Future of the project after 5.27

[boehs]

KDE is adding tiling in 5.27, and having tested it, it has a really nice UX.

In Nate's "This Week In KDE" post, he writes:

also the new APIs added for it should benefit 3rd-party tiling scripts that do want to let you turn KWin into a tiling window manager. Thanks very much to Marco Martin for contributing this work, which will be released in Plasma 5.27!

Is there some way you see that these two awesome features can work together?

edit: oh no...

[gikari]

Thank you for raising this issue.

I think I am going to deprecate the add-on after 5.27 releases. Here are a couple of reasons:

1. As I see in [Bug]: Broken on KDE 5.27 beta #473, Bismuth apparently is not working in 5.27. Also, it is fundamentally incompatible by design with the new KWin feature and needs a rewrite from the ground up. As you can see from the project history, I am not so good at rewrites, primary because it is a very time-consuming task, which is impossible to do because of the second point.
2. Currently, I do not have enough time and will to work on Bismuth due to a full-time software developer job to which I am committed. In general, my lifestyle changed drastically in the recent year, so I have new things to do and discover. Which takes us to the third point.
3. I do not use KDE Plasma anymore, because it is no longer works for me as a technical solution for my problems, so I am no longer observe the KDE Community in the same amount of detail, that allow me to enhance my work on the add-on.

In my opinion, the best solution to the presented problem is to wait for someone with the fitting background to write a new KDE Plasma add-on, that is designed better around the new APIs and UI of Plasma 5.27 and eventually around Plasma 6. This would be better for the community in every way.

Sorry to inform about that.

[boehs]

thank you for your service to our community

[NeonMinnen]

Thank you for raising this issue.

I think I am going to deprecate the add-on after 5.27 releases. Here are a couple of reasons:

1. As I see in [Bug]: Broken on KDE 5.27 beta #473, Bismuth apparently is not working in 5.27. Also, it is fundamentally incompatible by design with the new KWin feature and needs a rewrite from the ground up. As you can see from the project history, I am not so good at rewrites, primary because it is a very time-consuming task, which is impossible to do because of the second point.
2. Currently, I do not have enough time and will to work on Bismuth due to a full-time software developer job to which I am committed. In general, my lifestyle changed drastically in the recent year, so I have new things to do and discover. Which takes us to the third point.
3. I do not use KDE Plasma anymore, because it is no longer works for me as a technical solution for my problems, so I am no longer observe the KDE Community in the same amount of detail, that allow me to enhance my work on the add-on.

In my opinion, the best solution to the presented problem is to wait for someone with the fitting background to write a new KDE Plasma add-on, that is designed better around the new APIs and UI of Plasma 5.27 and eventually around Plasma 6. This would be better for the community in every way.

Sorry to inform about that.

thanks for everything! if you don’t mind me asking, what did you switch to after KDE?

[maxfinnsjo]

So long and thanks for all the tiling.

[adrianvg]

Thank you for raising this issue.

I think I am going to deprecate the add-on after 5.27 releases. Here are a couple of reasons:

1. As I see in [Bug]: Broken on KDE 5.27 beta #473, Bismuth apparently is not working in 5.27. Also, it is fundamentally incompatible by design with the new KWin feature and needs a rewrite from the ground up. As you can see from the project history, I am not so good at rewrites, primary because it is a very time-consuming task, which is impossible to do because of the second point.
2. Currently, I do not have enough time and will to work on Bismuth due to a full-time software developer job to which I am committed. In general, my lifestyle changed drastically in the recent year, so I have new things to do and discover. Which takes us to the third point.
3. I do not use KDE Plasma anymore, because it is no longer works for me as a technical solution for my problems, so I am no longer observe the KDE Community in the same amount of detail, that allow me to enhance my work on the add-on.

In my opinion, the best solution to the presented problem is to wait for someone with the fitting background to write a new KDE Plasma add-on, that is designed better around the new APIs and UI of Plasma 5.27 and eventually around Plasma 6. This would be better for the community in every way.

Sorry to inform about that.

Well, we all need to prioritise!
If this is the way Bismuth will go, I'd like to extend a thank you for the time given so far!
So thanks!

[ladydascalie]

Thank you so much for all your work so far.
It's sad to see Bismuth go, but it's totally understandable.

Congratulations on the awesome work, I'm pretty sure Bismuth is partly responsible for the popularity of tiling in the KDE community and probably was an influence on the decision to add those new features in 5.27

[b1scu1t]

I feared this would happen.
I'm the user that suggested a merger of Bismuth and Kronkite on your Matrix server.
Just want to say that you (@gikari), @esjeon, and the many other unnamed contributors did a damn good job. Kronkite/Bismuth was (arguably still is) the most feature-complete tiling window manager script for KWin, and I dread the day it finally stops working. Maybe both projects directly inspired the creation of KWin's new Tiling API...

Good luck in your future endeavours, and please don't start the Third Impact.

[PhusionDev]

Thanks for your hard work. I was using Bismuth on my Manjaro KDE setup as my first enjoyable tiler and enjoyed it a lot. I use amethyst on mac, and xmonad on my arch setup. I really liked bismuth and appreciate your efforts and wish you the best of luck in the future.

[phrxmd]

Thank you, and good luck!

[ca5ua1]

Thanks a lot!

[micoro]

Thank you for creating and maintaining this great tool until now.
I am sad to learn that it will be deprecated but that's life.

Good luck and thanks again.

[rabfel-hobmet]

bismuth is the main selling point of KDE for me. this is very sad, indeed.

[boehs]

bismuth is the main selling point of KDE for me. this is very sad, indeed.

As the author acknowledged and I mentioned in the original issue, KDE is getting some tiling support, and plugins should be able to tie in. It seems likely native tiling will eventually come (though It's possible developers will be reluctant to implement it until Plasma 6)

[gagbo]

Thanks for all the good stuff!

[maxcurzi]

Ouch, I wish I checked this issue before going back to KDE, I loved Bismuth on Manjaro KDE Plasma, and it was the single reason why I moved back to KDE (Neon this time) after a short time with Mint.

Bismuth is (was) my ideal tiling manager (I'm not a fan of tiling DEs) and 5.27 tiling manager is just ...ok for now. I hope KDE keeps pushing it to become as close as Bismuth as possible (autotiling, quick resize, keyboard shortcuts, instant layout switch).

I do wonder if 5.27 tiling could be disabled and let Bismuth do its work, but that's a question for new maintainers, if any :(

[xfzv]

Ouch, I wish I checked this issue before going back to KDE, I loved Bismuth on Manjaro KDE Plasma, and it was the single reason why I moved back to KDE (Neon this time) after a short time with Mint.

Bismuth is (was) my ideal tiling manager (I'm not a fan of tiling DEs) and 5.27 tiling manager is just ...ok for now. I hope KDE keeps pushing it to become as close as Bismuth as possible (autotiling, quick resize, keyboard shortcuts, instant layout switch).

I do wonder if 5.27 tiling could be disabled and let Bismuth do its work, but that's a question for new maintainers, if any :(

I've updated to 5.27 yesterday and Bismuth still works just fine

[maxcurzi]

I've updated to 5.27 yesterday and Bismuth still works just fine

You are right! I got worried because after installing it I couldn't find it or its shortcuts, but after a reboot it worked just fine.
I even installed Krohnkite as a possible replacement in the meantime (unfortunately is a bit too slow to resize/rearrange).

Great! I'll keep using Bismuth until it breaks (hopefully never!) :)

[ivan-gj]

Wait, what?

[Nano-Ocelot]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.

One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.

Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

[xfzv]

One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.

Cannot reproduce any of these issues on my end, it works exactly like 5.26.5. However, I had a couple of random kwin_x11 crashes but I can live with that.

[maxcurzi]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.

One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.

Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

I don't see these bugs either. Everything works exactly as expected (refocusing, resizing, auto tiling etc).

The only thing I had to manually do was to set Kwin rules to remove title bar and border for most windows, in Manjaro I had a "Bismuth" decoration that took care of it (and I just had to add some exceptions)

[ivan-gj]

Just updated Arch Linux to Plasma 5.27 (Wayland) and everything that I have tried still works as expected!

This is so relieving, I was expecting a broken bismuth and the final day of a great project, but everything is fine as always. This made my week!

[CarlosEkisde]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.

One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.

Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

I can confirm that it mostly works with the same bugs.

[JustEnoughDucks]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.

One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.

Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

I have the same bugs, but if windows don't auto fill to their space on close and you have to refloat and tile every single window whenever you close a window, that is not working tiling. That pretty much defeats the purpose of a tiling window manager which is having good, automatic distribution of space for windows in your workspace.

[Nano-Ocelot]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.
One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.
Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

I have the same bugs, but if windows don't auto fill to their space on close and you have to refloat and tile every single window whenever you close a window, that is not working tiling. That pretty much defeats the purpose of a tiling window manager which is having good, automatic distribution of space for windows in your workspace.

That's strange. Mine appropriately auto tiles again whenever any window or window manager changes take place like even just opening a plasmoid, new window, changing virtual desktops, etc. I don't need to manually float then retile all the windows. I'm on Wayland btw.

[CarlosEkisde]

I can confirm mine works as well with only a few bugs.
One is that window focus changing shortcuts no longer work (left,right,up,down directions) but other shortcuts that I tried worked fine. Another is that closing a tiled window no longer automatically resizes and repositions the other tiled windows, any subsequent window changes will cause the tiled windows to readjust (i.e. changing virtual desktops, opening new windows, hovering tooltips, etc). The last issue is that changing tiled window sizes with the mouse doesn't seem to properly work at all, the other windows don't change size and it will reset when any other window changes occur.
Since this extension mostly works fine with just a few bugs can we expect this project to continue or anyone to make a fork? I'm curious if anything has changed in that regard. I was under the impression that this extension was completely broken after the update and I'm pleasantly surprised.

I have the same bugs, but if windows don't auto fill to their space on close and you have to refloat and tile every single window whenever you close a window, that is not working tiling. That pretty much defeats the purpose of a tiling window manager which is having good, automatic distribution of space for windows in your workspace.

That's strange. Mine appropriately auto tiles again whenever any window or window manager changes take place like even just opening a plasmoid, new window, changing virtual desktops, etc. I don't need to manually float then retile all the windows. I'm on Wayland btw.

The problem seems to appear when a window is closed only. Then, in my case, the windows don't reposition themselves automatically until something external, like a program, or the user doing anything triggers any reposition event. Then, every window goes to their corresponding place.

I wonder what could be the difference between those who report a correct behaviour and those who report a faulty behaviour. But it doesn't seem to be related to being on X11 or Wayland. Btw I have tried on a fresh install on a VM and the same bugs are appearing in there.

[intentionally-left-nil]

As a fan and sponsor I want to say thank you for all the hard work you've put into the addon. It's really unfortunate that KDE broke the addon without providing a meaningful migration path forward. Best of luck in your future endeavors.

I can also confirm the 5.27 experience is more or less broken for me. Windows don't get resized when opening (sometimes). Windows never resize after closing a window. It's not a working experience any more

[CarlosEkisde]

#473 (comment)

I wanted to post this in this issue, but is the same anyway. It seems that a fix to kwin probably related to our problem is going to arrive soon.

[rafauke]

@rafauke ok just you didnt mentioned in your report here... was that referring to X11, or on Wayland? (or on both?). To cross check with those other commentary

It's X11. Wayland is not reliable in general with my setup (NVIDIA laptop/Optimus Prime 🤖)

[FantasyPvP]

TBH kwin-bismuth v3.1.4 works very well on Arch with KDE Plasma v5.27.5. No major issues really! There are some little quirks with Plasma settings, but other than that it is really excellent. Thank you for all the work pray

from what i've seen it works really well in X but there are issues with windows sometimes not tiling on wayland, its getting really frustrating and i really dont see the current tiling system on kwin to be anywhere near complete enough to actually use over bismuth. the only annoyance with it at the moment is that sometimes I have to open 2 or 3 instances of an application because the first one wont tile, i'm not sure why but i cant manually set it to tiling mode either.

[Jeoshua]

I have been thinking about it, and my experience is much the same as the previous replies. Bismuth works okay in X and barely works in Wayland. One thing that I've been able to do to help my situation is, when I open a window, and it doesn't tile correctly, I will mouse over the desktop and flick the scroll wheel, which moves to the next virtual desktop. Then, returning to the original desktop, the windows on that screen will refresh and tile properly. I do it this way since, with the gaps along the edge, it's as simple as flicking the mouse to the edge of the screen. Hopefully this either helps someone figure out the problem, or at least give them a <1 sec fix for when it inevitably occurs.

[andaag]

https://github.com/zeroxoneafour/polonium

Disclaimer : Not my project, but I'm a heavy user. Strongly recommend giving it a try and see if it works for you 🙂

[FantasyPvP]

https://github.com/zeroxoneafour/polonium

Disclaimer : Not my project, but I'm a heavy user. Strongly recommend giving it a try and see if it works for you 🙂

Tysm this is exactly what I'm looking for XD

[gianmarcogg03]

https://github.com/zeroxoneafour/polonium

Disclaimer : Not my project, but I'm a heavy user. Strongly recommend giving it a try and see if it works for you slightly_smiling_face

For me it doesn't work right and it also does not work exactly like Bismuth, which is a deal breaker.

[crazyc4t]

Thank you kind and good sir for your service!

[dobladez]

FYI: This small PR fixes the issues on 5.27 wayland (did for me at least): #490

[intentionally-left-nil]

+1 fixes it for me too!!

[farline99]

FYI: This small PR fixes the issues on 5.27 wayland (did for me at least): #490

Built package for Fedora for this fix. Here you go, maybe someone will need it ❤️

[v3ss0n]

@gikari can you add some maintainers , so we can work on keeping this working atleast across newer KDEs ,

[I-Want-ToBelieve]

NixOS:

{pkgs, ...}: {
  home.packages = with pkgs; [
    # @see https://ryantm.github.io/nixpkgs/stdenv/stdenv/#:~:text=As%20described%20in%20the%20Nix%20manual%2C%20almost%20any,so%20that%20certain%20other%20setup%20can%20take%20place.
    # @see https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/blob/nixos-unstable/pkgs/desktops/plasma-5/3rdparty/addons/bismuth/default.nix#L43
    # @see https://ryantm.github.io/nixpkgs/using/overrides/#sec-pkg-overrideAttrs
    # @see https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/issues/474
    # @see https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/issues/471
    # @see https://github.com/Bismuth-Forge/bismuth/blob/ef69afe69f615149ab347e4402862ee900452a65/src/kdecoration/decoration.cpp#L63-L64
    # @see https://discourse.nixos.org/t/how-to-patch-in-an-overlay/3678
    # @see https://stackoverflow.com/a/28484585
    (libsForQt5.bismuth.overrideAttrs
      (finalAttrs: previousAttrs: {
        patches =
          (previousAttrs.patches or [])
          ++ [
            # (fetchpatch {
            #   name = "bismuth-3.1-4-border-color.patch";
            #   url = "https://github.com/I-Want-ToBelieve/bismuth/commit/dac110934fe1ae0da9e4aca8c331f27987b033cf.patch";
            #   sha256 = "sha256-3fQs/A4hc/qeiu+792nZBTl4ujg8rQD25kuwNr03YUs=";
            # })
            # https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/commit/748ccc92a6f72c99258ce5b5bf464e79c6244710
            # (fetchpatch {
            #   name = "bismuth-3.1-4-static-block.patch";
            #   url = "https://github.com/I-Want-ToBelieve/bismuth/commit/99438b55a82f90d4df3653d00f1f0978eddc2725.patch";
            #   sha256 = "sha256-jEt0YdS7k0bJRIS0UMY21o71jgrJcwNp3gFA8e8TG6I=";
            # })
            (fetchpatch {
              name = "bismuth-3.1-4-window-id.patch";
              url = "https://github.com/jkcdarunday/bismuth/commit/ce377a33232b7eac80e7d99cb795962a057643ae.patch";
              sha256 = "sha256-15txf7pRhIvqsrBdBQOH1JDQGim2Kh5kifxQzVs5Zm0=";
            })
          ];
      }))
  ];
}

The https://github.com/I-Want-ToBelieve/bismuth/commit/99438b55a82f90d4df3653d00f1f0978eddc2725 will fix

Aug 31 11:20:00 k99-lite kwin_wayland_wrapper[4333]: ^, file:///etc/profiles/per-user/i.want.to.believe/share/kwin/scripts/bismuth/contents/code/index.mjs:796:9: Expected token (' Aug 31 11:20:00 k99-lite kwin_wayland_wrapper[4333]: ^, file:///etc/profiles/per-user/i.want.to.believe/share/kwin/scripts/bismuth/contents/code/index.mjs:795:10: Unexpected token {'
lines 20-55/55 (END)

[piotr-dobrogost]

@gikari can you add some maintainers , so we can work on keeping this working atleast across newer KDEs ,

@gikari Could you please answer this?

[kbloom]

Mabye someone could try to be the official fork?

[JohnRTitor]

Mabye someone could try to be the official fork?

I suppose. It's just plain sad to see this die. Some maintainers or a fork can keep it alive atleast.

[aitorpazos]

Isn't this the case: #471 (comment)

https://github.com/zeroxoneafour/polonium

Disclaimer : Not my project, but I'm a heavy user. Strongly recommend giving it a try and see if it works for you 🙂

[czhunor]

Isn't this the case: #471 (comment)

https://github.com/zeroxoneafour/polonium
Disclaimer : Not my project, but I'm a heavy user. Strongly recommend giving it a try and see if it works for you 🙂

Not really.

On Plasma 6, bismuth officially is not working anymore. Until now, on 5.XX it worked fine at least for me.

[abeerahmed576]

It's sad to see Bismuth die like this. After 5.27, I stopped using the auto-tiling and only used the decoration style. But that too is not recognized in system settings after Plasma 6 update.

Can someone fork this to feature only the decoration style which also successfully builds against KDE 6?

[ca5ua1]

Can someone fork this to feature only the decoration style which also successfully builds against KDE 6?

Don't want to be mean but - do it yourself. If some developer would want to make it - it would be already done.

[abeerahmed576]

Don't want to be mean but - do it yourself. If some developer would want to make it - it would be already done.

I mean, I know that and wouldn't even be here asking if I could. I have been trying to build this in KDE 6 but now running into a C specific error which I have no idea how to even approach.

[ca5ua1]

Don't want to be mean but - do it yourself. If some developer would want to make it - it would be already done.

I mean, I know that and wouldn't even be here asking if I could. I have been trying to build this in KDE 6 but now running into a C specific error which I have no idea how to even approach.

Well, in my opinion you have few options what to do next:

• Start learning things to do what you need
• Create issue with your idea so people who would want about the same would cooperate to make it. But I think what you want a bit off the way of this project as for now

While what you did is a bit off by my point of how things should be done - you wrote your idea in an issue about what to do after project unable to work with recent versions of KDE, an idea that isn't really popular and apart from that requires to "fix" project to work on more recent KDE (I suppose) and to cut out specific functionalaty that you want. I mean this may be really cool idea but it presented like you want someone to make this for you.

And that leads to this point, where I, you, others who read this message - waste time on this instead of maybe actually fixing this project or spend time more productivly.

But! The punch line is - as stated in "The Cult of Done" - (aprox.) "Who don't have dirty hands - isn't right". And as far as I remember I didn't contribute to Bismuth and I have not dealed with your specific kind of problem, or even tried to help you - so I am not right. Go do what you think will benefit community or your needs to ultimately proof how I'm wrong.

Yep, have a pleasant day :)

[abeerahmed576]

While what you did is a bit off by my point of how things should be done - you wrote your idea in an issue about what to do after project unable to work with recent versions of KDE, an idea that isn't really popular and apart from that requires to "fix" project to work on more recent KDE (I suppose) and to cut out specific functionalaty that you want. I mean this may be really cool idea but it presented like you want someone to make this for you.

Well, I guess that was a bit of whining from my part for something that would only benefit me. I'll try setting up my mindset to think for the benefit of the greater community, thanks to you.

[zyf0330]

After recent upgrading to Ubuntu 24.04 and plasmashell is updated to 5.27.11, the Bismuth doesn't work suddenly.
But the Krohnkite still works, so I go back to use it .