Bismuth was an open-source tiling window manager add-on for KDE Plasma, similar to i3 or dwm. See its features, install steps, and archived status.
Bismuth was a free, open-source add-on for the KDE Plasma desktop environment on Linux that automatically tiled open windows and let users manage them via keyboard shortcuts, bringing an i3-style or dwm-style tiling workflow to Plasma users without requiring a separate window manager or desktop environment.
The project began as a fork of an earlier tool called Krohnkite, created after Krohnkite's original maintainer had been inactive for over a year, and it was developed and hosted under the Bismuth-Forge organization on GitHub, growing to roughly 2,400 stars and dozens of contributors.
In June 2024, the project's GitHub repository was archived and made read-only, effectively ending active development, largely because KDE Plasma introduced its own native tiling window management starting with Plasma 5.27, reducing the need for a third-party extension.
Bismuth's core function was automatic window tiling: rather than manually dragging and resizing windows, users' open windows were arranged into layouts automatically, with keyboard shortcuts available for rearranging, resizing, and switching between windows, similar to tools like i3, Sway, and dwm on other desktop environments.
It integrated with native KDE Plasma features such as Virtual Desktops and Activities, supported multiple switchable layouts so users could adapt tiling behavior to different contexts, and shipped with its own border-only window decoration designed to look and feel like a proper tiling window manager rather than a bolted-on extension.
The project was packaged for most major Linux distributions, including official or community packages for Ubuntu, Debian, Fedora, Arch Linux, Solus, openSUSE, and Gentoo, making installation straightforward for KDE Plasma users on a wide range of systems.
Bismuth was entirely free and open source, with no paid tier, license fee, or subscription of any kind; its source code was publicly available on GitHub under an open-source license.
Ongoing development was supported in part by voluntary community donations through Open Collective rather than commercial sales or a company backing the project.
The project is now archived and unmaintained, but its source code and historical distro packages remain publicly available at no cost for users who want to install it on compatible, typically older, Plasma versions.
No, the Bismuth-Forge repository was archived and made read-only on GitHub on June 16, 2024.
KDE Plasma introduced native tiling window management starting with Plasma 5.27, which reduced the need for a third-party extension like Bismuth.
It was a free, open-source KDE Plasma add-on that automatically tiled windows and let users manage them via keyboard, similar to i3, Sway, or dwm.
Newer versions of Plasma, 5.27 and later, include built-in native tiling, which is the recommended path instead of installing Bismuth.
Bismuth was a fork of an earlier project called Krohnkite, created after Krohnkite's original maintainer was inactive for more than a year.
Yes, it was entirely free and open source, supported in part by community donations through Open Collective.
It required KDE Plasma 5.20 or later, Qt 5.15 or later, and KDE Frameworks 5.78 or later.
Existing distro packages may still be installable on older Plasma versions, but the project is unmaintained and may not work correctly on current releases.