KDE Plasma Tiling - Why Is It Not Better?

Today I talk about my impressions of Plasma's built-in window "tiling".
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#kde #plasma #thelinuxcast

[TheLinuxCast]

Liking the video is a great way to help me out! I really appreciate those who have taken the time!

[quantumtacos]

Yes, it's just the wrong perspective compared to what we're doing. Your tiling window manager workflow is very different from kwin users' workflow. You can just replace kwin with i3 if you want that. Kwin is great already but we found some tiling features that are useful to add, so that's what we're doing. No, it's not fully thought-out yet. Everyone has various ideas to throw at the wall and see what sticks. Expect to see a lot of experimentation over the next while. No doubt some keyboard shortcuts are soon on the way for example, especially now that you've mentioned it. Features will appear and disappear and change as we figure out what works well. Eventually you'll probably be able to use kwin just like a dedicated tiling manager if you like, but that's a low priority for now. You can add that if you want to, it will be welcomed, but I'd suggest waiting until the current development stabilizes.

[esra_erimez]

If I recall correctly, it was Nate Graham that implemented this, one of the lead KDE developers. However, this is *not* supposed to be a tiling window manager, I *believe* that it is supposed to be more like windows "fancy zones".

[mizhimo]

In theory, this is not a replace for a tiling window manager but is expected to help the community to create better and easier tiling scripts. At least I remember that from a Niccolo video. IMO this is very useful on ultrawide monitors.

[esra_erimez]

13:00 Yes, this does make sense to me. As someone that has used KDE for years, and is used to floating windows, this offers a perfect way for me to get the benefits of "zones" while keeping some floating window operations.

[esra_erimez]

*This* is the video I've been waiting for. Thank you.

[keylowmike]

This was very informative. Thank you, Matt!

[Itachi-zwvn]

Thanks for all the linux content you bring to the community. I also like tiling windows managers, bspwm is my favorite so far

[JemilMarcosTyC]

Thank you kind sir, this was of great use to me.

[ulterno]

Nice to know about this new feature.
I myself never felt the need for it as Super+ArrowKey tiling was more than enough for me.
As long as the previous feature doesn't get removed, I have no qualms with the new one being unpolished (not a fan of gap anyway).
For those who want the new tiling experience and want it to be better, giving your input in feature requests and discussions on the KDE forums is a good idea.

[Spwnt]

I think you are being a bit unfair. I'm actually pretty excited about this from the perspective of a normal user. This tool is not trying to be a hyper power user i3 replacement with 37 different keybindings for the ultra-hackers out there. This is supposed to be a normal user accessible tool for giving basic window management much like fancy zones on windows. I think that if you think of this as a fancy zones like tool rather than a tiling window manager that it both makes a lot more sense and seems a lot more useful. I agree that it still needs a bit of polish like saving different modifications and such, but I think this is actually a really useful tool for people who like fancy zones.

[tristen_grant]

The Shift+Drag "tiling" is like using PowerToys tiling in Windows.

[anon_y_mousse]

It would be cool if KDE had such functionality for those who like tiling. The more people that use it the better, since that might lead to more developers interested in working on the project. I don't personally use tiling in any real form, but I do have shortcut keys setup to push windows into regions of the desktop they're on, and to fullscreen as well. It's been pretty handy to not have to use the mouse to snap vim to half of the screen and pin it to the top. But I also still use the mouse when I need more complex geometries which is probably equally as often.

[christopheriman]

I saw a lot of comments talking about this, I was aware that 5.27 added this feature and played around with it for a little bit but I also was fully aware that this feature was basically in the most basic working state it could be as of currently and so I haven't used it much. I know that it is supposed to be getting iterated on to become better over time and I am looking forward to seeing what happens with it.

[JanSteen]

I actually like it.
It is simple, and it works.
f one really wants the full functions of a tilling windows manager, then you should install a tilling windows manager.

[wido]

My understanding is, that the advantage of this feature is not the actual implementation, which is more or less just a demo, but the fact that there is a Tiling API now within Plasma that can be used by scripts to implement Tiling in a sane way. Not the hacky way Bismuth used to do. I don't know if there are any actual scripts yet who take advantage of the Tiling API, but sooner or later there will be and they won't be a buggy mess as Bismuth used to be.

[Hennesg]

try KDE-bismuth that's a tiling manager in KDE that automatically snap tiles and has keyboard shotcuts

[Schwarzer.Kater.YouTube]

IIRC one of the Plasma developers said that they have no time/resources to implement a "real" tiling window manager but that they have to rely on the community to use this as a foundation for KWin scripts at this point instead - like e.g. Bismuth before.
And there are already some: e.g. Polonium and Autotile.

[keshara]

This isn't meant to be replacing a tiling window manager, however, this is a good base for tiling Kwin scripts to add functionality that the user needs. On my 21:9 ultrawide monitor, this tiling is great, browser on the left, notes on the right, slightly offset so the browser portion is a bit bigger. The fact that it is mouse focused is perfectly fine as well, set it and forget it.

My complaints would be no option for single application "tiling", and no separate layouts per workspace.

If you're looking for full fledged TWM functionality you're going to be disappointed, but in that scenario, just run a TWM...

[theclient]

Same. Let's see if Cosmic will have a better tiling.