Smart windows: Tiling with KDE Plasma 5.27 - TUXEDO Computers

Freely placeable and scalable windows on the desktop are one of the basic principles of all common computer desktops, whether Windows, MacOS or Linux. However, a small but select group of enthusiasts prefers a different kind of window management: a tiling window manager. Here you don’t have to distribute the windows opened by the system manually, instead they arrange themselves automatically on the screen. Popular tiling window managers are i3, awesome, bspwm or herbstluftwm.

Even if advanced users swear by the specialists: For beginners, the step towards a tiling window manager is often very large and the usually rigid distribution of windows on the desktop is too inflexible in many situations. But with KDE Plasma 5.27, now included in TUXEDO OS, you can now have the best of both worlds. The proven window manager of the KDE desktop environment can now also align program windows to a freely configurable grid.

Tiling functions in Plasma 5.27

For some time now, you have been able to spread windows in KDE Plasma to the left or right half of the screen or align them to a quarter of the display by grabbing the desired program at the window bar and dragging it to the right/left edge of the desktop or to a corner. Optionally, you could drag the window to the top of the screen to switch the window to full screen mode. So far, so well known and proven. If you wanted “more”, you had to resort to extensions like Bismuth.

For the new tiling mode, first activate the module Tiling Editor under Settings » System settings » Workspace Behavior » Desktop Effects. Then call up the function via the key combination Super+T. Here you can now adjust the grid to your preferences. You can subdivide individual areas into additional tiles using the Split Horizontally and Split Vertically options. A floating tile can be placed freely within an already existing tile. If required, you can activate a predefined configuration via Load layout… in the upper right corner.

Smart windows and tiles

Then grab a window by its window bar with the left mouse button again, but this time additionally press the Shift key and keep it pressed. The window now no longer snaps only to the window edges or the corners, but orients itself to the tiles you have configured. It always maximizes to the closest tile. If you then drag one of the windows attached to the tiles wider or higher, all other windows arranged in the tiles change automatically.