3 ms·

Since there's going to be a lot of tiling WM users looking: what's the best way to get tiling WM and all the convenience of a "full blown WM like Gnome": things

Since there's going to be a lot of tiling WM users looking: what's the best way to get tiling WM and all the convenience of a "full blown WM like Gnome": things like Network Manager applet, bluetooth control, audio etc. all just few clicks away.

raccolta 3y ago
pop-shell (can be used as an extension to gnome shell on most distros) has a toggle for tiling windows. Otherwise it's all the Gnome DE.
jklinger410 3y ago
I use Forge, it works really well most of the time. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/
greggyb 3y ago
XFCE is super modular. You can turn off individual components. You can enable any program to start with the XFCE session. So, for example, disable xfdesktop and xfwm; enable other window manager of your choice. Then, when you run xfce4-session via any mechanism you get all of XFCE, but with another window manager. You can pull up xfce4-settings manager to handle all system settings as you would in any other XFCE session. I am pretty sure that LXDE/LXQT allows this sort of modularity as well. I have no clue about KDE and Gnome. Of particular note, you can combine XFCE's panel applet with a tiling window manager. So then you can keep an application menu and notification area (with associated notification settings) from XFCE with an arbitrary window manager.
- wesapien 3y ago
  I did this. Xfce and Bspwm along with Sxhkd works well.
Nullabillity 3y ago
At least KDE (not sure about other DEs but I'd assume most except GNOME) supports EWMH, which lets its widgets control with any compliant window manager. Xmonad has a wiki page on this.[0] One gotcha is that many full DEs use compositing window managers, which tilers usually don't. You can get around this by running a standalone compositor (such as picom). [0]: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE
yepguy 3y ago
I'm using xmonad inside of KDE Plasma. It's not flawless. I had to patch plasma-desktop to get it to work at all, and there are still some bugs around widgets and toolbars I haven't found a solution for. But I'm still pretty happy with it. I have window animations with picom, and even window decorations that blend in pretty well, such that a casual observer probably wouldn't even notice that I replaced the window manager. I'm pretty pumped that both Plasma and GNOME are now working on better tiling support by default. Maybe in a year I'll be back to using kwin or GNOME Shell.
vladvasiliu 3y ago
Depends on what you put in your "full blow WM like Gnome" bag. In my case, I just have nm-applet for my networking needs, blueman for my BT needs, pasystray for my audio needs, secret manager and polkit started on login, etc. The only thing I miss from Gnome is that fancy pinentry program that shades the screen, which is replaced with a basic gtk window.

raccolta 3y ago

pop-shell (can be used as an extension to gnome shell on most distros) has a toggle for tiling windows. Otherwise it's all the Gnome DE.

jklinger410 3y ago

I use Forge, it works really well most of the time. https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/ https://extensions.gnome.org/extension/4481/forge/

greggyb 3y ago

XFCE is super modular. You can turn off individual components. You can enable any program to start with the XFCE session. So, for example, disable xfdesktop and xfwm; enable other window manager of your choice. Then, when you run xfce4-session via any mechanism you get all of XFCE, but with another window manager. You can pull up xfce4-settings manager to handle all system settings as you would in any other XFCE session. I am pretty sure that LXDE/LXQT allows this sort of modularity as well. I have no clue about KDE and Gnome. Of particular note, you can combine XFCE's panel applet with a tiling window manager. So then you can keep an application menu and notification area (with associated notification settings) from XFCE with an arbitrary window manager.

wesapien 3y ago
I did this. Xfce and Bspwm along with Sxhkd works well.

Nullabillity 3y ago

At least KDE (not sure about other DEs but I'd assume most except GNOME) supports EWMH, which lets its widgets control with any compliant window manager. Xmonad has a wiki page on this.[0] One gotcha is that many full DEs use compositing window managers, which tilers usually don't. You can get around this by running a standalone compositor (such as picom). [0]: https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE https://wiki.haskell.org/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_KDE

yepguy 3y ago

I'm using xmonad inside of KDE Plasma. It's not flawless. I had to patch plasma-desktop to get it to work at all, and there are still some bugs around widgets and toolbars I haven't found a solution for. But I'm still pretty happy with it. I have window animations with picom, and even window decorations that blend in pretty well, such that a casual observer probably wouldn't even notice that I replaced the window manager. I'm pretty pumped that both Plasma and GNOME are now working on better tiling support by default. Maybe in a year I'll be back to using kwin or GNOME Shell.

vladvasiliu 3y ago

Depends on what you put in your "full blow WM like Gnome" bag. In my case, I just have nm-applet for my networking needs, blueman for my BT needs, pasystray for my audio needs, secret manager and polkit started on login, etc. The only thing I miss from Gnome is that fancy pinentry program that shades the screen, which is replaced with a basic gtk window.