this post was submitted on 13 Sep 2024
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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/
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
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.
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.