I know that for KDE 4.5 someone has implemented tiling window management for kwin. However, I am not clear what these means or how it changes things in practice. Can anyone either explain it to me or point me towards a resource that can do so?

Hi BC - hope I understand your question properly, i.e. what is tiling...

The beginnings of tiling were the lovely addition that you drag a window to the right/left/top and it does stuff automagically. Well, full blown tiling is even better in that it offers more possibilities. PyTyle is a nice example:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0cz78mCnfE

I've been playing with KWin as a tiling window manager for a few minutes on my netbook. Here's my take (especially for you (and people like you)!): http://softwareandunicycles.wordpress.c ... -and-kwin/