[lug] Window Tiling Tools for Display Management

[Maxwell Spangler]

Hello everyone,

I just found a pretty cool Gnome shell extension and I thought I'd
share (and endorse) for those few people actually using Linux on
workstations instead of a MacOS or Windows.

gTile is a Gnome 3.x shell extension for positioning, sizing and tiling
of windows.  It's similar to / inspired by things like divvy for MacOS
and Windows.

Here's the short summary of what I can do after customizing it for my
very precise needs:

1. Launch an application, say gnome-terminal.
2. Put window focus on that app
3. Hold keys CTRL + SUPER plus one of the keypad number keys like 7
(top left on the key pad)

gTile will resize and reposition that focused window to an initial size
and position of my choosing.   Tap 7 again and it'll cycle through a
variety of sizes.

Example: Make this window small and position it in the top left. Now
make it bigger.  Now make it wide.  Now make it TALL. Good, leave it
like that.  Now move to another window, CTRL + SUPER + 9 and it's in
the top right.

For the last six or seven years I've had some custom scripts that would
launch launch gnome-terminals in specific places or reposition windows
to specific locations.  But these require X11 graphics and as
distributions switch to Wayland, key features to reposition and size-
set windows are unavailable.

I'm really surprised that this type of thing -- tiling -- regardless of
OS isn't a topic discussed more.  As a power user with 30-50 terminal
windows open (across multiple desktops) on a regular basis, I need
these kinds of tools to organize my display and I don't want to
manually do it with a mouse all the time.

I've only been experimenting with gTile for about 2 days, but so far
I'm really liking it. 

Pros:

* Fairly good customization support. It's exceeded my expectations so
far.
* Easy to install and experiment with without any real effort.
* Works with X11 or Wayland display systems
* Has a bunch of other features like automatic tiling
* Even lets you reposition windows using vi cursor keys (h, j, k, l).
This was a nice surprise. Clever.

Cons:

* Customization is manual, tricky and takes time and experimentation.
Initial use is very user friendly but a custom config makes it a power
user tool.
* Documentation is not clear enough -- took me a little bit to figure
out what features the docs were describing.
* Linux is never perfect. I found some problems with gnome-terminal
that prevent it gTile from doing exactly what I want, but found ways to
work around it using roxterm as an alternative terminal emulator.
* Not sure how I'm supposed to access keypad specific features when I'm
on a laptop with no keypad.

Anyway: Wondering if anyone else is using this, or i3 or divvy for
similar purposes?

Cheers,


-- 
Maxwell Spangler

===================================================================
Denver, Colorado, USA

maxwellspangler.com
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