What is Qtile Chameleon?

Qtile Chameleon is a curated configuration for the Qtile tiling window manager.  Qtile Chameleon was originally a personal project. I began working on it in 2019 when migrating back to GNU/Linux. I use it for general desktop computing and graphic design. As the workflow matured I realized other people might want to use it.

Qtile Chameleon takes inspiration from the Gnome desktop environment. It uses the concept of a date and time widget centered on the top bar from Gnome 3. As well as the old Gnome 2 layout displaying window names at the bottom of the screen on a second bar. The configuration uses mostly the gruvbox color scheme. However, Qtile Chameleon’s main trick is color convergence. It picks colors from the wallpaper and applies them to the system theme. You can find my old blog posts to see the  origins and evolution of the project.

Who is Qtile Chameleon for?

The main audience of the project is intermediate to advanced Linux users with a focus on creative software. A small niche to be sure. However I believe that there is a growing number of people who are dissatisfied with not owning or having any control over the software on their computer. There are few people more affected by this than designers. Proprietary design software has moved to a software as a service model to more tightly control the user and more greatly limit the use of their license. GNU/Linux and free software are a solution to this problem.

Where Can I get Qtile Chameleon?

All of the configuration files are hosted on github. Additionally if you are running Arch Linux or a system based on Arch you should be able to simply run the install script.

$curl -LO https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DioptricDesign/qtile-chameleon/master/installscript-arch.sh && sh installscript-arch.sh

The Qtile Chameleon install script includes a survey of user needs to help quickly setup a creative studio environment. If you are a more advanced user you can install everything manually.

Why would you run Qtile Chameleon?

If you are interested in using a tiling window manager but don’t have the time to configure one. Qtile Chameleon might be a good starting place. If you want a beautiful dynamic environment to work in. I’ve put effort most of my effort towards this aim. Tens of shell scripts automate the workflow and provide a good template for innovation. If you want a keyboard driven interface Qtile Chameleon also uses vim like mnemonic keycords and keybindings inspired by the Spacemacs distribution of Emacs. If you want a solid distraction free environment for working on creative projects this might be the ticket.

How do I start?

The easiest way is to install a Arch based distribution of GNU/Linux and run the install script. Then login to Qtile from your display manager. Once you are logged in press super+space-h to start a popup with a list of the hotkeys. If you want to make changes to the configuration read the Qtile documentation. The qtile-chameleon,  Spacemacs, and Qutebrowser hotkey layout is based on  vim. If you are unfamiliar with vim keys press super+e to open Emacs and then press space-h-T-v to start the evil tutor. The evil tutor will teach you the basics of vim.