How to use Tiling Wm's

Joxy · 2008-10-23 14:36:30

After using Kde, Gnome, Xfce, Openbox and IceWm I want to try tiling Wm, but I just instaled Awesome and don't know what to do with it, right click for xterm I figured that. What I want to know is there any tutorials for complete tiling wm beginers?
Joxy

u_no_hu · 2008-10-23 14:53:06

wmii has a nice walkthru/tutorial sort of thing when you start it first....gives a step by step idea of what you can do...try that...

Any way dont give up before trying it for atleast a week ... i guarantee that u will never go back to floating once you get the feel of it:-)

jagardaniel · 2008-10-23 15:16:22

Try "man awesome".

koch · 2008-10-23 15:46:40

klick on the awesome icon in the statusbar if you use awesome2 or read this...

http://awesome.naquadah.org/

awesome is pretty easy to use once you understand it's tag-feature and how windows are handled.
just try out the shortcuts and if you made a mistake hit ctrl+win (the mod4-key)+r to restart awesome.

Last edited by koch (2008-10-23 15:59:15)

Joxy · 2008-10-23 16:44:23

@u_no_hu Thanks! I wont give up ;-)

@koch I visited web site before instaling awesome and get the basic information about tiling WM, but I needed some basic instructions and recomendation how to effectively use tiling WM.

Joxy

Last edited by Joxy (2008-10-23 16:46:35)

moljac024 · 2008-10-23 16:50:47

http://xmonad.org/tour.html
http://xmonad.org/documentation.html

SomeGuyDude · 2008-10-23 19:16:21

I think TWMs work for some people, but they're definitely not a universal tool. Playing with Awesome I admit it's cool, and I do like the setup in general, but for doing what I'm doing right now (watching a movie while surfing the internet and chatting with people) it's hard to get an arragement of tiled windows that works. More than 3 clients per screen is simply unusable, and it's really hard to give enough space to my browser without smushing everything else.

Joxy · 2008-10-23 20:58:36

It is a weird feeling, but I'll give it a shot. So far I'm using different screens for different apps (maximum 2 clients per screen) and it's going fine. It's my first day with TWM's and I will play with TWM's for at least a few weeks, after that who knows...

peets · 2008-10-24 02:17:35

SomeGuyDude wrote:

... I do like the setup in general, but for doing what I'm doing right now (watching a movie while surfing the internet and chatting with people) it's hard to get an arragement of tiled windows that works. More than 3 clients per screen is simply unusable, and it's really hard to give enough space to my browser without smushing everything else.

Funny, I would say this about floating WMs

SomeGuyDude · 2008-10-24 02:42:41

peets wrote:

Funny, I would say this about floating WMs

I'll say this, I'd be more keen on these things if you didn't have to basically code the config files. There really is an upper limit on how much work I feel like putting into my computer. I just spent half of today screwing around with Awesome only to discover that all of the example config files made my desktop look wonky and I had no idea what was going wrong.

There's something to be said for "install, change a few variables inside a file to tweak to your liking".

creslin · 2008-10-24 03:03:22

SomeGuyDude wrote:

I just spent half of today screwing around with Awesome only to discover that all of the example config files made my desktop look wonky and I had no idea what was going wrong.

In all fairness, awesomeWM is just especially bad when it comes to learning its config syntax because of how often it gets changed. Its configs generally aren't even compatible between minor version bumps.

SomeGuyDude · 2008-10-24 03:20:25

This is possible. I may check out DWM. I'd go for Xmonad, but I don't feel like installing the 300mb of haskell files.

wirenik · 2008-10-24 03:53:24

wmii is actually pretty awesome, and has the best config file I've seen on any tiling WM. To change dwm's config, you have to change the header file and recompile it.

SomeGuyDude · 2008-10-24 05:01:24

Liking wmii, but without a tray, wicd becomes worthless and without wicd I can't use the wireless at school here (because I'm constantly changing access points). However, I'm starting to get the allure and wmii has my favorite general setup so far.

Also, my precious conky becomes useless!

Vintendo · 2008-10-24 06:27:13

SomeGuyDude wrote:

This is possible. I may check out DWM. I'd go for Xmonad, but I don't feel like installing the 300mb of haskell files.

You will like it, I had disliked it too in the beginning, still now but I can live with it. Especially dual screen is good with Xmonad.

Gigamo · 2008-10-24 08:47:16

creslin wrote:

SomeGuyDude wrote:
I just spent half of today screwing around with Awesome only to discover that all of the example config files made my desktop look wonky and I had no idea what was going wrong.
In all fairness, awesomeWM is just especially bad when it comes to learning its config syntax because of how often it gets changed. Its configs generally aren't even compatible between minor version bumps.

That's why there are stable releases. I personally don't mind a part of the config syntax changing every 1 or 2 months. Ofcourse when you're using development version, there will be surprises around the corner (like a few days ago ).

Having tried most of the tiling WM's myself (apart from stumpWM), I stick to Awesome mostly because it's still the easiest to configure (for me), and because the developper is great (very close to the users).

u_no_hu · 2008-10-24 09:15:51

I find it always easier to take the latest default config file that came with the update and then merge my changes than trying to update your existing config.

moljac024 · 2008-10-24 10:44:20

SomeGuyDude wrote:

Liking wmii, but without a tray, wicd becomes worthless and without wicd I can't use the wireless at school here (because I'm constantly changing access points). However, I'm starting to get the allure and wmii has my favorite general setup so far.
Also, my precious conky becomes useless!

I'm using Xmonad with conky and trayer for system tray. Works out great for me.

xen · 2008-10-24 11:39:10

I tried using tiling WM's earlier this week, switcing from Openbox. I found it almost impossible, I just couldn't predict the behaviour of the windows, it felt like I had less control that with a floating manager. I guess the desktop metaphor is just too finely engraved in my soul! Also, I have nice desktop wallpapers and I couldn't get used to not seeing them very often, hmm.

moljac024 · 2008-10-24 13:37:30

xen wrote:

I tried using tiling WM's earlier this week, switcing from Openbox. I found it almost impossible, I just couldn't predict the behaviour of the windows, it felt like I had less control that with a floating manager. I guess the desktop metaphor is just too finely engraved in my soul! Also, I have nice desktop wallpapers and I couldn't get used to not seeing them very often, hmm.

I'm sorry, COULDN'T predict the behavior of windows ? I would say the opposite...

cinan · 2008-10-24 14:37:59

xen: Windows are grouped by tags. Each window can be tagged with one or multiple tags. Selecting certain tags displays all windows with those tags. Each tag can have its own layout.

Tags can be compared to virtual desktops, but it's more powerful: you can quickly merge and show several tags at the same time, and go back to only one tag after.
(http://awesome.naquadah.org/)

skottish · 2008-10-24 15:47:42

For all of the experience tiling WM users: have any of you tired E17's tiling module? If so, how does it compare to the dedicated tiling WMs?

u_no_hu · 2008-10-24 19:14:07

skottish wrote:

For all of the experience tiling WM users: have any of you tired E17's tiling module? If so, how does it compare to the dedicated tiling WMs?

Reinstalled E17 after reading this but tiling doesnt seem to be stable......lots of glitches while tiling. And it just has two layouts.. One grid based layout in which everything is equally splited and another one in which you can specify the size of master window and the others will be tiled in the remaining space.

I m going to wait n watch.....

cardinals_fan · 2008-10-28 01:38:15

As I see it, there is a key to using a TWM effectively: use those workspaces! I find a TWM so valuable precisely because I never open two apps on one workspace unless I want to see them both. To not view an app, I stick it on another workspace; that's what they're for!

Also, make sure your WM makes good use of dmenu. It's an awesome tool on any WM.

pauldonnelly · 2008-10-28 20:14:11

cardinals_fan wrote:

As I see it, there is a key to using a TWM effectively: use those workspaces! I find a TWM so valuable precisely because I never open two apps on one workspace unless I want to see them both. To not view an app, I stick it on another workspace; that's what they're for!

That was pretty confusing until I realized that by TWM you didn't mean twm.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-10-23 14:36:30

How to use Tiling Wm's

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