"Ubuntu is nice but what really is missing is this cool aligning windows feature from Windows 7."
Have you ever heard that sentence while wondering why this feature actually is missing in Ubuntu? Well the answer to this is because it is available and as you may have guessed it is a lot more configurable than this "drag the window with the mouse"-feature...
But first things first: What I do a lot while editing e.g. LaTex files is having the editor of my choice open so that it fills approx. half of my screen while having some terminals open in parallel. I normally try to align the terminals on the right of my screen. But opening and aligning the windows may take some time and even though you can start some of your X windows with appropriate --geometry options you just might not remember the parameters or you just don't think about it when you start the program.
It would be nice if there was something like a shortcut that would align my open windows just the way I want it. And the answer is pytyle. As the name suggests this little tool is written in python which is why you need to install the python-xlib before installing pytyle (and of course python but that should be installed on a standard ubuntu):
me@mymachine:~$ sudo apt-get install python-xlib
After that you can go to the pytyle project at sourceforge and download what you need. What you will get is e.g. the pytyle-0.7.4.tar.gz. Installation instructions can be found on the wiki but what you have to do is extract the tar.gz somewhere and install it with
sudo python setup.py install
When run for the first time pytyle will create a config file under
~/.config/pytyle/pytylerc
which is a regular python file so if you want to pimp the setting you should keep that in mind. Some standard keyboard shortcuts that pytyle will define are:
Alt + a = apply the tile default setting
which is exactly the setting described earlier: main window left, others right on the screen.
Alt + u = untile all windows
This will bring you back to what your desktop looked like in the beginning.
Alt + RETURN = make current window the master window
which means the current window will appear big on the left side. With
Alt + h = decrease
Alt + l = increase
you can change the size of the master window. For more shortcuts you should check the pytylerc.
If you see something like this in the terminal you started pytyle from:
X protocol error:
there are most probably some keybindings that you defined somewhere that are interfering with the standard key bindings of pytyle. And I am afraid pytyle may have some trouble with compiz effects depending on your graphics adapter.
