Spent lots of time with Gnome 2.
In Dec 2024 I got hooked in Hyprland on Arch and have a cool rice for it. But I’ve tried KDE on desktop now with Parrot OS since Plasma is popular. Still need to find some cool dot files or rice it myself.
I’ve noticed SwayFX getting lots of love lately. I might use that as an option with Plasma but am afraid of conflicts. I’m excited about it since Linux has now officially replaced windows on my gaming rig, which is the very last MS computer left in my house.
KDE, but only with an extension called kröhnkite for auto tiling. To me a manual stacked window management system is almost unusable. As someone who used tiling window managers for years and lots of KDE based applications, and as KDE was one of the first who worked well in Wayland, I thought to give it a shot. I like it and since then (years by now) stayed on KDE.
For reference, I used Gnome 2 on Ubuntu, made the switch to Unity desktop, then Gnome 3 (and I think Gnome 4 too?, don’t remember). Then started experimenting with Regolith, auto tiling for Gnome, and tried out real tiling window managers, until I landed on qtile. Then experimented with Xfce, before finally making the switch to KDE (because of Wayland). Rest is history.
i don’t like tiling wm, and can’t stand seemingly random placement a linux d.e. usually gives (if not just centering everything every time).
i use the kwin script for ‘remember window positions’ to get behaviour similar to windows. gnome has something similar, too (‘smart auto move ng’). so now a window for a program will open right back up the same size and in the same spot next time you run it.
There are multiple different logic how new windows are placed and the existing one re-ordered (or not re-ordered). Some have a logic that make look it random, if you don’t know whats going on. Sometimes these behavior can be configured, or even choose from many “layouts” (these behavior and logic are often called layouts) that suits your needs. I actually use different layouts and switch between them depending on what I need. Below is a bit description of different ways how these layouts could function:
A predictable layout is the one that cuts the view in half, uses the first window opened up on the left, and then just tiles the right side, while adding new windows on the right bottom side only. This can be configured in a way that every new open window will replace the right big view, and push all other window one below to the left bottom stack in example. Another predictable one is that it cuts the view in 4 parts, left-top to right-bottom. And if all are filled and you open more windows, then the others are cut in half again when needed. Or if you want, use a spiral, that looks random at first and in my opinion was never useful anyway. And there are more ways how a layout logic could function. Not knowing how looks sometimes random.
Oh my god, Krohnkite was so unbelievably buggy for me, it kept fully crashing KDE. I tried to get it to work for like a week, but eventually I just had to give up.
Its different now, and I mean it. I used Krohnkite in Plasma 5 when it worked well, but later it started to be buggy. Its a fork from the original BTW and the main thing that is worked on at https://codeberg.org/anametologin/Krohnkite . I think reason it was buggy is, caused by Wayland or when transitioning to Plasma 6, forgot. Then I switched to Polonium (kwin script) and it worked but wasn’t great. But Polonium started to be buggy too,… then Krohnkite was reworked, even the Kwin developers made adjustments so that Krohnkite works well.
I am using it again since Plasma 6 launch period and it works well. Krohnkite is not buggy and it even got some cool features, where you can dock any window to the side or top or bottom side in a smaller area, that will not interfere with the other windows for tiling in example. So all in all, if you think about using it, then I can highly recommend Krohnkite.
Yes, that’s the version I was using. And I was trying it this past February or March, so definitely after the switchover to Plasma 6