KZones

The KDE Plasma desktop has become fertile territory for people wanting to experiment with tiling window managers. This is because while KDE is a fully fledged modern desktop that will feel familiar to anyone, it's also supremely configurable. Its KWin window manager can be scripted to do almost anything, and there are several high-profile and easy-to-install scripts that will change the default standard desktop window behavior. We've looked at a couple in the past, with the best being the austerely named "Tiling Extension." With this script enabled, your application windows would automatically snap and expand to one of several layouts, filling your entire screen and even removing window borders. It used the same shortcuts and layouts as the native tiling window manager i3 and was a brilliant solution for those of us unwilling to give up all modernity in the search for tiling efficiency.

Unfortunately, the Tiling Extension script is no longer being developed or supported, and the project has been archived. This has led to a glut of alternatives trying to win its user base, including Exquisite, which we looked at previously, and KZones, a beautiful solution that includes graphical configuration, on-screen prompts, editable zones, and keyboard shortcuts. All of this is accessible from its System Settings panel, which lets you change how zones are triggered and how you drag windows into those zones to activate them. The layouts are easy to create yourself and include percentages and positions for each column or row you want to create. Shortcuts can be assigned via KDE's global settings. It's the easiest on-ramp to tiling we've seen and a brilliant option for KDE Plasma users who want to make the most of their desktop space without committing entirely to tiling.

Project Website

https://github.com/gerritdevriese/kzones

The main difference between KZones and a real tiling window manager is that there's no concept of a master window around which every other panel arranges itself.

Office manager

Kraft

Creating and maintaining the documentation associated with running a business isn't normally something you can get too geeky about. It usually involves the sober writing of invoices, customer contact details, quotes, and calculations, which is probably why so many commercial products take advantage of this monotony with their proprietary solutions. Kraft lets you accomplish all of this while letting you explore your geeky curiosity and support for open source. Kraft 1.0 is a Qt application that integrates perfectly with KDE Plasma, but it looks just as good from other desktops, too. Its 1.0 tag is also something of a misnomer. Despite only being released at the end of 2022, Kraft has been in development since 2004, with lots of public 0.1 releases along the way. This means it arrives fully formed and stable enough for professional use on whichever desktop you choose.

Kraft is a content management system for business documents. It lets you create them, update them, and keep track of them across a timeline. The documents are created within the app, with their type selected from a drop-down list that can include your own types. Select an invoice, for example, and you can use KDE's built-in KAddressBook to assign a customer and add notes for how the document will appear on the virtual whiteboard. Documents are built from editable templates, and the invoice, for example, lets you add and edit chargeable items, with hourly rates and tax calculations, in a way that can be given to customers and kept and processed as part of your own records. The whiteboard is an easy-to-view list of outstanding documents that makes those that are current easy to access. Older documents can be opened from the timeline or from the Documents view, which lists every document in the database and lets you filter by tags, type, and text. If you run a small business, Kraft should offer everything you need.

Project Website

https://volle-kraft-voraus.de/Main/Details

Kraft can create and manage invoices, offers, delivery receipts, and many other types of documents, managing them across time and versions with a database back end.