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Japanlinux

Member

Registered: 2010-05-18

Posts: 173

openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

Hello, I am using LXDE right now until I can switch over to a qt-desktop (once it's stable), and I'd like to find another floating window manager that can do tiling. Particularly, I want to be able to set a keybinding to have windows move to take up the left/right half of the screen and possibly quarters of the screen. I'm aware that there are many tiling wms out there, but I was hoping for a floating wm that works like openbox, but has that tiling ability built into it. My first attempt was pekwm, but unless I missed something, it couldn't do tiling like I wanted. I do like the look of it much more than openbox though. I've also heard that openbox has a plugin thing to get tiling, but I'd rather experiment with an alternative wm.

Unia

Member

From: Stockholm, Sweden

Registered: 2010-03-30

Posts: 2,486

Website

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

You could try Subtle, it has manual tiling and I think a floating lay-out too. Other than Subtle you could try WMFS too. It has a right click menu, tiling and floating mode. Or Compiz with the grid plugin if it doesn't have to be 'light'.

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Japanlinux

Member

Registered: 2010-05-18

Posts: 173

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

light's not too big of a problem, but compositing is. I've tried xcompmgr on lxde and I get a ridiculous  amount of artifacts and such. So compositing, sadly isn't going to work for me... Are subtle/wmfs easy to set up? I'd rather not have to learn programming just to set up a window manager ;P

ANOKNUSA

Member

Registered: 2010-10-22

Posts: 2,141

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

The plugin you mentioned is probalby pytyle, which does a pretty good job.  But as far as WMs go, most tiling window managers offer floating as well, and some offer titlebars.  Just thought I'd get that out of the way, so as to keep this from being the 73rd thread in which people just plug their personal favorites.  As for being easy to set up: unless you used obmenu, obkey and such with Openbox, you had to learn to work with its XML files, right?  Most config files I've come across are in the same vein, with annotations and settings that are pretty easy to deduce.

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thisoldman

Member

From: Pittsburgh

Registered: 2009-04-25

Posts: 1,172

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

Openbox has the capability to size and place windows built into it.  It's not strictly tiling as other WMs use the term, but it works for me.  I use W+NumPad keys to place and size the active window.

I have a 1280x1024 desktop.  I don't use window decorations.  I like to keep gaps on the left and right edges of the desktop.  It looks like this:

I've posted the tiling section of my ~/.config/openbox/rc.xml at http://pastebin.com/0rd0uSGC.

Last edited by thisoldman (2011-08-30 22:42:09)

Inxsible

Forum Fellow

From: Chicago

Registered: 2008-06-09

Posts: 9,183

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

JapanLinux, I believe you were told in your other thread as well, that to get a qt-only system, you do not need to forego openbox.

And openbox also has the tiling options available if you use stiler or pytyle. Since you are used to openbox, it would be best to stick with it.

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Iranon

Member

Registered: 2011-06-11

Posts: 146

Re: openbox alternative with tiling builtin?

If you don't need continuous tiling, I heartily recommend FVWM because it gives you a lot of freedom in your configuration. I have this functionality bound to drag gestures initiated by the right mouse button on the titlebar.

Drag left to fill the left half of the screen.
Drag up and left to fill the top left quarter of the screen.
Drag left, then up to fill the first 1/8 of the screen (1/4 width, 1/2 height)
Drag up, then left to fill the second 1/8 of the screen.
Drag left, then right, to fill the left 3/4 of the screen
and so on.

You can bind whatever to whatever, including keychains and buttons that do dozens of different things depending on mouse button and modifiers keys used; you can also put buttons wherever you want and aren't restricted to traditional panels or window borders. FVWM is a lot more powerful than Openbox, can mimic it so well you won't notice the difference if that's all you want, and still plays in the same weight class.

The configuration syntax isn't quite as straightforward though, and outside tool to add functionality to window managers didn't always behave as nicely for me.