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

COMMUNISTCHINA · 2008-08-07 16:30:04

shakin wrote:

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.

Hey, that's a good tip.

Intrepid · 2008-08-18 04:36:28

sa wrote:

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

I believe someone (ekerazha) asked how you could do this in metacity and Openbox. In Openbox, there are commands like GrowToEdge{East,West,North,South} and in metacity, when resizing you can hold shift and press an arrow key to hit another window's edge, thus maximizing use of space like a tiling manager. I think it's funny when people criticize metacity for lack of features when little-known useful ones are unrecognized.

Last edited by Intrepid (2008-08-18 04:37:51)

timetrap · 2008-08-18 11:40:01

slackhack wrote:

I thought about using a tiling WM, but I use mostly browsers and other gtk2 gui apps, with terminals secondarily. tiling WMs seemed better if you primarily use terminals, am I wrong about that? It just seems like I would feel constricted or restrained not being able to move windows around, resize them, etc. what's the best tiling WM to try? Awesome?

I use lots of GTK2 apps in Awesome no problems here.

voteforpedro36 · 2008-08-22 03:09:27

I don't use one, because I find configuring one too troublesome, and even then I usually have two or three windows open, Firefox, which I like to be big, IRC, when I keep over Firefox if I'm just reading something on the net, and Sonata, which I keep far away for when I want to change the song .

loyx · 2008-08-22 04:29:41

ratpoison user here. The more I use tiling WMs the more I like them, however ratpoison seems a little too buggy and old for me. I tried to install stumpwm but the AUR packages are broken for it's dependencies, so I guess i'll try out Awesome

pauldonnelly · 2008-08-22 05:08:32

loyx wrote:

ratpoison user here. The more I use tiling WMs the more I like them, however ratpoison seems a little too buggy and old for me. I tried to install stumpwm but the AUR packages are broken for it's dependencies, so I guess i'll try out Awesome

Stumpwm is easy to do. Just compile CLISP with new-clx, download cl-ppcre, then follow the instructions in Stumpwm's README. Don't mess around with ASDF-install; just jump right to the section labeled "Building".

Theomachos · 2008-08-26 12:55:43

loyx wrote:

ratpoison user here. The more I use tiling WMs the more I like them, however ratpoison seems a little too buggy and old for me. I tried to install stumpwm but the AUR packages are broken for it's dependencies, so I guess i'll try out Awesome :)

Could you be more precise ? What exactly is broken ? Thanks ;)
(I'd recommend using Clisp - had some instability issues with SBCL.)

Last edited by Theomachos (2008-08-26 13:01:10)

Zarin · 2008-09-17 06:57:14

I'm currently using Awesome on my laptop and have tried XMonad and Ion (I'm not going to be attacked or anything for saying that here right?) in the past. As a developer I like how XMonad works but as a user it just takes too much time to setup completely so unfortunately I haven't used it as much as the others.

vogt wrote:

Now, if somebody added compositing, but it seems that the people with enough skills to get xmonad to steal some of compiz's effects don't have enough motivation and/or spare time to do that.

Come KWin 4.3 there should be some decent tiling support added that will hopefully bring window tiling into grandma land while keeping the hardcore users entertained. This also means it will be the first "real" tiling manager that has "real" compositing. ;-)

Last edited by Zarin (2008-09-17 06:59:07)

finferflu · 2008-09-17 09:15:03

I have used many tiling WM and keyboad driven WMs, like Ratpoison, but I have always come to a sad conclusion: they slow down my system.
I don't know why and how, but it seems that if you try to tile or frame something that is supposed to be in a X window, then the applicaton starts to suck a lot of CPU cycles.

So, I think tiling WMs are great and wonderful, but I am forced to use standard WIMP WMs because the WIMP applications misbehave in a tiling environment, which is very sad. I know that one day I will come up with a CLI-driven WM with custom apps, that's the only solution for me

patroclo7 · 2008-09-17 09:51:42

finferflu: does this happen with any app or only with some of them? I have never experienced this slowness (perhaps because actually I do not use often apps operatring on multiple windows, such as gimp) and I wonder where it can come from: when you tile a window you simply give it a certain geometry, exactly as you do in a floating WM when you resize a window. Even if this resizing takes soem resources, this should have no consequence in the following operations of the app, when nothing is resized again.

finferflu · 2008-09-17 11:03:00

I'm not sure about where this behaviour comes from, but the general feel is one of increased sluggishness in the application. This happens with any application (I'm sure about Gtk apps, because I maninly use those). Of course, if resizing happens often (for example because of unexpected popups), such sluggishness becomes even worse. I have tried tiling WMs on two different machines (one with an ATi card, the other with an Intel card), and I got the same results.

I think the main problem with tiling WMs is that most applications are designed to be used in a WIMP environment, which is counter-productive for somebody wanting to use a keyboard-driven environment: we need more keyboard-driven applications!

moljac024 · 2008-09-17 12:48:33

finferflu wrote:

I'm not sure about where this behaviour comes from, but the general feel is one of increased sluggishness in the application. This happens with any application (I'm sure about Gtk apps, because I maninly use those). Of course, if resizing happens often (for example because of unexpected popups), such sluggishness becomes even worse. I have tried tiling WMs on two different machines (one with an ATi card, the other with an Intel card), and I got the same results.
I think the main problem with tiling WMs is that most applications are designed to be used in a WIMP environment, which is counter-productive for somebody wanting to use a keyboard-driven environment: we need more keyboard-driven applications!

A floating window manager with good keybindings can also be very productive. There is nothing wrong with using that. And most of you tiling WM users use CLI applications 90% of the time, so what is wrong with a terminal emulator running a GNU Screen session or dvtm ?

finferflu · 2008-09-17 13:10:07

It's wrong that terminal font rendering sucks. I mean, I'm not able to read on a terminal extensively, my eyes start to burn. Also, sometimes I need to see pictures, for example in a web browser. I have used Elinks extensively: it's very good, but websites are designed to be used with graphical web browsers, and the experience you get with a text web browser is usually very limited or awful. Other than that, there are not as many CLI apps as GUI apps out there.
Anyway, I'm on my way to learn C, and writing CLI apps will be a fun way to apply some theory to practice.

onearm · 2008-09-23 10:18:41

My 2¢ on tiling WMs: I've recently (yesterday) installed and configured awesome 3.0 mostly because it seemed very well regarded here and some weeks ago I tried xmonad too (but dropped it after a bit, too complex to configure). I am an openbox user and it fits very nicely with my take on window managers, simple, lightweight but beautiful at the same time.

Awesome is really nice, the rc.lua is a pita at first to configure but it's not that hard to get accustomed to after a bit of daily use; tiling WMs are great for terminals, having 3-4 urxvt running at the same time and covering all the desktop is plain great. Plus, awesome iss very beautiful to look at, removes the need of other programs like conky or trayer because it integrates them already, you can have as many bar as you want without, again, having to install external panels and it's fast. All good things for sure.

But, because there is a but and it's the reason I'm writing this in openbox, it doesn't go very well with gui applications. Sure they can be set as floating over a tiled background or choose to have some virtual desktops as floating at start, but for example viewing images with feh set as float causes it to cover everything behind it (usually a file manager). There is actually a keybinding to "iconify" a window, but is nowhere near handy as alt+tab or clicking on the titlebar's button.

Same thing can be said about mplayer or other video players, firefox (especially the download manager that becomes as large as the main window in a tiling desktop), gimp and many other programs. So in the end all those applications will be going to be set as float over a tiling desktop or will have their own floating desktop or even will always open in a different desktop so to not interfere with other applications (but making slightly more difficult to access them, more keys to press to do the same thing), which in some way makes the whole idea of a tiling WM useless, I end up always having more windows (or clients as awesome calls them) as floated than proper tiled windows. So, for programming and heavily terminal use, tiling WMs are the way to go; yet many desktop oriented programs as a browser, a video player or a image editing don't go very well in a tiled environment so it's all about how much one uses them.

Arkane · 2008-09-23 11:55:42

I guess this depends on how you're used to managing your windows in floating environments. Even in Openbox, I usually maximize all my large windows and spread them over different workspaces (well, my ridiculously small screen probably has something to do with this); the only windows I ever need to put in the floating layer of a tiling WM are gimp windows and wizards/popups.

The reasons I'm back to Openbox these days are:

- I was waiting for the awesome3 api to stabilize before giving it a real go, now I need some free time to set it up. Of course, I could just have used awesome2 again, but I felt like it would be a waste.

- I like having full mouse support as wel, and configuring that in XMonad is a major pain (not saying it's impossible, everything is probably possible with XMonad, but.).

- MAN do I love Openbox's menus, even for keyboard control.

Last edited by Arkane (2008-09-23 12:06:19)

onearm · 2008-09-23 12:47:05

Yes, in the end it all depends on how one uses the various programs. I keep firefox maximized at all time so tiling in that case is worthless, while I prefer to keep file managers and image viewer (thunar and feh in my case) in small windows that I can enlarge if I need to. Especially with an image viewer I prefer the window to follow the image's size and this can't be in awesome with another window open in the same desktop.
I do have a large monitor though, so there is decidedly a difference from a maximized window and a "normal" sized one.

heleos · 2008-09-23 22:41:00

I agree with onearm about floating windows in tiling window managers. When I use xmonad/awesome, I'm usually floating a window 90% of the time. Although, its not really that big of a deal for me. I usually had 1 tag that was floating, and had sonata/pidgin on there, and opera opened in tag 2. I found myself opening a terminal in tag1 all the time, which made it floating, but I didn't really care, and because of that, I now rely on windowskey + mouse buttons to move windows in openbox/fvwm now!

fflarex · 2008-09-24 01:46:34

As far as browsing the web in a tiling window manager: vimperator (or if any other decent browser allows complete keyboard control, I don't know about it) is required to avoid headaches and annoyances. Turn off the download manager window (you can view it in the normal window if you want) and torture yourself for a few days to a few hours until you're comfortable with the shortcuts and commands and you'll thank yourself later.

finferflu · 2008-09-24 12:13:16

fflarex wrote:

Turn off the download manager window (you can view it in the normal window if you want) and torture yourself for a few days to a few hours until you're comfortable with the shortcuts and commands and you'll thank yourself later.

You'll thank yourself later also because you'll find yourself able to use Vim as well

Arkane · 2008-09-25 05:59:57

I'm mostly cursing myself for it right now, because I'd really like to enjoy all those light new wekit-based browsers. But I just can't point and click links anymore...

ST.x · 2008-09-30 13:51:22

Currently using awesome3, but been reading up on xmonad and im eager to try it soon. Besides learning a new language, what's so special about xmonad that awesome doesn't have?

cheers

catwell · 2008-10-16 23:19:53

Awesome 3 is definitely the best WM. At least it's full of win. Proof ?

KurtKraut · 2008-10-17 05:34:32

Is it possible to have a tiling window manager for human beings ?

Im a biology teacher... a geek one But Im not a programmer. All WMs you`ve mentioned here envolves a conf file with a programming pattern (like Lua in awesome) or fully lack a conf file (like dwm).

It would be nice to have a tiling WM with a conf file like most unix-like programs: a bunch of variables to be set with a lot of comments (# lines) explaning the effect of each variable.

Source is for coders. Please, let the conf human readable.

pauldonnelly · 2008-10-17 06:22:10

KurtKraut wrote:

Is it possible to have a tiling window manager for human beings ?
Im a biology teacher... a geek one But Im not a programmer. All WMs you`ve mentioned here envolves a conf file with a programming pattern (like Lua in awesome) or fully lack a conf file (like dwm).
It would be nice to have a tiling WM with a conf file like most unix-like programs: a bunch of variables to be set with a lot of comments (# lines) explaning the effect of each variable.
Source is for coders. Please, let the conf human readable.

We're human too....

Ratpoison has a pretty wimpy config format, so you might like that. And StumpWM configuration doesn't require any fancy programming. Mostly stuff like:

;; Emacs-style window controls.
(define-key *new-root-map* (kbd "2") "vsplit")
(define-key *new-root-map* (kbd "3") "hsplit")
(define-key *new-root-map* (kbd "0") "remove")
(define-key *new-root-map* (kbd "1") "only")

I would expect other WMs that are configured with a programming language to be similarly easy. Nothing to be scared of, really. The whole point is that using a programming language doesn't make basic configuration harder... it just alleviates the unbearable pain of an inadequate configuration format. Scripting Emacs is a time-honored way of accidentally becoming a programmer. Scripting a window manager is pretty much the same, right?

andre.ramaciotti · 2008-10-17 12:04:42

KurtKraut wrote:

Is it possible to have a tiling window manager for human beings ?
Im a biology teacher... a geek one But Im not a programmer. All WMs you`ve mentioned here envolves a conf file with a programming pattern (like Lua in awesome) or fully lack a conf file (like dwm).
It would be nice to have a tiling WM with a conf file like most unix-like programs: a bunch of variables to be set with a lot of comments (# lines) explaning the effect of each variable.
Source is for coders. Please, let the conf human readable.

Awesome from [community] is version 2.3, which uses a configuration file that resembles those files with "config = value".

Even the rc.lua of awesome3 is quite simple. You can copy /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua to your ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua and configure it by comparison. And you can always copy other's rc.lua.

Arch Linux

#51 2008-08-07 16:30:04

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

#52 2008-08-18 04:36:28

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

#53 2008-08-18 11:40:01

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

#54 2008-08-22 03:09:27

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

#55 2008-08-22 04:29:41

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

#56 2008-08-22 05:08:32

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

#57 2008-08-26 12:55:43

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

#58 2008-09-17 06:57:14

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

#59 2008-09-17 09:15:03

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

#60 2008-09-17 09:51:42

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

#61 2008-09-17 11:03:00

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

#62 2008-09-17 12:48:33

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

#63 2008-09-17 13:10:07

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

#64 2008-09-23 10:18:41

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

#65 2008-09-23 11:55:42

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

#66 2008-09-23 12:47:05

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

#67 2008-09-23 22:41:00

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

#68 2008-09-24 01:46:34

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

#69 2008-09-24 12:13:16

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

#70 2008-09-25 05:59:57

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

#71 2008-09-30 13:51:22

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

#72 2008-10-16 23:19:53

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

#73 2008-10-17 05:34:32

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

#74 2008-10-17 06:22:10

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

#75 2008-10-17 12:04:42

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

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