Ok, I’ve dabbled with WMs off and on, but I really don’t know a whole lot about them. So..this may be a stupid question, but bear with me? My experiences have been I3/Sway, River, and Hyprland…well and Cosmic if you count that.
What I think I would like to do, is design a layout in which browser always fits in this spatial arrangement, terminal here, filemanager here, etc. Even if they were the only thing opened.
I know how to setup which workspace windows appear in, using HyprLand…but I want more (and it may be there with windowrules, but this would seem very cumbersome?). But is it best for what I’m trying to do ?
So exactly how does one do that? And what WM would support such a thing? Bonus for support of gap space (because I don’t want my windows to get hot and sweaty lol).
Gaps in hyprland:
gaps_in = 4
gaps_out = 4
You could create a script:
#!/bin/bash
hyprctl dispatch workspace 2
firefox&
sleep 3
kitty&
thunar&
Which would give:
I use the master layout, I prefer to have a workspace for browser, another for terminal and ditto filemanager.
Ok, so this as you suggest, would be an autostart script, relying on launching in a particular order to populate the workspace. It doesn’t tick my box (which may not be tickable) of laying out specific dimensions and/or placements of my design for windows/apps, regardless of when launched.
It’s a small step in the right direction…but..not there.
I know this can be done in BSPWM.
- Example:
bspc rule -a "MyProgram" desktop=1 state=floating rectangle=400x300+100+100opens “MyProgram” on desktop 1, floating, with a size of 400x300 and position (100,100).
I’m looking into layouts for River including one modeled after BSP.
I made something similar to one desired layout in Cosmic, too bad it doesn’t (yet) remember started programs and window positions 
If nothing pans out with River (or if I get some other suggestions/tips), I may have to look at bspwm, though it bothers me that it’s X11 
is that Mr. Roark from Fantasy Island?
It is…I’m watching my way through the series (2nd time since I was a child during the first airing)
every word you said ^^^ there except for me it’s been Rockford.
You know, I’m just very fickle. I run KDE for a few days and think that’s the way to go. Then I run Hyprland a few days, and that’s the way to go. Then I run Cosmic, and I think that’s the way to go.
Haah, maybe my distro hopper mentality has became DE hopper. Luckily for my sanity, they can peacefully coexist on the same distro install.
If you want to for example the browser to take a half of the screen when it is the only window active then you do not want a tilling WM.
The whole point of tilling is that the windows take as much of the screen as is available. You can work around it with a floating window setup but again for that a tilling WM makes no sense.
If on the other hand you want to always open the same set of windows in a predefined pattern then there are tools for it - like i3-save-tree.
Well, in principle that sounds great..but I really want to just have a static layout. I don’t care if the browser is full screen or not..but I do want it to go to a 50% share, when something(s) else are opened and to go to wherever on the screen I tell it to go :0
I haven’t been deep enough into I3 to have seen the i3-save-tree, but I’ll certainly take a look at it. Thanks!
For river there is lots of laulout generators… Some of them can by configure to open specific sets of apps to specific positions and size. For open one window in 50% screen u can configure “floating” window with specific position…
But that is posible with most of the WM… And for this you need dynamic tilling manager not stacking (like river, hyprland, dwl…)