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Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

qtile.org

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Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#21

Post by cespare »

Shameless tangentially-related-software plug: I've been working on Carlisle[0] for a while and I use it day-to-to day. I wrote it because I don't personally like using tiling WMs (and I'm quite happy with Xfce) but I wanted a highly configurable way to quickly move/arrange/resize windows.

If you've used Slate[1], it's like a (much simpler) version of that, for Linux (well, EWMH-compliant X window managers, specifically).

(Carlisle is a fairly simple wrapper on top of Andrew Gallant's amazing xgbutil libraries[2] for Go.)

[0] https://github.com/cespare/carlisle

[1] https://github.com/jigish/slate

[2] http://godoc.org/github.com/BurntSushi/xgbutil

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#22

Post by ramLlama »

phaer wrote: post #20
krick wrote: post #19

I cannot get over the fact GUI apps (like firefox) look so bad on every screenshot with tiling WMs. Is it that users just don't care or you actually cannot make it look good ("good" is ambiguous, so let's say how it would normally look on Xfce with standard Xubuntu theme) easily enough? I saw something like Xmonad + Gnome 3, but it sounds pretty scary (I mean, one thing that is good about tiling WMs is that they are…

I guess you are referring to the GTK/QT/... theme used? Most tiling WMs don't set one by default, but you can easily do so by using a custom .gtkrc-2.0 or so[1]. [1] see, for example, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GTK%2B#Themes

This is exactly right. GNOME, KDE and other out-of-the-box solutions make sure to set the GTK and Qt themes so that everything looks pretty. When you use a WM (window manager) rather than a DE (desktop environment), it is up to you to setup all the ancillary things such as themes and daemons. This is why .xprofile exists!

Also, I find lxappearance an easy and quick way to set GTK themes via GUI rather than having to edit the .gtkrc files for every option.

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#23

Post by dmpayton »

freshhawk wrote: post #9

Does anyone know how it handles multiple monitors? I recently switched from xmonad to awesome and while I'm happy with it, having a separate set of screens for each monitor is pretty annoying. It's been said before but everyone writing a tiling window manager should make it work just like xmonad does for multiple screens, they really got it perfect.

I'm not sure how Xmonad and AwesomeWM handle multiple monitors, but in Qtile you have a single set of groups (analagous to tags or workspaces) shared between your monitors, and each monitor displays one group.

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#24

Post by tych0 »

freshhawk wrote: post #9

Does anyone know how it handles multiple monitors? I recently switched from xmonad to awesome and while I'm happy with it, having a separate set of screens for each monitor is pretty annoying. It's been said before but everyone writing a tiling window manager should make it work just like xmonad does for multiple screens, they really got it perfect.

Qtile has a set of virtual desktops ("groups" in qtile lingo), and you can display any group on any monitor, rather than having one group that maps to your pair of monitors. I find this behavior very handy.

EDIT: to clarify, it functions in essentially the same fundamental way xmonad's does.

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#26

Post by tych0 »

platz wrote: post #7
robertfw wrote: post #6

I've looked at using Qtile before, but opted to go for I3 as it seemed to be a bit more mature. Would love to hear experiences/thoughts of anyone using this, I would love to switch to it and be able to leverage my existing python knowledge for customizing.

One of the things about i3 that is really compelling is the multi-monitor support.

Qtile has multi monitor support as well. Any thoughts on why i3's is more compelling?

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#27

Post by dmpayton »

phaer wrote: post #20
krick wrote: post #19

I cannot get over the fact GUI apps (like firefox) look so bad on every screenshot with tiling WMs. Is it that users just don't care or you actually cannot make it look good ("good" is ambiguous, so let's say how it would normally look on Xfce with standard Xubuntu theme) easily enough? I saw something like Xmonad + Gnome 3, but it sounds pretty scary (I mean, one thing that is good about tiling WMs is that they are…

I guess you are referring to the GTK/QT/... theme used? Most tiling WMs don't set one by default, but you can easily do so by using a custom .gtkrc-2.0 or so[1]. [1] see, for example, https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/GTK%2B#Themes

Yep. I use Ubuntu and my .xsession starts unity-settings-daemon before firing up Qtile to give me a more pleasent desktop experience.

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#28

Post by linguafranca »

krick wrote: post #19

I cannot get over the fact GUI apps (like firefox) look so bad on every screenshot with tiling WMs. Is it that users just don't care or you actually cannot make it look good ("good" is ambiguous, so let's say how it would normally look on Xfce with standard Xubuntu theme) easily enough? I saw something like Xmonad + Gnome 3, but it sounds pretty scary (I mean, one thing that is good about tiling WMs is that they are…

In my experience, window manager authors don't usually care if some other program looks bad. There's no real unity, and their attitude is just "not my program, not my problem".

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#29

Post by giancarlostoro »

ibrahima wrote: post #17
giancarlostoro wrote: post #2

Used it before, felt like it needed a little more. Great otherwise. After being spoiled with the Windows 8 tiling system I can't seem to appreciate tiling managers on Linux as much as I should.

Are you serious? Going from tiling window managers to Windows 8, I was like... this could be the start of something great for Windows, but it's still way too basic for me. All Windows 8 seems to have is a split view with adjustable split widths but that's super easy in any sane tiling WM. Or are you talking about Windows 8 apps being "responsive" in some sense?

Well I do understand it's basic, but I like how isolated the applications can be. For example, I can go full screen with flash on IE for Metro, or with other "full-screen" applications and it will only hijack the portion of the screen that is taken up by IE. I can keep using Skype or even the Desktop on the side and multi-task. If I try to fullscreen Flash elsewhere it hijacks the screen and even with a second monitor breaks my multi-tasking experience.

So if anyone made a Tiling Window Manager that isolates how much an application can control, and gets rid of this config it to make it work mentality, they would have me sold. I love having multiple desktops on Linux, one feature that Windows lacks to this day. Their tiling, although incomplete, it works for me and what I do.

Sorry if I offended anyone, I'm not a tiling guru, though I'd love to be. I just prefer applications that "just work" without too much effort on the end-users part, as opposed to getting in the way of the end-user.

Re: Qtile – A hackable tiling window manager written in Python

#30

Post by yew »

krick wrote: post #19

I cannot get over the fact GUI apps (like firefox) look so bad on every screenshot with tiling WMs. Is it that users just don't care or you actually cannot make it look good ("good" is ambiguous, so let's say how it would normally look on Xfce with standard Xubuntu theme) easily enough? I saw something like Xmonad + Gnome 3, but it sounds pretty scary (I mean, one thing that is good about tiling WMs is that they are…

Could you link an example? Some tiling window manager users just don't care much about appearances (my general approach to window decoration is to get rid of it), but it should be possible to approximate the appearance of windows under any desktop environment via configuration tweaking (eg Firefox themes, font settings, GTK/Qt themes).

You are likely to find that a stand-alone WM requires more manual configuration than a DE. Most DEs have more-or-less unified settings managers, but those settings are really for many disparate components of the environment that a WM won't even try to control. It might be possible to recover some convenience by using a third-party settings manager like the previously mentioned lxappearance (I find the Arch Linux wiki a useful resource in this regard even though I don't run Arch).

Alternatively, you can use xmonad with Xfce (or another DE). That's what I did before completely switching to xmonad and it does make settings management easier.

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