Qtile Community Edition - General Discussion

Desktop Environments All WMs
21

Only arm device I have is a pi 3b+ with 1GB ram so it’s hard to run anything on it. If you can try to test it on an Arm device that’ll be great!

I’m thinking xfce4-terminal for the terminal as well. Tilix is also very nice.

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22

no worry about no arm device… will test on pi 4 +pinebook pro when you ready :+1:

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23

I think instead of configuring Gtk, icon, font rendering, cursor themes separately across files, it might be beneficial to use xsettingsd which lets you configure them all in an easier to manage file. perhaps this will be useful for other community editions?

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24

I was mistaken, there is only a notifications service and no ui (see https://github.com/qtile/qtile/issues/1521). Dunst it is then, most likely.

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25

I’m not quite sure about this, but something I’ve done on my own Qtile install is use gnome-flashback as a background service. With a tiny bit of configuration it does nothing more than handle monitors, but it’s the same code as Gnome so it does that extremely well, I must say. Maybe we should consider this? Like I said, not sure if it’s worth adding the bloat.

26

Anything that can be done to simplify dual monitor setup up would be great. Right now can’t figure how to make it work for my set up, tried xrandr, arandr, etc. I must be missing something in my config file. qtile does not seem to treat my two monitors as separate workspaces, it just extends my laptop screen on the external monitor. my dual screen setup works on cinnamon session.

Obviously this is not the place to troubleshoot this problem (you want solutions :grin:) → would be great to add a new section in the forum under Desktop Environment/Qtile. So anything that can be done to make this easy would be great!

27

DT has quite few videos, in case, to introduce qtile

edit: and here a snippet of code I used to make my laptop screen brightness and volume buttons work:

#Volume
     Key([], "XF86AudioMute", lazy.spawn("amixer -q set Master toggle")),
     Key([], "XF86AudioLowerVolume", lazy.spawn("amixer -c 0 sset Master 1- unmute")),
     Key([], "XF86AudioRaiseVolume", lazy.spawn("amixer -c 0 sset Master 1+ unmute")),
#Brightness
     Key([], "XF86MonBrightnessUp", lazy.spawn("brightnessctl s 5%+")),
     Key([], "XF86MonBrightnessDown", lazy.spawn("brightnessctl s 5%-")),
28

My use case involves disabling my laptop’s monitor when I am not using it so I’m not sure re that.
For separate workspaces, I think there’s something in the docs for it.

29

will dig more… Once I manage to make both screens recognized as separate, it must be possible to add separate bottom bars and group assigned by screen (i.e. groups are workspaces for people not used to qtile)

Edit: I figured it out, but that may be hybrid intel/nvidia specific. Had to switch to my nvidia card (not hybrid mode) via optimus manager, then start nvidia-settings and move the external screen to not overlap with the laptop screen. Now I have a bar on both screens and groups(workspaces) can be used independently.

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30

I’m running into a bit of a problem with notifications. Gnome-flashback seems to take over notifications but that can be disabled. Either way, flashback and dunst both overlap with the top bar… should I move the notifications to the bottom?

(never mind, dunst can be configured to avoid that)

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31

dunst can be moved to bottom right.

And where does gnome-flashback come in? :thinking:

edit : ok you can have top margin on dunst of you want notifications at top right

32

I was using gnome flashback to handle monitors in my own setup (not in the community edition)

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33

Sorry for the inactivity, I’ve been setting it up in my spare time. Everything is almost in a usable state and similar to other community editions but of course there will be lots of bugs to work out. I will push to the Git repository tomorrow

Edit: I pushed the plumbing up. There is some tweaking to do, and then I’ll make a setup script. Then please feel free to test everything!

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34

No problem. We’re doing it for fun. Shouldn’t feel like boring work :wink:

Do update on the thread when we can try it out :yum:

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35

Again I haven’t got a chance to work on it (too lazy, writing init systems is more fun! :wink: ) but I made a setup.sh script, so just clone the repository and run bash on it. Need to first install everything from packages-repository.txt

Things to improve on:

  • set wallpaper
  • write a hook for autostart, delegate it all to some simple api in a file called autostart.py.
    • start picom
    • configure dunst. bar is 28 px, so I think offset from top should be 30, or 32 px. use consistent font, play with sizes and themes.
  • set up rofi!
    • thoughts on keybindings? mod+r? then we can use mod+shift+r to access qtile’s built in spawn
    • which theme?
  • finalize default apps
  • play with bar
    • attempt 2 at adding powerline
    • we need more widgets! qtile’s inbuilt volume widget is meh. pasystray is in the arch repos and it works beautifully so probably using that. add a custom Image widget at top left that spawns rofi. will play around…
  • play with fonts
  • figure out why the update indicator widget for qtile does not work
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36

Following this as I am currently working on a Qtile setup myself. Coming from XFCE. Struggling alot to get multi monitor setup to work properly.

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37

I just discovered this thread after 2 weeks of making a try at i3 where I have to jump through all kinds of hoops in the config file just to have standard Vim keys. Being totally unaware of this discussion, I went through most of DT’s videos about Qtile thinking that this might work better for me than i3.

As a long time Xfce user who is tired of having to drag windows around with a mouse, I’m really looking forward to trying a commusity edition of Qtile.

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

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38

Great! I think I’m done with the first release. I’ll push it this weekend, then hopefully people get a chance to take it for a whirl. I do need ideas for more widgets to add to the bar, though; works for me but might be lackluster to others.

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39

wip, but it is pushed. do not expect anything extraordinary, you won’t get it yet, but it’s usable now. here’s an easy way to test in a vm.

  • get an iso from the latest April release
  • use online installer
  • do not select a desktop environment
  • once installed, connect to network from tty, and install qtile sudo pacman -S qtile
  • start qtile, set up a display manager like lightdm if you want to
  • git clone my repository, do
sudo pacman -S - < packages-repository

(might want to add --needed). then run bash setup.sh. don’t worry about the destructive config message; doesn’t matter on a fresh install. it just overwrites Xresources, gtk config, qtile config, etc. in the future, I’ll make it back them up. Keybinding is Super+R for Rofi (might want to change because conflicts with some apps like the default for SimpleScreenRecorder, what do the i3/sway/bspwm editions use?)

Here’s an obligatory demo (sorry for these Streamable links, forum does not let me upload videos, this is the first result for “video uploading online free”): https://streamable.com/i342sv

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40

Mod+D

Looks very cool btw!

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