Basically, KDE Plasma is a full desktop enviroment, which also has its own built in window manager called KWin. KWin only supports floating windows and not tiling and so I wanted to swap KWin for another window manager (I chose AwesomeWM but the choice is yours) @Shjim @pebcak massively helped along with @dalto @vazicebon. Because of their help all the steps are in the topic through replies, but I’m going to condense everything that I did to replace stupid KWin with another WM:
1.) First download the WM of your choice. I chose awesomewm.
2.) Then we need to mask the KWIn service, as KDE uses services like these to startup KWin, so we need to run sudo systemctl mask plasma-kwin_x11.service
, to mask the service.
3.) Now we need to create a new user service, which will allow us to swap KWin with the WM of your choice, but remember, this only applies to the user that you’re currently logged in as. To create a new user service, we go to ~/.config/systemd/user
(cd into it) If the folders systemd
and user
don’t exist ten just create your own as @pebcak suggested by doing mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user
(After you have created the folders then cd into it)
4.) Now to create our custom service in the terminal we’re going to have to use the cat command (which is what I have done) cat > ~/.config/systemd/user/whateveryouwanttocallthisservice.service
and it will create. Also remember to do Ctrl+C in the terminal when it’s done.
5.) Now we nano into the .service file we have made nano ~/.config/systemd/user/whateveryouwanttocallthisservice.service
6.) Enter this into your service file:
[Install]
WantedBy=plasma-workspace.target
[Unit]
Description=Plasma Custom Window Manager
Before=plasma-workspace.target
[Service]
ExecStart=/path/to/other/wm
Slice=session.slice
Restart=on-failure
7.) Save your file.
8.)As @pebcak suggested, enable your service by NOT using sudo but using the --user flag, like systemctl --user enable whateveryouwanttocallthisservice.service
9.) Logout then log back in again. You shoul have your own window manager in Plasma.
What is it like:
Remember, KWin isn’t just a window manager, it’s a compositor too, and even manages your BACKGROUNDS. Which means you’re gonna have to install an external background manager(feh, Nitrogen) and an external compositor(like picom) And it’s kinda buggy but that can all be fixed by editing the config in your WM or installing external programs.