Most administrative tasks are done best with the keyboard in a terminal. Hence, tiling window managers are such a [bless](xserver.html "bless") for system administration. But what to do on a "normal" desktop, i.e., one with a desktop environment such as KDE or Gnome? Well, the window manager of KDE, kwin, fully supports tiling since version 4.5. It works well, but I was never able to work with it to my full satisfaction. I frequently use applications with too different requirements regarding window placement and size, and the tiling feature then often hinders instead of being of help. I instead found a solution which kind of separates my usual desktop activity and serious administrative work. Look at the following screenshot: [](../images/desktop_280712_90.webp) What you see there is a KDE desktop with the taskbar on top, conky to the right, netnewsticker at the bottom, and a transparent urxvt just above. Now, I use the latter for simple tasks such as 'sudo pacman -S tmux', but for more complicated matters I turn to the combination of yakuake and tmux you see in the top left of the desktop. [Yakuake](http://extragear.kde.org/apps/yakuake/ "Yakuake") is a drop-down terminal emulator based on the KDE konsole which slides down upon a press of F12, very much like the consoles used in [Quake](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_(video_game) "Quake"). [Tmux](http://tmux.sourceforge.net/ "Tmux") is a terminal multiplexer with many features, of which I use only a few. If you are interested, look [here](http://blog.hawkhost.com/2010/06/28/tmux-the-terminal-multiplexer/ "here") and [there](http://lukaszwrobel.pl/blog/tmux-tutorial-split-terminal-windows-easily "there"), and memorize the following minimum set of commands (all of which are preceded by a Ctrl-b) : " split pane horizontally % split pane vertically arrow key switch pane hold control, arrow key resize pane c (c)reate new window. n (n)ext window. p (p)revious window. You can, of course, rebind all commands. By using tmux, one can turn the above inconspicuous yakuake window into a full fledged tiled desktop by going into full screen mode (Ctrl-Shift F11). For example: [](../images/terminals_280712_censored_90.webp) From left-up to right-down: [weechat](http://www.weechat.org/ "weechat"), [moc](http://moc.daper.net/ "moc"), [mc](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midnight_Commander "mc"), [mutt](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutt_(e-mail_client) "mutt"). Press F12, and \*puff\* you're back at your "normal" desktop.