this post was submitted on 18 Jun 2023
23 points (89.7% liked)

Linux

47231 readers
786 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

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.

top 31 comments
sorted by: hot top controversial new old
[–] [email protected] 9 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Wow, this looks very promising

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Also gnome-flashback gives you a gnome DE that you can plug a WM into. E.g. https://github.com/regolith-linux/i3-gnome-flashback

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (3 children)

That only works on Xorg though, doesn't it? /g

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That looks promising! Usually. I prefer Plasma, but the tiling options for that aren't too great either.

The System76 people are working on tilingein their DE, though.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I've been through a few tiling WMs and came back to i3. For me it's the right combo of automatic & manual and malleable. And of course it should be easy to move to Wayland with Sway (effectively i3 for Wayland), but I have held off until I know I can get it in a curated DE as I have no idea to create an environment, I want it to just work.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

sway is the i3 like experience for wayland.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I know that there are tiling WMs for wayland. But I though that using a different tiling WM (like i3/sway) inside of a certain DE (like Gnome or Plasma) doesn't work in wayland anymore, since the WM/DE distinction doesn't exist anymore.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

I personally use the tiling features recently introduced in plasma. For my needs it works just fine.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago

The newest KDE Plasma versions have tiling buiilt in. But you can also install Kwin plugin called Krohnkite, which is really neat.

https://store.kde.org/p/1281790/

https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

KDE has pretty good tiling functionality these days, not much need in using another WM unless you have a very specific workflow in mind

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (2 children)

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Everyone’s workflow is different and it could very well be that the plasma tiling features weren’t a good match for the author of that video.

My tiling needs are pretty simple and I rarely use anything more complicated than a vertical split.

There were also major changes in the plasma tiling earlier this year so if that video predates the concerns no longer apply.

You’d probably have to give it a try to see if all the features you need nicely work with a keyboard.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm in the same boat. I use tiling more when it has virtually zero visible edge and I just get more overall window space. That's literally all I want tiling for most of the time on any machine. I'm completely content with that.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I really like popOS auto tiling+stacking on gnome, it's very acessible, you can disable at any time and control most of it just dragging and dropping, even when it fails i usually just pres the key combination two times to reset it, and it organizes itself pretty well.

On KDE side there where some Kwin scripts that did the same, but they always broke on me, i left kde a while ago, so the scenario may be better now.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

There is an extention of Gnome called pop-shell that does exactly what you want

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Theres a gnome extension for tiling.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

You can use qtile with gnome

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You van use tour favorite windowmanager with tour favorite Desktop. That said, KDE has tiling capabilities.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 year ago (1 children)

You may want to adjust your keyboard

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I can't stand tiling environments, apart from Emacs lol.

I use Window Maker which is a classic WM I used back in the 90's. I used to use XFCE, still do on a couple of laptops, and I thought I would miss the DE stuff that WM obviously didn't have.

Nope, I just brought in stuff that WM had that made it more useful.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I 100% want this too. I currently use GNOME with Pop Shell which works ig but it's very wonky and buggy with some of the apps. You also cannot really change the layout easily which is criminal. So if a tiling DE was to come out I'd definitely switch to it.

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

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 :)

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

You can add the same feature to gnome...

load more comments
view more: next ›