great to see the variety of options provided by KDE. I'll have to give this a try.

[deleted]

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

#18

Post by hello_there »

I clicked through to the tiling WM that he was using for KDE and one of the things under "Features" that got my attention was this:

> Support for setting windows to floating or quitting tiling altogether, per-desktop (Meta+Shift+F11) and per-window (Meta-f) (“Meta” refers to the “super” or “windows” key here)

I think this might be worth a try...

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

#19

Post by rodgerd »

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.

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.

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

#20

Post by [deleted] »

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.

[deleted]
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