tiling WM

User avatar
scottc

03 Jun 2015, 23:11

matt3o wrote: what file manager do you guys use?
Check this out. http://zshwiki.org/home/builtin/functions/zmv
Discovered it a few days ago. It's AMAZING.

User avatar
SL89

03 Jun 2015, 23:12

Mu with the images lol.

I'll check it out scottc, I'm not so much of an expert so I'll probably just clone it instead of migrating.

Arch seems fun, versionless sounds nice. Maybe I'll give it a go.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

03 Jun 2015, 23:18

ok, regarding file managers.

I often have to browse dozens of images named like DCSxxxxx, sometimes preview a few, delete some, cherry pick number 1,2,6,10,11,14, copy to a temp directory, and so on... I do love the command line and I use it whenever I can, but there are certain tasks that become incredibly tedious without a GUI.

User avatar
Mal-2

04 Jun 2015, 07:26

Muirium wrote: An Italian would say that…

Image
Not Italian, Roman.

Nothing Italian lasts 2000 years. :mrgreen:

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

04 Jun 2015, 07:33

Mal-2 wrote: Not Italian, Roman.

Nothing Italian lasts 2000 years. :mrgreen:
Americans have a very weird perception of geography and history.

User avatar
wlhlm
~

04 Jun 2015, 09:52

Redmaus wrote: What language are you people speaking???

I feel so dumb...
:?
Linux on the desktop...

User avatar
ramnes
ПБТ НАВСЕГДА

04 Jun 2015, 10:10

scottc wrote: Debian testing or unstable are both fairly up-to-date
:lol:

In terms of package update frequency on unstable branches, I'd easily say that Gentoo > Arch >= Fedora > Debian.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

04 Jun 2015, 10:33

ramnes wrote: In terms of package update frequency on unstable branches, I'd easily say that Gentoo > Arch >= Fedora > Debian.
not sure about that >=

User avatar
ramnes
ПБТ НАВСЕГДА

04 Jun 2015, 10:42

Anyway, who uses Fedora nowadays?

User avatar
iAmAhab

04 Jun 2015, 11:27

ramnes wrote: Anyway, who uses Fedora nowadays?
I do! But I'm gonna go back to Arch this summer, this time I'm not gonna break my system and actually try to learn some more instead of just blindly following guides. I used awesome in the past and quite liked it, even though I don't know lua it was not impossible to configure. I'm thinking of trying i3, any pros and cons compared to awesome?

User avatar
Mal-2

04 Jun 2015, 11:50

matt3o wrote:
Mal-2 wrote: Not Italian, Roman.

Nothing Italian lasts 2000 years. :mrgreen:
Americans have a very weird perception of geography and history.
It was a joke, trying to point out the disparity between the incredible robustness of Roman construction, and the somewhat questionable reputation of modern Italian manufacturing. The aqueducts sure weren't made by Fix-It-Again-Tony.

andrewjoy

04 Jun 2015, 11:56

I can attest to that , i went to sorrento recently ( very beautiful place) and went on several day trips , among others one to Napoli and one to Pompeii.... Pompeii was in better condition.

EDIT

Fontanelle cemetery, was worth the visit , a very cool yet very strange place!

User avatar
Muirium
µ

04 Jun 2015, 12:55

Naples has a hard time. Extreme corruption and organised crime. I spent some time there as I know people who lived in town, but they ultimately had to leave. It's a wonderful place that's being destroyed by politics. Judging all of Italy by Napoli's standards is like visiting 1980 New York and deciding all of America was a terrorised, stinking shithole! True, locally, but entirely false.

You need to see Tuscany! Italy's California. The north is the whole reason Italy has as large an economy as California. The south is a great place historically, and I love the culture there, but they've been stuck in a trap for generations. The place needs a clear out from the mob and filthy politicians on a scale that's just inconceivable.

davkol

04 Jun 2015, 13:39

Muirium wrote: The north is the whole reason Italy has as large an economy as California.
…and they're louder Austrians.

They're just louder in the south.

^_^

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

04 Jun 2015, 14:21

ah the internet: everyone has an opinion on anything :)

User avatar
fifted

04 Jun 2015, 16:24

Used ion back in my Linux days. It was last updated in 2009, but still ongoing while I was in the crowd. Looks like there's still an active fork: Notion (Sidenote: "not-ion"? Oh, Linux folks, when will your project names stop sounding like bad dad humor? I only wish I didn't chuckle at them.)

Now making do with WinSplit Revolution on Windows for no-fuss keyboard-based window management that approximates tiling.

For file management: FreeCommander -- dual-panel really is nice!

User avatar
ramnes
ПБТ НАВСЕГДА

04 Jun 2015, 18:21

iAmAhab wrote:
ramnes wrote: Anyway, who uses Fedora nowadays?
I do! But I'm gonna go back to Arch this summer, this time I'm not gonna break my system and actually try to learn some more instead of just blindly following guides. I used awesome in the past and quite liked it, even though I don't know lua it was not impossible to configure. I'm thinking of trying i3, any pros and cons compared to awesome?
i3 and awesome are very different. Awesome is much easier for beginners, but things get really interesting when you understand the manual tiling of i3.

jonlorusso

05 Jun 2015, 17:33

sth wrote: in combination with wmutils for basic window management
I gave swm a whirl recently, but I realized I was just reimplementing a bunch of stuff I get for free with bspwm. What kind of window management stuff are you doing that you don't get with openbox?

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

06 Jun 2015, 07:52

okay I started playing with tiling wm. I can see the appeal but...

... they force you in a very structured work area, which is good I guess but I have a very fuzzy workflow. For web design I need a big vertical area for coding and half a dozen browsers open and some of them in a virtual machine. I couldn't find a way to arrange them in a way that was really comfortable for easy switching. Also window resizing is very important to check responsive designs, you can easily resize the windows but you end up resizing everything else on the work area which is a bit of an annoyance in some scenarios.

Configuration is also pretty exhausting, you basically never stop fixing the config files and every time you install a new software you probably have to add something (mostly for dialogs, they always open in the wrong place and you can't see half of their content). But honestly I could live with that. Actually I enjoy that.

Of all I tried maybe bspwm is the one I like the most, but honestly I don't know them enough to be able to draw an absolute winner. There are differences, some are important, but the overall concept seems more or less the same.

I'll try to spend some more time on bspwm, but for the way I work I can't see it making my life any easier.

davkol

06 Jun 2015, 12:53

Yeah, and that's why I use (pseudo)tiling on top of a stacking window manager.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

06 Jun 2015, 13:07

davkol wrote: Yeah, and that's why I use (pseudo)tiling on top of a stacking window manager.
care to elaborate?

User avatar
ramnes
ПБТ НАВСЕГДА

06 Jun 2015, 13:41

matt3o wrote: okay I started playing with tiling wm. I can see the appeal but...

... they force you in a very structured work area, which is good I guess but I have a very fuzzy workflow. For web design I need a big vertical area for coding and half a dozen browsers open and some of them in a virtual machine. I couldn't find a way to arrange them in a way that was really comfortable for easy switching.
Considering your usecase, from what I know (I don't know bspwm), I would have gone i3.

It's a bit hard to understand how it works and its bindings and stuff, but then it allows you to manually tile your windows without never touching any configuration file, and then you can switch between the windows with the arrows : if you want to go on the window on the left, it's super + left, etc.
matt3o wrote: Also window resizing is very important to check responsive designs, you can easily resize the windows but you end up resizing everything else on the work area which is a bit of an annoyance in some scenarios.
On this, you should take the windows you want to resize, make it floating, have fun resizing, and then put it back on the layout.
matt3o wrote: Configuration is also pretty exhausting, you basically never stop fixing the config files and every time you install a new software you probably have to add something (mostly for dialogs, they always open in the wrong place and you can't see half of their content). But honestly I could live with that. Actually I enjoy that.
I don't know how it's done on bspwm, but on most WM you can tell to make dialogs floating by default. Then they will open just over your current window.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

06 Jun 2015, 13:49

Switching back and forth to floating is something I could do but it would be an additional step in my workflow. There are certain things that are very nice especially if your daily work is predictable, but as I said I have a very fuzzy workflow and I never know what I will end doing (3d modeling, web design, php, nodejs, images, videos, ...)

anyway I'll keep trying another bit

davkol

06 Jun 2015, 13:51

My first comment in the thread: KWin. Tiling was removed from it quite a few releases ago, and the replacement script doesn't work anymore either. However, you can easily configure rules for particular window classes, and add keyboard shortcuts for pseudotiling, switching windows/focus, maximizing windows in either direction, moving them between screens, wm-level tab groups and virtual desktops,… There are only a few things missing IMO; for example, filling the top/bottom half of the screen in portrait mode requires two hotkeys (one bottom quarter and then maximize horizontally). You can setup macros directly in KDE System Settings though, or there's AutoKey and stuff like that.

Most of it should be supported in almost any modern stacking window manager. I've tried stock Xfce 4.12 (so, xfwm?) and tiling worked better, but dual-screen support was rather poor. I hear that Compiz (not maintained anymore AFAIK) has a great Grid plugin.

The advantage of this approach is that dialog windows keep their natural size, all windows are tiled independently, and KWin has awesome Exposé-like effects for switching windows/desktops visually.

Alternatively, you can run something like PyTyle on top of any standard wm (e.g., Openbox or KWin).

User avatar
SL89

06 Jun 2015, 14:20

davkol wrote: Alternatively, you can run something like PyTyle on top of any standard wm (e.g., Openbox or KWin).
What is this PyTyle? I'm guessing its Python related and probably allows for tiling in what would normally be a non tiling wm.

User avatar
ramnes
ПБТ НАВСЕГДА

06 Jun 2015, 14:23

SL89 wrote:
davkol wrote: Alternatively, you can run something like PyTyle on top of any standard wm (e.g., Openbox or KWin).
What is this PyTyle? I'm guessing its Python related and probably allows for tiling in what would normally be a non tiling wm.
Your guess is correct sir.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

06 Jun 2015, 14:23

you mean kwin, without KDE?

davkol

06 Jun 2015, 14:37

matt3o wrote: you mean kwin, without KDE?
Eh? KDE has been the community for many years. They make a whole bunch of different stuff, including ownCloud AFAIK.

But no, I use the whole KDE Plasma Desktop, only with file search and most Akonadi-related jobs turned off. It has a ton of quite unique features that I haven't seen anywhere else. For example, screen rotation is synchronized with the orientation of a connected Wacom digitizer.

User avatar
matt3o
-[°_°]-

06 Jun 2015, 16:03

ok, the whole plasma desktop. yeah that's what I have now (5.3.1) it's really a great system and incredibly lighter than 4.x, but still quite buggy

amospalla
let's go

06 Jun 2015, 16:14

My experience with Awesome was nice, it has automatic arrangement, but once you learn it and need something more flexible a window manager like i3 comes into rescue. With i3 you don't need so many rules, you can arrange things on the fly and in ways an automatic tiling wm can not.

Post Reply

Return to “Off-topic”