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A Tiling Desktop Environment

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Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#111

Post by chrfyi »

wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

Shameless plug: I just released https://highlyopinionated.co/swish, which includes 2x2 and 2x3 window tiling through two-finger swiping on the window's titlebar or the app's dock icon. It's primarily designed for Magic Trackpads and is faster (and more accurate on a multi-monitor setup) than any dragging-based window manager and — in my honest opinion — fits pretty well into Apple's design philosophy.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#112

Post by enygmata »

I've been using Awesome every day since 2009. The only things I change from the default on a new install is the terminal, the default layout and hide title bars.

The author mentions compositors, but if you don't require fancy things like transparent windows or shadows, and you have a a well supported/behaved GPU and monitor, you can probably do without them if all you care about is tearfree video. Drivers like intel, ati, amdgpu and more recently modesetting have a TearFree option that does just that. For some systems switching to a DRI3/glamour setup is enough and as a last resort you can configure X11 and mesa to force vsync.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#113

Post by sean_the_geek »

imeron wrote: post #81
wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

I use the magnet app for this. Works perfectly when needed. Interestingly I don't use it that often on my laptop's screen, but for my 34" widescreen it's a must have.

+1 for Magnet. Been using it for a while and it works like a charm.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#114

Post by jws »

OJFord wrote: post #43
wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

Because Apple hasn't invented tiling windows yet? It'll be revolutionary when it does, though, I'm sure.

Sure they have. It’s in the iPad, though it only supports two application level windows the applications may tile within themselves.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#115

Post by flurdy »

A tiling window manager is a must for me. But I (like the OP's article mentions) prefer to use a standard desktop environment (Gnome or macOS) but add tiling feature only.

So, on my macOS laptops, it is Amethyst all day https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst. Love it.

But on my Linux desktops, I am stuck with Gnome and not gone for full VM replacement with XMonad, i3 or Awesome.

I don't want issues with disk mounting, clipboards, multiple monitors, etc just cause I want automated tiling and have to replace my whole desktop environment to achieve it.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#116

Post by alpaca128 »

INTPenis wrote: post #71

I know tiling DE followers have firm principles in my experience so please don't take this the wrong way because everyone is different. My personal experience is that I used a lot of tiling DE back when I had a laptop with 256M RAM. Lately my last three laptops have had 8G and more of RAM so I don't see the point. Mainly because I use vim+tmux as an IDE. So I'm already using keyboard shortcuts extensively to quickly…

In my case I don't need a third layer on top, I simply don't use(aka don't need) tmux most of the time - I just run terminal buffers inside NeoVim tabs/windows and can switch quickly between workspaces and windows via i3 shortcuts.

But if I was forced to use a DE I'd also go for Gnome - it's pretty polished and provides switchable workspaces a bit like i3. It's just not near as configurable as I'd like.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#117

Post by dividuum »

rusticpotato wrote: post #100
dividuum wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One of the dozen users checking in. My favorite feature of ion/notion is the alt-space scratch pad. I always have a bunch of ad-hoc terminals or other programs open that I can easily reach from any desktop. So far I haven't seen any other tiling wm that has something similar. I'm probably wrong though.

Uhh i3 has had a scratchpad forever and I use it in tabbed mode with as many tabs as I want

Yep. That's the "I'm probably wrong" part. I knew that i3 had something like that, but I remember that you could only start one program within the scratchpad. If there's a tabbed mode within the scratchpad, I should probably take another look.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#118

Post by rusticpotato »

dividuum wrote: post #117
rusticpotato wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Uhh i3 has had a scratchpad forever and I use it in tabbed mode with as many tabs as I want

Yep. That's the "I'm probably wrong" part. I knew that i3 had something like that, but I remember that you could only start one program within the scratchpad. If there's a tabbed mode within the scratchpad, I should probably take another look.

It’s a bit of a trick. You just have a bunch of tabs and then select all (select the parent) then send the entire parent to scratch pad

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#119

Post by tluyben2 »

panpanna wrote: post #102
tluyben2 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

X220 with 9-cell battery, ssd from a broken macbook pro and 16 gb from the same macbook pro. Yes, it is the best laptop I have ever owned (and I owned many). I have several (bought for almost nothing from a company sale) for replacement; if I break one, I am up and running in 10 minutes again. I think I paid less than $250 for 5 pristine ones + 2 new 9 cell batteries new in box. It is surprisingly fast for it’s age w…

Lenovo X220 was the best laptop ever produced. But after 8 years non-stop use they often need fan and thermal paste replaced.

Spare parts and complete replacements are quite easy and cheap to pick up. Luckily many of there were made :)

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#120

Post by YeGoblynQueenne »

git-pull wrote: post #26

Like the author, I've spent years in tiling WM's (xmonad, awesome, dwm, i3). Right now I'm hanging around big DE's like kde, gnome, windows 10, osx + magnet. Windows 10 snapping keyboard keys are top tier. Not automated tiling, but save so much time. Also the GUI is beautiful on whatever screen you plug it into (including 4k). On Linux DE's right now? Mint or gnome will show options to scale up 200%, 300%, 400%(!) Ev…

Yeah.

Until I read the parent article I hadn't realised why I have been so lazy about installing linux on my current laptop, which came with win 10. It's the desktop manager.

Winkey + left/right arrow key snaps the currently focused window at the corresponding half of the screen. Then the desktop icons appear on the other half and you can move around with the keys and press enter on one, and it snaps on the other half. Then press Winkey + up/down key and the focused window snaps to the upper/lower quarter of the screen and you can again choose another window to fill the remaining space. Winkey + Ctrl + left/right arrow changes desktops. With Winkey + tab you see a desktop overlay and can send windows to other desktops from their context menu.

And all without every having to touch the mouse. I had Xmonad on a previous laptop and it's just like that, except for all the arcane configuration files. It works out of the box.

I mean, it's still windows 10, right? I plug it back into my dock and it LBSODs (it's Light Blue now). Every other week I go into nerd warp spasm because of some inane stupidity, like, my machine keeps going to sleep if I leave it idle for a couple of minutes after I woke it up over bluetooth and that's not configurable. Or it randomly adds a new language to my language bar. Stuff like that. It's windows.

But the desktop manager is actually, very damn good.

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