PaperWM VS Grid-Tiling-Kwin

But with auto-tiling you need to place windows according to a pre-set configuration, it needs to fit whatever layout you want to go for and it needs to be able to resize the window without breaking the content. This works pretty well for libadwaita apps, but a lot of webapps seem to assume a certain minimum window size. Another issue is how to handle modal dialogues, where paperwm for example sets an override to ensure they're not attached to the main window. Should the settings window then be treated as a separate window and tiled, or should it be left floating above all others?

I like Gnome's simplicity, agree with most of its deviations from the tired old Windowsy desktop status quo, and am very happy to depend on all its great integration work. I can't quite live with the simplistic window management, but extensions cover that (as they do much else). With Fedora + Gnome + PaperWM, I'm quite at peace with the current linux desktop situation.

Still I'm looking forward for something like PaperWM to be possible in KDE - or even to write it by myself

I have noticed in one of your comments in this thread that you are looking for novel ideas of the UI look. As others commenters stated, you might be interested in tiling window managers like i3 [0] or sway [1]. They are truly a gem for productivity and sometimes for an eye [2].

However, I love the concept of scrollable window manager like PaperWM [3] is. When I had a smaller screen (24" 16:9) I was complaining a lot on unused space on my screen. With PaperWM I was finally happy with its dimensions, because I could have huge IDE on the left and small part of terminal displayed on the right. That way I knew if something was printed to terminal, while my editor took 80% of the screen.

[0]: https://i3wm.org/

[1]: https://swaywm.org/

[2]: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

[3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

If you want something really different, give PaperWM a shot.

You may want to try PaperWM (GNOME extension) https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM

KWin used to have no tiling capabilities at all and people came up with lots of add-on scripts like kwin-tiling, Grid-Tiling-KWin, Krohnkite, Bismuth and so on. This gave users tiling, but it was always a bit hackish, getting KWin to do something it wasn't designed to do.

Grid-Tiling-Kwin

Personally I use Grid-Tiling-Kwin, which is working great with Wayland. Not sure why it won't allow more than 2 splits horizontally/2 splits vertically, though.

I only had issues a few times when installing new theme or icons. Desktop widgets might sometimes move a bit after restart, other than that it works well. I also use https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin

For starters, there is a couple of tiling scripts for KWin (Kröhnkite and Grid-Tiling). You can also turn any EWMH-compliant WM into a tiling one with PyTyle.

Also have noticed that when a notification shows up, an entry on the window list plasmoid shows up too - so it could be that they got kind of a regular window behavior somehow. This behavior is reported in bug #411462, which I think is the cause of another issue I'm having (using Grid-Tiling-Kwin and when opening a plasmoid, it wants to fill a space as if it were a regular window, and it messes up with the layout of previously opened windows) but am not sure if it's related to the focus stealing issue.

Note that there are at least other alternative. Maybe not as powerful as I imagine Bismuth/Krohnite is, the one I use, [Grid-tiling-kwin](https://github.com/lingtjien/Grid-Tiling-Kwin) (though it's being funny lately with Wayland and not sure why)

Perhaps a working kwin script - for example, I use Grid-Tiling-Kwin and for some reason while in use it keeps rewriting that file.

Tiling window managers take a lot of time to learn and configure, and typically require configuration through text files. I would not recommend starting with a true tiling WM. You can use System76's Pop tiling GNOME extension, which still allows you to use the mouse to drag windows as well as add tiling exceptions, or you can install KDE and use Grid-Tiling-KWin. Krohnkite also works, but it might be a little too advanced. Grid-Tiling allows you to meta-drag windows around to change their positions rather than relying entirely on keyboard shortcuts, just like the Pop tiling.