Distro isn’t important for tiling, just the window manager. I’d start with i3 personally, it’s been around a long time, which means the documentation is fairly plentiful.
this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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can I get that on plasma?
Dude I recommend you to watch a few Youtube videos about what is a desktop, a window manager and a distro ;)
No, you cant get i3 on Plasma.
Well, you kind of can actually. It just replaces KWin
Only on X11 though.
You can? And then it still launches the Plasma session?
That may be an XOrg thing, which Fedora dropped. But the apps could still run on Xorg.
Possibly? Though I wouldn’t recommend it. I tried that with xfce once, and it technically worked, but tiling window manager and desktop environments tend to have different aims. A desktop environment like plasma will have everything bundled together and playing well as a whole, while a window manager like i3 will be barebones and expect you to pick out the pieces yourself. DE’s are much more beginner friendly, while WM’s are great if you want to get as much customization as possible. Which will better suit you depends on your needs.
Cool, thanks for the explanation.
The word you're looking for is Desktop Environment (DE). KDE Plasma is one such DE. Distro is the underlying system.
- i3 has been around forever and has lots of guides on how to customize it. Only downside is it's X11-only, so as everyone moves to Wayland, X11 support will decrease.
- Sway is i3+Wayland, though it's newer, so I dunno how much customization content is out there or whether the i3 tutorials are forward compatible.
- Hyprland is another popular choice, and it is Wayland-based. Only downside is the project lead is a toxic asshole, despite being a gifted dev.
- Cosmic is an upcoming DE, so if you're in no hurry, keep an eye on that one.
To install any of them, search for the project and see if they have an installation guide for your distro. If not look up "how to install <DE> in Fedora."
Cosmic is already more usable than most Window managers, that literally just manage Windows.
I mean, it has apps... and GUI settings...
There is a guy called Ryan Brue that packages all the COSMIC apps. He created a SIG and in the channel there are some COSMIC Devs helping out.
There is a uBlue variant with COSMIC, working pretty great.
COSMIC just breaks KDE Apps a bit. Will have to see if some package may fix them, as they are so themable that missing packages make them use aome shitty fallback theme.
I know Cosmic is there, but it's not even in beta. I can't yet recommend it in good conscience, especially for OP, who is new enough not to know the difference between a distro and a DE.
(And if you're reading this, OP, that's nothing to be ashamed of.)
Hm, the compositor stuff just works
The packages also dont interfere with others, probably? So on Fedora, just add the COPR and try them
COSMIC is extremely stable. I had a single crash or something, and that was a while ago. It is mainly just lacking features, but that is likely already at least as good as most Window Managers like Sway, that are extremely barebones.
I see someone every now and again on [email protected] asking about random Cosmic bugs, which is why I'm hesitant to recommend it to someone green.
Thats very understandable. Meanwhile I think no beginners use Sway etc.
IIRC Sway is 100% compatible with i3 configs
Oh, nice! Might give it a try myself!
Where is dwm?
I would try a few Plasma based tiling scripts before switching to anything like Sway or i3. You'll get a good idea of whether it's for you. Later on if you find you need more control over the tiling you could switch to a dedicated tiling window manager.
I'm using Karousel in Plasma which is scrollable tiling. You can install and enable it like so:
Go to System Settings > Apps & Windows > Window Management > KWin Scripts > select Get New... > In search enter Karousel and wait for it to show up > select Install > select the latest version (as of now karousel-0-9-4.tar.gz).
There is a companion desktop effect that also needs to be installed like so:
Go to System Settings > Apps & Windows > Window Management > Desktop Effects > select Get New... > enter Geometry Change in search > select Install > select the latest version (as of now kwin4-effect-geometry-change-1.3.tar.gz).
Karousel and Geometry Change have configuration options and Karousel also has keyboard shortcuts (view here) which you may need to update to your liking. I don't have a need to configure anything in Geometry Change as the default animation settings are fine. For Karousel I tend to adjust the various spacing and gaps options along with making sure the shortcuts I want are configured. That link above has a short video of what Karousel looks like in action.
Krohnkite
https://github.com/anametologin/krohnkite
https://store.kde.org/p/2144146/
I would try a few Plasma based tiling scripts before switching to anything like Sway or i3.
Agreed. I used tiling window managers for years before coming back to Plasma. Right now on Wayland I highly recommend giving Krohnkite a shot, its stable without any problems and has even multiple layouts to choose (and switch) from. I used Polonum before, but that one is not stable and was problematic. Krohnkite plugin (can be found in KWin Scripts > Get New... > then search for "krohnkite", by anametologin) is pretty good in my opinion.
The only problem with these plugins is, that they are not well documented as a standalone tiling window manager and cannot be configured as deeply. And they might interfere with other plugins or shortcut setups and so on. I knew what I wanted and I knew how to configure stuff, that's why its easy for me. At least it can be easily disabled without replacing entire desktop environment.
Little tip: One thing to mention, unlike Polonium, with Krohnkite one does not need to logout and login from current user session whenever settings are changed. It's enough to disable Krohnkite in KWin Scripts, Apply, then enable and Apply again. This is basically a reload of the plugin to take any changed settings in effect.
I've got issues with both of them, but polonium is closer to what I want. In krohnkite I can't use btree while also keeping the tiling part. If I drag a tile while in btree in krohnkite they just snap back to their previous position. Overall krohnkite is more polished though because it doesn't rely on kwin for the most part to determine positioning. Whereas polonium uses only the api's provided by kwin.
Lastly I have noticed that you don't actually need to log out and back in for polinium. Closing all windows and relaunching them has been enough for me.
Krohnkite
In krohnkite I can’t use btree while also keeping the tiling part. If I drag a tile while in btree in krohnkite they just snap back to their previous position.
I use a 3 different layouts, one of them Btree. And drag and drop one window over the other will swap position of both windows. So functionally, it is working (for me) and maybe another plugin or configuration in Plasma is in the way?
Polonium
Closing all windows and relaunching them is from users perspective actually not too different from logging out and in again, at least from my view. From time to time I'm looking at the source in Github to see what the recent advancements are. But it seems development is on halt at the moment, with only minor changes over longer period of time.
On KDEs side I saw some update notes specifically mentioning fixes for Polonium, which is a good sign. My hope is that development of Polonium will take off soon.
I use a 3 different layouts, one of them Btree. And drag and drop one window over the other will swap position of both windows. So functionally, it is working (for me)
That is cool and I didn't know about that, but that is not what I meant. In most tiling window managers, regardless of the layout. You can increase the size of any individual window and all other windows will adjust in size.
Oh, you was talking about resizing. I see. Yes, Btree does not allow resizing. Trying so will snap window back to position, just as you were saying. When I read "drag", I thought you meant placing the window. The default "Tile" or "Quarter" could be used instead if window resizing is a requirement. But off course they do not function exactly like Btree.
Thanks for the suggestions! I have tried tiling scripts on plasma before, but I don't think I've tried this one, so I'll see how it goes!
Absolutely.
You should try Fedora Sway in a Virtual Machine to see if you'd like it
In my day (today) we would create a test user, install a new WM and try it. I don't get the "install the full distro on a VM just to try a program just a few kbs in size"...
You get the whole experience including installing your necessary software
Again, how is it different than installing directly on your machine? Especially when you have a package manager that can rollback the installation?
Not OP, but can only speak from my experience:
Installing a second WM/DE usually messes up my install, as quite some stuff is just from one GUI framework, so I don't have to have to much stuff installed.
Also getting rid of it afterwards always wasn't as easily possible.
I completely get trying out a WM y firing up a VM. You could even just boot the live USB stick to check it out.
But changing my working install just to try something (and then have to clean it up again) wasn't working out for me in the past
Well, as I said, it gives you the whole thing from scratch, in addition it doesn't fuck with your menus. Finally, and most importantly, maybe people don't like experimenting on their main machine.
Good idea, I'll do that.
You can easily install and configure a tiling window manager on any distro, so you should not switch an entire distribution and your base because of that. Unless off course you want to, but its not difficult. If you install a tiling window manager from your repository, then read the documentation how to set it up correctly and log out your current user session. Then in the login screen, you should be able to select what window manager or desktop environment you want to use.
But be careful, lot of window managers are still not supported in Wayland and the other way, some of the new window managers are Wayland only. The usual suspects would be probably Sway or Hyprland on Wayland? There is also Qtile, but that is for people who want to configure and write Python source code, as the configuration is in Python language (BTW my favorite tiling window manager, but not for everyone). EndeavourOS used to have a Qtile spin, but they stopped that not long ago.
But if you really must switch the distribution, then there might be a few preconfigured tiling window manager distributions:
- Fedora with Sway (on Wayland): https://fedoraproject.org/spins/sway/
- Fedora with i3 (on Legacy X11):
As a fan of both Fedora and KDE, I'd say there are better alternatives than Fedora KDE Spin.
I don't see how this is relevant
I'm surprised no one mentioned this if you are already using kde
It seems to be no longer updated, but I'll try it out, it looks cool.
When using KDE, press meta-T to activate the equivalent of Windows Power Toys' Fancy Zones.
You can then set tiling zones and when you drag a window, hold shift at the same time to lock it in one of the zones.
No idea what distro you're currently using but generally you can install whatever window manager/desktop (gui) you want
For a tiling wm I'd recommend hyprland. It's not the most stable but I've had minimal issues with it and it's really easy to get started with. You can install it alongside gnome/kde I believe and switch between the two on login so if you break one you've still got the other
Cool, I'll check out out.
Bear in mind most tiling wms don't come with much installed by default, you'll need a bar and a launcher at least
If you like fedora as a base, you can install the Gnome version of fedora and install the Pop Shell. It has autotiling that you can turn on and off while you get used to it if you want. Its what I run on Nobara and it works perfectly fine for me.
Little bit of a thread hijack. But maaaaaybe a recommendation for OP as well.
I’ve never tried a tiling wm before. What does it do that’s so much better than say, a gnome extension? For example, I’m running a gnome extension called grid and I LOVE it. I can tell it to break my screen up into rows and columns with a simple 5X8 or 4X4 command. Then set as many hot keys as I want to move things around and scale the size. It auto tiles and does intelligent window things. Basically I spend all my time with my entire screen tiled with random stuff, but I can move it around easily, not have to write scripts, and still have all the gnome interface stuff as well. What am I missing? If not much, maybe OP, you’re just looking for something like the extension I’m using?
I'm mostly looking for the layouts for different things, but a kwin script that someone else suggested might suffice.