[HN Gopher] Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows
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Komorebi: Tiling Window Management for Windows
Author : thunderbong
Score : 74 points
Date : 2024-06-24 19:20 UTC (3 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (github.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
| mionhe wrote:
| I'm excited to try this out. Fancy zones doesn't always cut it
| for me.
| metadat wrote:
| I installed and launched it ( _komorebi-gui.exe_? NOPE,
| _komorebi.exe_.. maybe that 's right) but it seems like there is
| some learning curve.. no Welcome screen or post-install
| onboarding.
|
| It randomly selected and tiled 2 / 50 total windows, and created
| a big black box for Progress Quest which wasn't there before
| (which I discovered here on HN last week but haven't started a
| New Game yet).
|
| Is there a minimal Quickstart guide? I really want to like this
| but so far it's pretty rough.. I don't want to learn another form
| of the obscure config language (e.g. tmux) for a tiling window
| manager.
|
| Edit: Thank you repliers :)
| Zambyte wrote:
| This seems like it would be helpful for you
| https://lgug2z.github.io/komorebi/example-configurations.htm...
| bsnnkv wrote:
| There is both a quickstart guide[1] and a video walking through
| it step by step[2]. It takes less than 10 minutes of your time.
|
| [1]: https://lgug2z.github.io/komorebi/installation.html
|
| [2]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H9-_c1egQ4g
| wonger_ wrote:
| I had a similar experience last time I tried komorebi. The
| architecture seems smart in theory, with concerns separated
| between komorebi/komorebic/autohotkey, but in practice it's a
| lot of fiddling. I also experienced an irritating pixel-border
| spacing issue.
|
| I've been using Divvy for the past few months and it's suited
| my needs much better. Instantly intuitive and productive.
| https://mizage.com/windivvy/
| runjake wrote:
| Obligatory FancyZones/PowerToys links if Komorebi doesn't suit
| your style:
|
| https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys?tab=readme-ov-file
|
| https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/powertoys/fancyzon...
|
| FancyZones is a Microsoft tiling window management utility from
| their PowerToys collection.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| A community member put together this great overview[1] for
| people who are wondering why you'd want to use an automatic
| tiling window manager with programmatic layouts instead of
| FancyZones.
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LCbS_gm0RA
| mandeepj wrote:
| I don't get these Window management s/w, nor the obsession with
| them. What could you possibly get done in those 4"x4" windows?
| Get a 2nd, 3rd, or even 4th monitor if you are short of space or
| just a 34".
| pluc wrote:
| I agree. I've only started using them since getting a 49"
| curved monitor and it's beautiful. Same for workspaces (virtual
| desktops) actually, never used them before.
| HumblyTossed wrote:
| Yeah, I don't either. I mean, maybe if I were debugging a
| console app? But I prefer using multiple workspaces.
| ThatMedicIsASpy wrote:
| they are not there to make squares. good ones have virtual
| desktops which you can change individually with multiple
| monitors. you can make programs start in specific desktops.
| recommended for keyboard heavy users not point and click
| people.
| omark96 wrote:
| I use komorebi on my computers and I rarely ever have more than
| 1 or 2 windows on any workspace open at once. However, to give
| the main reasons as to why I use Komorebi is:
|
| 1. I love the automatic tiling, even if I 99% of the time only
| use it to have 2 windows split. It's just such a nice feeling
| not having to tile windows each time you open them up.
|
| 2. It let's me set programs being tied to specific workspaces
| at launch, so I always get spotify and discord on the first
| workspace on my second monitor. Again, a nice qol feature.
|
| 3. I think komorebi's workspaces are more powerful than virtual
| desktops. In virtual desktops then you change the desktop for
| both monitors when you switch, with komorebi you only change
| one monitor at a time. Which allows me to for example keep a
| youtube video on my second monitor playing while switching
| between workspaces on my main monitor.
|
| These are probably the main reasons, I mention most of that in
| my youtube video that got linked in the thread.
| brudgers wrote:
| To access a new context a tiling manager requires moving my
| fingers. Multiple monitors requires moving my eyes, head,
| and/or torso.
|
| Sometimes one makes more sense, sometimes the other.
| Fortunately, I can use a tiling manager with multiple monitors
| if I want.
|
| But, I can use a tiling manager on my laptop anywhere multiple
| monitors are impractical. For me, that's most places. YMMV.
| dario_od wrote:
| It's mainly to avoid having to use a mouse, you don't have to
| create many tiny windows
| graemep wrote:
| it is large monitors that make tiling window managers so
| useful. It makes sense to split them and tiling is more usable
| than overlapping windows.
| funkhouser wrote:
| Any plans to make this for linux? I have recently switched away
| from Windows permanently due to the whole recall thing, but your
| project looks great.
| tr4656 wrote:
| For Linux, why not use one of the many tiling window managers?
| funkhouser wrote:
| I am new to linux, so I don't know my way around them
| currently!
| pluc wrote:
| You'd still have to learn this one... Takes 10 minutes to
| learn all about i3 config.
| brudgers wrote:
| X-monad and i3 are two common tiling managers for Linux.
| They prioritize different ways of working. So one might
| click with you while the other feels awkward...I connected
| with x-monad's interface and not i3 but you might find the
| opposite.
| out-of-ideas wrote:
| i'd recommend a cheet sheet for both (i no longer have a
| url to one i used years-past; there's probably many
| variants nowadays) - but i can say a background pic of
| common commands can be quite handy when using tiling wms
| (esp when not using as a daily driver)
| wongarsu wrote:
| Don't worry, in a couple weeks you will be using i3 as
| window manager, code in neovim, have a github repo of your
| dotfiles, and consider switching to Arch Linux
| gorkish wrote:
| Wow; I guess I've seen it all. Time to retire I suppose.
| funkhouser wrote:
| Is this tiling manager not worth its salt to bring over to
| Linux? Or is it because there are already other tiling
| managers, there's no point in this targeting Linux also?
| Dennip wrote:
| There are lots of very well established tiling window
| managers for linux, there likely would be no advantage in
| porting a windows one to linux, and it may even be somewhat
| of a fools errand given the specifics of what its doing;
| you may as well write one from scratch.
|
| i3 is a very widely used tiling manager on linux
| mtlynch wrote:
| I think the feigned shock from GP is that Komorebi was
| inspired by Linux tiling managers, so porting to Linux
| maybe feels like a copy of a copy.
|
| I guess it's a little like moving to Mexico and asking if
| Taco Bell has ever considered opening a location there, as
| you're interested in dishes that feature tortillas, rice,
| beans, and cheese. : )
| gorkish wrote:
| Sorry to give you a hard time :) In the X11 ecosystem, the
| window manager is traditionally a 3rd party tool chosen by
| the platform maker or user, so the options for managing the
| appearance and positions of your application windows are as
| varied as opinions about how to do it properly. A number of
| popular ideas have made their way back to Mac or Windows as
| features to modify the OS's window management to behave
| more like some particular window manager. On top of that,
| once upon a time, tiled layouts were basically all you got
| since you didn't have enough RAM for a render buffer. So
| it's amusing that you had asked this question.
|
| i3 is the main tiling WM in linux these days but very many
| more are configurable to support automatic or manual
| tiling. Your linux distro probably has a straightforward
| method to change your WM, but do be aware you may lose some
| behaviors you like; i3 is pretty svelte while most of the
| default WMs shipped by vendors today make use of quite a
| bit of eye candy, animations, etc.
| luqtas wrote:
| i think you aren't passing @ the gate of speech thing [0]
|
| but anyway, your comment has 12 words or 56 characters! with
| this amount we could type: "Linux has lots of WMs like:
| awesome, DWM, i3, xmonad etc"
|
| [0] https://suncoasthospice.org/the-three-gates-of-speech/
| luyu_wu wrote:
| The issue is that Windows API is completely incompatible with
| Linux unfortunately! This wouldn't even be runnable under Wine.
|
| That being said, as my siblings have mentioned, Linux has many
| (better) tiling managers. For instance Sway and Hyprland for
| Wayland or Awesome and i3 for X11!
|
| I'd personally recommend Hyprland as the learning curve is
| small and the extensibility feels the greatest!
| frebord wrote:
| Been using this for about a year and it is awesome! allows a lot
| more control than fancy zones.
| thesurlydev wrote:
| Love the name. For those that are curious:
|
| It's the Japanese word for sunlight, which is filtered through
| the leaves of the trees. In particular, it means the visible
| light rays. "Komorebi" is composed of several parts of the word:
| "Ko" means tree or trees. "More" means: something that comes
| through, something that shines through or seeps through. "Bi"
| means: sun or sunlight.
|
| The word "Komorebi" reflects the romantic and emotional love of
| the Japanese for nature.
| eastof wrote:
| There is also a word for this in Icelandic I believe. I
| remember seeing an interview with the Icelandic band Solstafir,
| and they said this is the meaning of their name. I can't find
| the link now though.
| getoj wrote:
| Allow me to be pedantic and say that English has a perfectly
| good two-word phrase for this exact phenomenon, "dappled
| light."
|
| The internet is very big on Japonisme (not to say Orientalism)
| so I feel obligated to present a contrary viewpoint once in a
| while.
| munchler wrote:
| Contrary viewpoint to what? I don't think anyone claimed that
| there was no English equivalent.
| eastof wrote:
| This is not the same thing. "Dappled light" refers to the
| pattern on the lit objects, while this is referring to the
| visible beams of light themselves a la
| https://live.staticflickr.com/3342/3663701610_a5f8e10d7a.jpg
|
| I've heard people call it "sun rays" or "sun beams" in
| English, but it's definitely not a well defined concept.
| rcarmo wrote:
| Added to https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/window_managers
| bsnnkv wrote:
| Thanks! It's worth adding GlazeWM[1] and Whim[2] to this list
| for Windows too
|
| [1]: https://github.com/glzr-io/glazewm
|
| [2]: https://github.com/dalyIsaac/Whim
| alpb wrote:
| A while back I have developed
| https://github.com/ahmetb/RectangleWin which is the Windows
| equivalent of Spectacle.app/Rectangle.app on macOS. It lets you
| pin windows to halves and one-thirds of the edges and corners
| with hotkeys.
| eptcyka wrote:
| What's up with the nix shell file?
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I tend to work on the docs in NixOS; although I have the
| patience to write a tiling window manager for Windows in Rust,
| I do not have the patience to deal with the Python dependency
| management ecosystem directly.
| patuitar wrote:
| This is a great windows tiling manager for windows, it is pretty
| easy to use and they are going to add a stack bar which I am
| pumped for.
| brbkr wrote:
| I've been using this for a few months and really like it.
|
| Pros: - Simple configuration and built-in
| keyboard shortcut daemon. - Performs very well; no
| animations, nothing to get in your way. - Workspace
| switching is excellent, doesn't use Windows' built-in system, and
| each monitor has its own set of workspaces - Draws a border
| around the active window. This is huge. I can't tell which
| window has focus without this and it's essential with focus
| change shortcuts. - Can move the cursor to the newly
| focused window, minimizing mouse movement. - Makes me
| happy. That's rare on Windows.
|
| Cons: - Doesn't handle DPI changes or laptop
| dock/undock well. I usually have to restart. - whkd gets
| stuck occasionally and requires restart. - Polyform Strict
| license is a little unusual; I hope the author stays committed.
| cisoto5034 wrote:
| I recently switched from Linux to Windows 11 and all my problems
| with bad UI, blurry fonts and terrible quality of update is gone,
| only what i missed is tiling manager, now I found it, thank you.
| unshavedyak wrote:
| What sort of code toolchains do you use? I've used a bit of
| windows before via WSL and Cygwin and it left a lot to be
| desired. It felt pretty similar to the problems i encountered
| on OSX when needing to run Linux specific tooling on docker
| containers. Ie not great.
|
| Curious on what you use, and how your experience might overlap
| with mine these days?
| add-sub-mul-div wrote:
| Not the GP but I use a headless Linux server VM through
| Virtualbox. I mount the Linux filesystem as a drive in
| Windows to use whatever editors on the Windows side and run
| any server processes (or command line utilities) on the Linux
| side. I've used this setup for over a decade without any
| complaints and the maintenance is low.
| bsnnkv wrote:
| I can strongly recommend trying out NixOS in WSL; I love this
| setup so much with komorebi. I have a starter template[1]
| available if you'd like to try it out. It takes less than 10
| minutes in most cases to set up a fully functional NixOS WSL
| VM.
|
| [1]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/nixos-wsl-starter
| leetrout wrote:
| What distro / window manager were you using? I've been using
| Pop!_OS and hadn't really noticed blurry fonts, per se, but
| neither linux nor windows look as good as my mac.
| delta_p_delta_x wrote:
| This comment is bound to generate controversy here, and I'm all
| for it, as someone who _also_ moved back to Windows. I dabbled
| with Arch Linux a couple years ago, found it a pain in the neck
| to manage because of HiDPI and my NVIDIA graphics card, moved
| back to Windows where everything works.
| Blahah wrote:
| Wonderful.
|
| Also. Komorebi is a Japanese word for the way light dapples
| through layers of leaves to illuminate a forest floor. I also
| made a tool called komorebi (an internal tool used for visuallly
| highlighting features in genomic comparisons) and deeply
| appreciate the name.
| GrantMoyer wrote:
| This looks very cool. All other tiling window manager
| implementations I've seen for Windows fall short in some way, but
| this looks as close to something like sway or i3 as possible.
| Keeping the design simple by configuration through message
| passing is cool.
|
| But the license is a dealbreaker for me. On one hand, I _like_
| that the license terms are short and easy to understand. In that
| regard, it blows other proprietary software out of the water. On
| the other hand, I know I 'd be tempted to tinker with the
| internals at some point, and the license forbids me from doing
| that. Even if in practice the maintainer accepts illicit patches,
| I'd rather not spend my time contributing unpaid to something
| proprietary, so I'd rather use and contribute to some open source
| alternative.
|
| But the real non-starter is that I only use Windows at work, and
| the license forbids me from using the software there in the first
| place.
| NanerBag wrote:
| Used to be a bit rougher around the edges but now most of my
| problems boil down to some niche app not being tiled every once
| in a while, which can always be fixed by contributing to the repo
| for application specific tiling rules. The docs are solid and it
| recently has received a small gui to test configurations and
| debug applications which dont play nicely.
|
| It takes a bit longer to get configuration up to speed because
| its not exactly one single program. Hotkeys are facilitated by
| whkd or an Autohotkey script, but thats because its built to
| allow other programs like status bars and application specific
| keyboard daemons can integrate with it. But all that also makes
| it a good learning experience.
|
| Not sure how to stick in this with the other points, but
| maintainer is really helpful with any problems.
| seabass-labrax wrote:
| The README says that " _komorebi_ is a free and open-source
| project ", but on the contrary, the software licence that this is
| released under (the 'PolyForm Strict License 1.0.0') makes it
| proprietary software, not free and open source (FOSS). The source
| code is available, but the licence doesn't permit modification,
| which is a key aspect of FOSS. So if the author is reading this,
| please change either the README or the licence so that they
| correspond!
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