I wish someone would make a tiling desktop environment instead of only a window manager to make them easy to use for all without tweaking because they are the future of the DEs.
The newest KDE Plasma versions have tiling buiilt in. But you can also install Kwin plugin called Krohnkite, which is really neat.
Looking forward to Cosmic DE from Pop!OS, they’re integrating tiling functionality in it.
https://blog.system76.com/post/cosmic-de-tiling-redesign-and-libcosmic-rebasing
I personally use the tiling features recently introduced in plasma. For my needs it works just fine.
KDE has pretty good tiling functionality these days, not much need in using another WM unless you have a very specific workflow in mind
I once saw a video which showed off the built-in Plasma tiling feature and complained that it could not have been developed by a tiling WM user, since it was very inflexible and mouse focused. He could not use it with a keyboard, which kind of defeats the purpose of tiling in the first place.
He could not use it with a keyboard, which kind of defeats the purpose of tiling in the first place.
I wouldn’t say it defeats the purpose of tiling in general - it’s a very nice addition for many of us, but I can see how it lacks utility for hardcore tiling wm users. Perhaps it could be improved if someone have time and skill to step in.
No, “defeating the purpose” definetly is hyperbole. ;)
But if you’ve used tiling before and do a lot of text editing (like developers do) and use the terminal a lot, not being able to use the keyboard for tiling WMs just feels worse than using a stacking WM in the first place, since you feel so held back by the mouse.
If you use a distro based on Ubuntu or Debian (like PopOS and others) I recommend Regolith Desktop. You can install it on an existing setup and it’s ready to go out of the box. You can choose it from the login screen like any other desktop environment like GNOME or KDE. The next version will also bring Sway/Wayland support since obviously X is on its way out in the long term.
You van use tour favorite windowmanager with tour favorite Desktop. That said, KDE has tiling capabilities.
You may want to adjust your keyboard
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You can actually tell KDE to use a window manager other than KWin. I’ve used i3 with KDE like this in the past, and it’s pretty good as long as you tweak the i3 config a bit. Somebody wrote a guide here with the necessary config changes.
Little disclaimer: I’ve not done this in years, but the linked guide was update recently so I believe it should still work ok.
You can do this yourself very easily. I use xfce with bspwm for example, you just have to remove xfwm from the startup applications and replace it with your wm of choice.
Also gnome-flashback Guinness you a gnome DE that you can plug a WM into. E.g. https://github.com/regolith-linux/i3-gnome-flashback
That only works on Xorg though, doesn’t it? /g
xfce and bspwm are both still xorg only afaik. I imagine you should be able to do something similar with wayland and a different de/wm, but I’m not really familiar with wayland.
That’s the big thing that keeps me from moving to Wayland and sway. I want a full DE and don’t want to reinvent that wheel but afaik I would have to.
So it’s i3-gnome-flashback for me for now.
You can use qtile with gnome
There is an extention of Gnome called pop-shell that does exactly what you want
I use KDE which just added tiling support and will continue to develop in that direction, but Pop!_OS has the best tiling within a desktop environment, as well as short (1 minute) videos showing how to use it. It’s a well designed and mature system that I would recommend.
This is the kind of thing that won my wife over to Pop!_OS, and tiling in general.
I’m using Pop_Os! Since 1.5 years and I basically fell in love with it. I was super annoyed with Gnome not having it and KDE being overkill for my personal use. I’m now using Pop_OS! At home and at work and patently waiting for the coming changes that they’re doing using Rust :)
You can add the same feature to gnome…