Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

thayer · 2008-07-16 17:01:10

Thought I'd share my own two cents about this, since I was going to blog about it months ago, but just never found the time...

I used a few different tiling window managers (mostly xmonad) for several months this past winter. They really opened my eyes to how productive and efficient a desktop could be. However, due to the software I have to use for work (Fireworks MX, Photoshop, Gimp, etc.) it was a hassle to constantly fight against the tiling behaviour within these tools. And then there's the headache of having to add a new float-this-window rule for nearly every dialog box that pops up in an application--I realize this is mostly the fault of the application developer, but it's still a headache.

I have since come back to Openbox with a completely fresh outlook on how to get stuff done. I have customized it to be 100% keyboard driven, borrowing many of the common key binds from the tiling wm's, and of course dmenu for application launching--I rarely use the ob menu these days.

I've also discovered the power of GNU Screen, so now I have 5 or 6 shells open all the time, sharing a single window. With SSH and screen, I can shell into my computer from my phone and it'll grab the same terminal session I was running on the desktop--that's too awesome for words.

I think that every serious computer user should try a tiling window manager for a few weeks--if only to see how good life can be without a mouse (especially for laptop users!)

Xmonizad is the Shizad!

sevenfourk · 2008-07-16 20:05:50

While we're on topic "(Discussion about tiling WMs)"

I'm an awesome user.
Just recently reinstalled my arch OS, and decided not to poison my system those mess of DE's of WM's (because before the reinstall i got lot's of environment, was just testing them )
So after X installing I build my awesome-git and I'm happy.

Well, I used to use almost all popular tiling WM's: including xmonad,dwm. They of course nice, but as we choose arch, because it suits us most, so that's why i choose awesome

Another one wanted to mention: almost all WM's give the user such a chance to leave their mouse and work and just use keyboard, of course I'm not talking about those programs that just require mouse.

In awesome i use external libs:
* wicked - widgets for awesome-git;
* eminent - for dynamic tagging in awesome

After awesome of course next one WM's is going xmonad. I haven't used it for a long time. But i used xmanad and xmobar - those combination is pretty nice, tried dzen2 but it seemed to be heavy, i don't know, maybe it's just on machine.

And, that's all!

dolby · 2008-07-16 20:34:35

Sadly this has once again sadly turned into a blog entry

Last edited by dolby (2008-07-16 20:35:03)

Square · 2008-07-16 20:41:48

Oh, why not share...
I've tried a few tiling WMs, but I've stuck with Awesome.
With a tiling WM, I can have everything set up where I can see it. I typically, when using X, have a browser (or other application) open taking up most of the screen with terminals and smaller windows across the top like some sort of HUD. It gives me huge working room while allowing me at the same time to be able to quickly move to a terminal when needed - also without needing to bring it in front of everything else I'm doing. I can quickly drag any of the small apps down into the main area when needed, and also put them back just as fast. I like hiding the bar and then just using the Execute command to bring up the bar when needed in order to type in what I want to launch. The only thing that displays on my screen other than my applications is stalonetray now that I've gone back to using pidgin more often than the CLI version - finch.
Another factor I've found in switching to tiling WMs is how lightweight they are. All bloat is eliminated. With my system being of "poor" specifications, this is a godsend.

thayer · 2008-07-16 21:33:48

Stalafin wrote:

..
Or for those who are using Floating WMs - did you ever try a tiling WM? Are you planning to? If you tried one, why aren't you using it?
What do guys think is the major advantage of tiling WMs over floating WMs and vice versae?
I would like to hear some opinions.

dolby wrote:

Sadly this has once again sadly turned into a blog entry

Sorry, dolby but the OP did ask several open-ended general questions about tiling and floating wm's...I don't think we've deviated from that topic, but maybe I missed a response or two that have.

Last edited by thayer (2008-07-17 14:43:49)

Procyon · 2008-07-16 22:01:48

I like the tiling approach. I like it a lot. But only for console applications.

All my graphical stuff must be fullscreen.

So I use dvtm. And a non-tiling wm which makes everything fullscreen: ratpoison.

The config of dvtm is like dwm (pretty bad), but there is much less to configure, and it doesn't get changed often.

Mr.Elendig · 2008-07-16 22:10:02

thayer wrote:

Thought I'd share my own two cents about this, since I was going to blog about it months ago, but just never found the time...
I used a few different tiling window managers (mostly xmonad) for several months this past winter. They really opened my eyes to how productive and efficient a desktop could be. However, due to the software I have to use for work (Fireworks MX, Photoshop, Gimp, etc.) it was a hassle to constantly fight against the tiling behaviour within these tools. And then there's the headache of having to add a new float-this-window rule for nearly every dialog box that pops up in an application--I realize this is mostly the fault of the application developer, but it's still a headache.
I have since come back to Openbox with a completely fresh outlook on how to get stuff done. I have customized it to be 100% keyboard driven, borrowing many of the common key binds from the tiling wm's, and of course dmenu for application launching--I rarely use the ob menu these days.
I've also discovered the power of GNU Screen, so now I have 5 or 6 shells open all the time, sharing a single window. With SSH and screen, I can shell into my computer from my phone and it'll grab the same terminal session I was running on the desktop--that's too awesome for words.
I think that every serious computer user should try a tiling window manager for a few weeks--if only to see how good life can be without a mouse (especially for laptop users!)
Xmonizad is the Shizad!

The solution to your headache of the dialogs etc, are either to find some common identifier (xmonad can identify an window based on several diff resources) or make the whole workspace that you got the apps on floating.

Zepp · 2008-07-17 03:43:47

Procyon wrote:

I like the tiling approach. I like it a lot. But only for console applications.
All my graphical stuff must be fullscreen.
So I use dvtm. And a non-tiling wm which makes everything fullscreen: ratpoison.
The config of dvtm is like dwm (pretty bad), but there is much less to configure, and it doesn't get changed often.

huh? xmonad lets you fullscreen applications... actually every tiling WM i have ever used lets you.

Procyon · 2008-07-17 11:06:56

Zepp wrote:

xmonad lets you fullscreen applications.

Yes I know, but it comes at the cost of having to configure and keeping up a tiling WM. Whereas I have limited this to only having to keep up dvtm, which is a breeze and has some features the average tiling WM doesn't have (mouse control (double click to maximize, middle click to move around)), and ratpoison, which is really easy too.

moljac024 · 2008-07-17 12:18:18

Procyon wrote:

Zepp wrote:
xmonad lets you fullscreen applications.
Yes I know, but it comes at the cost of having to configure and keeping up a tiling WM. Whereas I have limited this to only having to keep up dvtm, which is a breeze and has some features the average tiling WM doesn't have (mouse control (double click to maximize, middle click to move around)), and ratpoison, which is really easy too.

I'm confused now, If you want a fullscreen WM what use do you have of "maximizing" (isn't everything supposed to be maximized already?) and moving around (???)

You also mention ratpoison which discourages the use of a mouse......I'm confused

Procyon · 2008-07-17 12:30:34

moljac024 wrote:

If you want a fullscreen WM what use do you have of "maximizing"

If we're talking about WM, then yes, I want a fullscreen WM and there is no use for maximizing and moving around.

But if we're talking about dvtm, then no, I want my console applications tiled in dvtm.
dvtm runs in URxvt. URxvt is controlled by ratpoison and is fullscreen.
Console apps run in dvtm. They are tiled. So being able to maximize and move around is a useful feature.

cyclotomic · 2008-07-25 03:24:26

I recently just uninstalled fluxbox and installed awesome, and I have to say tiling WMs are amazing. I have always hated having to click around to find the right xterm I was using, and now I no longer have to worry about that. I also love how in awesome it gives you the option to make the windows maxed out, perfect for browsing the web or word processing, with no wasted space. I have to say, I'm officially a convert.

Bonzodog · 2008-07-25 19:25:00

Obi-Lan wrote:

quit openbox because I got tired to mount things manually. I like it when I get gtkam if I plug in camera or nautilus when I plugin usb stick

um...I use openbox exclusively on my Arch box, and all usb sticks automount. Udev will handle it quite nicely, as explained in this article.
You dont actually need volume managers at all with the current udev.

zodmaner · 2008-07-25 19:35:36

Bonzodog wrote:

Obi-Lan wrote:
quit openbox because I got tired to mount things manually. I like it when I get gtkam if I plug in camera or nautilus when I plugin usb stick
um...I use openbox exclusively on my Arch box, and all usb sticks automount. Udev will handle it quite nicely, as explained in this article.
You dont actually need volume managers at all with the current udev.

Sounds nice.

I have a question, though. How do you unmount the USB stick? Did udev also handles that or do we have to issue sudo umount?

vogt · 2008-07-29 16:28:50

@zodmaner: The filesystems are mounted with the 'flush' option, which practically means that the data gets written reasonably soon, so the unmounting that happens after you remove the drive shouldn't cause any data loss, provided you wait for your transfers to finish.

EDIT: With those udev rules in place, it becomes a bit awkward to dd to the disk, or to format, since the device is mounted by default. Fortunately, I only do those things rarely, and I'm pretty sure you can {dd,fdisk...} after manually unmounting the disk.

Last edited by vogt (2008-07-29 16:34:13)

Asgaroth · 2008-07-29 18:02:20

I converted to xmonad a few weeks ago. I decided to try out a tiling window manager and chose xmonad because it's written in Haskell, since I already knew some lisp which made me interested in functional programming and I heard quite a few good things about Haskell, which were confirmed for me later, because configuring xmonad made me want to learn more and more haskell and now it is one of my preferred languages. That's really the thing that made me prefer xmonad over the other tiling WMs. No need to learn an obscure ad-hoc configuration language, but instead I have a full-blown general purpose language( and a really nice one btw) available for configuring my window manager.(Actually the config-file is a full Haskell program which is some sort of wrapper around the xmonad libraries and thus one can do anything in the configuration file, you can do in a normal Haskell program).

Vintendo · 2008-07-30 23:17:37

i got to respond to the wonderful title. I almost completely agree. A little back in this thread i said I used awesome. But awesome-3 is going to use lua for the configuration file. I don't like it. And the simple configuration files maked me use awesome. So the last week I tried wmii, dwm and xmonad. Wmii has absolutely no dual screen support and weird configuration model so i didn't like that.
Dwm is very kiss and i like it , but it didn't support dual screen like i wanted. Each screen a tag, different layouts per screen. The configuration file however is very nice. It scared me by first because you are editing a c-header file, but it's easy.
Then we come to xmonad. I installed it and hated the 300(!)mb ghc dependency. I still don't like it but I have peace with it. The dual screen support of Xmonad is just amazing. Exactly what i wanted when i discovered workspaces. The configuration file is real nice, easy to understand and edit. Xmobar is nice too. I miss the spiral/dwindle layout of awesome and i want to change screen focus with control + left/right but i am going to stay with xmonad for a while

Asgaroth · 2008-07-31 12:08:38

Vintendo wrote:

I miss the spiral/dwindle layout of awesome but i am going to stay with xmonad for a while

I don't know how this layout of awesome looks like, but perhaps this is what you want:
http://www.xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmona … piral.html

Vintendo wrote:

and i want to change screen focus with control + left/right

Add this to your keybindings:

..
,((controlMask,xK_Left), prevScreen)
,((controlMask,xK_Right), nextScreen)
..

Vintendo wrote:

I installed it and hated the 300(!)mb ghc dependency.

Actually, that's a good incentive to learn some more Haskell and use it outside of xmonad as well.
There's a chance, that this will no longer be a dependency, since there's a module in darcs(PlainConfig) which allows configuration through a standard text file, that is parsed instead of a Haskell file that gets compiled, but the amount of things you can do is significantly reduced when using PlainConfig, so in my opinion the biggest advantage of xmonad is lost by using this approach.

Last edited by Asgaroth (2008-07-31 12:14:27)

pauldonnelly · 2008-07-31 18:31:53

Vintendo wrote:

I miss the spiral/dwindle layout of awesome and i want to change screen focus with control + left/right but i am going to stay with xmonad for a while

I'm pretty sure Xmonad has the former feature, and surely it can be made to do the latter.

Vintendo · 2008-07-31 21:33:48

Asgaroth wrote:

Vintendo wrote:
I miss the spiral/dwindle layout of awesome but i am going to stay with xmonad for a while
I don't know how this layout of awesome looks like, but perhaps this is what you want:
http://www.xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmona … piral.html

Asgaroth wrote:

There is a difference between the xmonad spiral and awesome spiral. The awesome spiral devides the available space in two, and then again and again, but keeps the same aspect ratio of the screen. But the xmonad spiral is different. I had seen that one. Thanks anyway
Vintendo wrote:
and i want to change screen focus with control + left/right
Add this to your keybindings:
..
,((controlMask,xK_Left), prevScreen)
,((controlMask,xK_Right), nextScreen)
..

That doesn't work, if i recompile the configuration file i get

[~] xmonad --recompile
Error detected while loading xmonad configuration file: /home/vincent/.xmonad/xmonad.hs

xmonad.hs:86:31: Not in scope: `prevScreen'

xmonad.hs:87:31: Not in scope: `nextScreen'

Please check the file for errors.

xmonad: xmessage: executeFile: does not exist (No such file or directory)

[~]

Asgaroth wrote:

Vintendo wrote:
I installed it and hated the 300(!)mb ghc dependency.
Actually, that's a good incentive to learn some more Haskell and use it outside of xmonad as well.
There's a chance, that this will no longer be a dependency, since there's a module in darcs(PlainConfig) which allows configuration through a standard text file, that is parsed instead of a Haskell file that gets compiled, but the amount of things you can do is significantly reduced when using PlainConfig, so in my opinion the biggest advantage of xmonad is lost by using this approach.

It doesn't bug me that much anymore. Because xmonad is awesome;)

vogt · 2008-07-31 21:49:48

nextScreen and prevScreen are in XMonad.Actions.CycleWS

so you have to add it with

import XMonad.Actions.CycleWS (nextScreen,prevScreen)

and of course, you need to have xmonad-contrib installed too.

Vintendo · 2008-07-31 21:55:03

I knew it had to be a module, i just didn't knew wich one. Thank you!

sa · 2008-08-06 06:00:13

I switch back and forth between Openbox and Awesome depending on what I need it for. My Openbox setup is always meticulously laid out though, so it looks tiled anyway

whargoul · 2008-08-06 20:04:59

You evil people... talking about tiling WM's... it gives me wet dreams.

Uhm, I think I gonna try it later this week.

shakin · 2008-08-07 13:03:49

I used Awesome with KDE 4 for a few days. I'm going to have to give it and Xmonad a fair trial. I really liked Awesome, but I was working on a deadline at work and didn't have time to get used to it.

For people who are used to a full desktop like KDE or Gnome the easiest way to start using a new window manager is in place of the one that comes with KDE and Gnome so you don't lose all the other features of your desktop. For KDE I ran 'killall kwin && awesome &' to exit Kwin and start Awesome in its place.

Arch Linux

#26 2008-07-16 17:01:10

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#27 2008-07-16 20:05:50

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#28 2008-07-16 20:34:35

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#29 2008-07-16 20:41:48

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#30 2008-07-16 21:33:48

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#31 2008-07-16 22:01:48

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#32 2008-07-16 22:10:02

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#33 2008-07-17 03:43:47

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#34 2008-07-17 11:06:56

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#35 2008-07-17 12:18:18

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#36 2008-07-17 12:30:34

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#37 2008-07-25 03:24:26

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#38 2008-07-25 19:25:00

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#39 2008-07-25 19:35:36

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#40 2008-07-29 16:28:50

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#41 2008-07-29 18:02:20

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#42 2008-07-30 23:17:37

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#43 2008-07-31 12:08:38

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#44 2008-07-31 18:31:53

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#45 2008-07-31 21:33:48

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#46 2008-07-31 21:49:48

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#47 2008-07-31 21:55:03

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#48 2008-08-06 06:00:13

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#49 2008-08-06 20:04:59

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

#50 2008-08-07 13:03:49

Re: Why is Xmonad so beautiful? (Discussion about tiling WMs)

Board footer