It has been a lit­tle over a week since I com­mit­ted to us­ing a tiling win­dow man­ag­er.

Sure, I am cheat­ing be­cause I am ac­tu­al­ly still us­ing KDE plus Kröhnkite but my win­dows are tiled and I am lik­ing it a lot.

Why this and not i3 or what­ev­er? Be­cause I don't want to change my lifestyle, I just want my win­dows to not over­lap gen­er­al­ly.

Kröhnkite pro­vides enough tiling func­tion­al­i­ty that I get (I think) the ben­e­fits with­out the mas­sive up­heaval of giv­ing up ev­ery­thing I am used to in my desk­top. I still use the Win­dows Key (ok, ok, the "Meta" key) to launch app­s. I still have a plas­ma pan­el with plas­moids at the bot­tom of my mon­i­tor, I can still float the win­dows if I want to! I can still use most of the short­cuts from my past 24 years us­ing KDE (yes, re­al­ly) and so on.

What are some things I had to change to adap­t?

• I had to change to fo­­cus-­­fol­lows-­­mouse. BUT for the first time since I start­ed us­ing FVWM in 1993 I am lik­ing fo­­cus-­­fol­lows-­­mouse bet­ter than click­­-­­to-­­fo­­cus. It turns out KDE's im­­ple­­men­­ta­­tion of it is quite nice and al­­most "does what I mean". As it says in the doc­s, "like click to fo­­cus, but just don't click­­".

• I re­­moved win­­dow dec­o­ra­­tion­s. Yes, you can keep them, but they feel out of place.

• I set thick­­er win­­dow bor­der­s. Re­­siz­ing win­­dows via short­­­cuts is just not nice in gen­er­al, so thick­­er bor­ders help.

What are some things I have liked?

• Fixed tiling lay­out in one mon­i­­tor and float­ing in the oth­­er is awe­­some when need­ed. And I can get it in place with one key­­press! So, in gen­er­al, dy­­nam­ic, sep­a­rate lay­outs for each screen is very, very use­­ful.

• Hav­ing a "til­ing" wm that still re­spects most WM con­ven­­tions is good. So, pop­ups float. Yay.

• The Al­t+En­ter short­cut to make a win­dow the "im­por­tan­t" one is neat.

• Love how max­i­miza­­­tion/min­i­miza­­­tion work­s.

What are some things I have not liked?

• The "tiled" lay­out has mul­ti­­ple ver­­sions you can switch be­tween with Ctr­l+I/D ... and well, some­­times none of them is ex­ac­t­­ly what I wan­t? Al­­so, the high­­er num­bered ones on­­ly are use­­ful when you have many win­­dows tiling, and if you don't they don't do any­thing.

• Since I have no win­dow dec­o­ra­tions, the bru­tal in­con­sis­ten­cy on ap­p-quit­ting short­cuts is an­noy­ing. It can be ctr­l+q or ctr­l+x or esc or what­ev­er. I end up do­ing al­t+f4 which feels like win­dows 3.11.

• The UX of KWin scripts is a bit lack­­ing. I in­­stalled an­oth­er one a while ago, called Quar­ter-Til­ing, and I have re­­moved ev­ery trace of it from my sys­tem... ex­­cept for its short­­­cut­s, which will ap­­par­en­t­­ly pol­­lute my con­­fig di­alogs for­ev­er.

So, ex­per­i­ment will con­tin­ue!

(Sor­ry, the video is in span­ish)