All posts tagged: tiling

I tried a real tiling window manager on Windows and Snap has felt broken ever since

I tried a real tiling window manager on Windows and Snap has felt broken ever since

Published by skeptic

I used to think Windows Snap had solved most of my window-management problems. I mean, it was tidy enough, fast enough, and a clear improvement over dragging windows around. Then I tried Komorebi, a proper tiling window manager for Windows, and I began to look at Snap as unfinished. Not useless, to be clear. Snap Layouts are still one of the better everyday features in modern Windows. The problem is that they still expect me to manage the mess. Komorebi changes the premise. Instead of treating every new window like a small interior design project, it drops apps into structured layouts, moves them across workspaces, and lets me steer the whole desktop from the keyboard. After a few days, the old drag-resize-squint-repeat routine was primitive. Related I tested four Linux tiling window managers and one of them clearly won me over Battle for the greatest and perhaps most situational. Windows Snap is a party trick, not a system Snap is useful, but it still makes me do the work To be fair to Microsoft, Snap …

This extension finally turns KDE into a tiling window manager

This extension finally turns KDE into a tiling window manager

Published by skeptic

KDE is great. It’s probably my favorite desktop environment, and I’ve been on a bit of a hopping spree lately. It’s mostly stable, and offers a ton of customizability baked into the system menus itself. Still, by nature of its design, KDE does not support tiling at all, at least in its vanilla state. Yes, there are ways to manually tile windows together, but it’s a lot less intuitive than proper auto-tiling layouts. Disappointed as I was, I decided to dig up some recommendations. Of these, I had used Bismuth previously. Unfortunately for me, Bismuth didn’t have any support for Plasma 6, which is the current version of KDE. Things changed when I laid eyes on Krohnkite. This simple extension made tiling in KDE a lot more effortless, while retaining enough customizability. Related I switched my Linux desktop environment from GNOME, and it’s so much better One offers more control, the other is a bit more opinionated. Installing Krohnkite was a bit of a challenge Make sure to grab the most up-to-date fork Krohnkite isn’t …

I got all the benefits of a tiling WM without ever leaving GNOME

I got all the benefits of a tiling WM without ever leaving GNOME

Published by skeptic

Using a tiling window manager is a lot like rewiring your brain. You learn shortcuts, ascertain your workflow and finally combine it all into an often cool-looking but insanely complicated setup. Tilting window managers can often be a bit intimidating. Not to mention, if you’re already invested in a desktop environment, it might be hard to learn from scratch. This is where GNOME’s powerful extension system comes into play once again, which is host to multiple tiling options. The one that I’ve come to appreciate lately is Pop!_OS’s auto-tiling extension. Related GNOME OS revealed what Linux is actually becoming It will be more than a Desktop Environment soon. Getting the extension installed A bit of a frustrating experience The Pop!_OS tiling extension can be accessed from its GitHub page, where it mentions multiple AUR packages. In theory, this should be a very easy install (assuming you have an AUR helper like Yay or Paru on your system) but the reality is a lot worse. On my CachyOS GNOME install, using the AUR package yielded no …

I tested four Linux tiling window managers and one of them clearly won me over

I tested four Linux tiling window managers and one of them clearly won me over

Published by skeptic

Tiling window managers aren’t exactly a new concept. They’ve been here for quite some time now, with i3 and bspwm being some of the older ones out there (but still very much a favorite!). Every tiling window manager seems to do its own thing, be it custom layouts or a user-defined configuration file to control each and every part of the window manager. This makes it really hard to jump into it as a beginner, and while some options are a lot easier, a tiling window manager is in no way close to being as accessible as a traditional desktop interface, like KDE Plasma. With so many options, keeping track of it all can be exhausting. I felt the same way too, back in my early days of distro-hopping and desktop swapping. After going through the most popular picks out there, I feel like I finally have a winner. i3 Old but gold Chances are you’ve probably heard of i3. It’s been one of the oldest tiling window managers, and still remains a popular choice …

I switched to this tiling window manager and can’t go back to normal desktops

I switched to this tiling window manager and can’t go back to normal desktops

Published by skeptic

You may have found the key to gaming on desktop Linux, but managing multiple windows has always been a hassle. The traditional overlapping window layouts stack windows on top of each other like a digital game of Jenga. And if you’re tired of Alt-Tabbing to find the window you want, perhaps it’s time to try a tiling window manager. Tiling window managers are fundamentally reshaping how power users think about desktop productivity, and for folks like us who spend entire days in front of a screen, the efficiency gains are impossible to ignore. So that’s exactly what I did, and now I can’t go back to the normal Linux desktop. Why traditional Linux desktops waste so much space Floating windows, constant resizing, and too much mouse work Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOfCredit: Yadullah Abidi / MakeUseOf You know that frustrating dance we all do with floating windows. Open an IDE, a terminal, some documentation, and then spend the next hour shuffling windows around to see what’s underneath. Or worse, minimizing and maximizing windows like some sort of …