Can I get a proper tiling window manager in KDE
I've been a bit conflicted about switching over to a tiling window manager. I made the switch a while ago and I really like it for some things but for other things I don't. So I ended up switching back to my trusty KDE.
However, when switching between my virtual desktops I can't help but think how awesome it would be if I could have a proper tiling window manager in KDE. I know that kwin has some tiling options but IMHO they suck! I want something similar to i3 where all the window decorations are completely stripped away.
Then I took this idea a step further and started thinking how absolutely mindbogglingly awesome it would be if I could configure specific virtual desktops to have this tiling WM while others would have the good old floating kwin behavior.
So I ask, does anybody know of such awesomeness? Is there anything even remotely similar to this? Even just some way to have proper tiling window management in KDE without this virtual desktop specific WM feature?
I'd also be curious to hear from people with deep understanding of the whole window management concept as to why this isn't possible if that is in fact the case. What makes it difficult to implement?
Answer
First of all KDE is not a window manager, kwin is. KDE does not rely on kwin, so you can replace it with any other window manager, including tiling ones, that you like. One possibility of doing this is setting the KDEWM environment variable to the binary of your window manager before running startkde.
Second, there exist tiling window managers that have the functionality of virtual desktops being designated as floating desktops. You are probably aware of that feature already.
Third, it is not possible to have a different window manager for each virtual desktop. The reason is that virtual desktops are not a concept in X11. Instead they are achieved by the window manager manually showing/hiding windows when switching desktops. There is some standardization on that, meaning there are custom, but standardized tags to identify the virtual desktop of windows. This enables other X11 clients (like a desktop switcher applet) to recognize the virtual desktop layout. However, the X server only allows one single window manager per screen which then implements the virtual desktop behavior.