Tiling window managers written in C

Berticus · 2009-03-18 16:55:46

I'm currently using xmonad, and I absolutely love tiling window managers. The only issue I have with xmonad is it's written in Haskell, so I couldn't write my own extensions. I've tried learning that language, and I hated it. I have experience with C, so I'm looking at evilwm, scrotwm, dwm, and musca.

The first one I'm trying out is dwm. But one thing sort of confuses me. If every time you have to compile dwm to configure it, and it's installed in /usr/bin, how do multiple users configure it?

Ashren · 2009-03-18 16:59:44

What I did when using dwm was to compile it in a build dir in ~ and copy the executable to ~/bin which was in my path.

rson451 · 2009-03-18 17:05:59

As Ashren said, in a multiuser environment, the proper place for the dwm binary is somewhere in your $HOME, in most cases people use $HOME/bin. Just don't do the make install if you are building by hand.

Inxsible · 2009-03-18 17:14:20

I use dwm and musca and I am loving it. I don't have the problem of multiple users since I am the only one using the computer, so I just do a

makepkg -fi

musca is really great because I kinda like the manual tiling.

Berticus · 2009-03-18 17:22:36

So instead of using abs to fetch the source, you just download the tarball from suckless?

Also, as for musca, aren't the frames usually user defined? That's how it is with xmonad. There's the master pane and then other windows in varoius layouts like dieshes, tall, circle, et cetera.

Last edited by Berticus (2009-03-18 17:24:15)

Ashren · 2009-03-18 17:25:31

Berticus: exactly. Containing dwm compiling + executable in $HOME makes it easier to configure/test.

And if you feel adventurous you get latest hg pull.

Last edited by Ashren (2009-03-18 17:26:12)

Procyon · 2009-03-18 17:26:47

I have a few WMs installed at the moment. What I do is put the source in ~/util/pkgname-version and set configure/config.mk to ~/util/pkgname, and I put a symlink of ~/util/pkgname/bin/pkg in ~/bin.

That saves having to update the symlink every time there is a new version. And it is nice to have older versions available.

Sometimes I also use find to copy all the man pages in ~/util to ~/man, and use a man function to use man ~/manpage.1 if it can't find it regularly.

EDIT: PS about git and such
When I want a new trunk I move the old progname-git to progname-git-old1 and just use the same git clone command I used before.

Last edited by Procyon (2009-03-18 17:29:55)

Bonzodog · 2009-03-18 17:47:21

How about Awesome?
Thats written in C, and extended with Lua.
I use Awesome at the moment, and I quite like it.

dusanx · 2009-03-18 18:22:03

I keep my dwm in ~/DWM and start it with exec ~/DWM/dwm. Is there any reason why would I want to package it every time? There may be something I am missing, security related?

initbox · 2009-03-18 18:50:13

Ratpoison is the awesomest and is written in C.

Inxsible · 2009-03-18 18:50:46

I used the recommended method to install dwm which uses the abs build...but I guess its a better option to just start it from home.

When I built the musca PKGBUILD, I did the same..but of course it meant that you use makepkg and it builds an empty pkg. so I changed it to copy the musca executable to /usr/bin. I guess everyone has a different opinion on it

Berticus · 2009-03-18 19:12:47

Bonzodog wrote:

How about Awesome?
Thats written in C, and extended with Lua.
I use Awesome at the moment, and I quite like it.

I heard with awesome, the configurations may need quite a bit of changing between versions. I'll give it another try when their configurations are more stable. I haven't touched my xmonad.hs since I started using it, which was a little over half a year ago. Don't even know how many versions I've been through. In the meantime, I'll check out Lua.

dusanx wrote:

I keep my dwm in ~/DWM and start it with exec ~/DWM/dwm. Is there any reason why would I want to package it every time? There may be something I am missing, security related?

No, it's just easier to have a package manager manage the software. So I don't have to keep checking suckless to see if there's a new version.

initbox wrote:

Ratpoison is the awesomest and is written in C.

I'll be sure to check it out

Dieter@be · 2009-03-18 19:27:15

my vote goes for wmii. i haven't tried ratpoison or anything yet though. I only tried awesome and found it to be way too complicated/overengineered.

Inxsible · 2009-03-18 19:47:20

Dieter@be wrote:

my vote goes for wmii. i haven't tried ratpoison or anything yet though. I only tried awesome and found it to be way too complicated/overengineered.

Awesome is more like a Desktop environment of the tiling WMs

I used wmii ...and I liked the stacking mode - the way it showed the title bars of the other windows and the fact that it automatically removed tags which did not contain any windows. But I had lots of problems with dmenu + wmii combination. The WM would just stop responding and the only option was kill X or hard reset. This never occurred in dwm -- so I switched to dwm completely until I started using musca I still use dwm occasionally though.

wmii also didn't give me too much gain in the memory usage -- it used about 2.2-2.8 MB and Openbox used around 2.5-3.5 MB. dwm on the other hand ran in only 479KB - which is great for this 9 yr old laptop that I have

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-03-18 19:48:00)

Procyon · 2009-03-18 20:06:05

Inxsible wrote:

the way it showed the title bars of the other windows and the fact that it automatically removed tags which did not contain any windows.

That is my favorite feature of wmii too! I really like wmii for that, but I use ratpoison because it's so simple, and I only ever have 3 or 4 windows open at a time anyway, and because I don't understand anything about wmiir, wmiirc, rc.wmii, etc etc

Even, the other day I tried out 9mount on a wmii socket, cat'd /event, it froze and then I cat'd some other files with other terms and I had to reboot with sysrq. (Even the ctrl+alt+numpad_divide didn't work.)

About awesome, I really like how you can build it from the ground up with the config.

Inxsible · 2009-03-18 20:09:53

Procyon wrote:

.....because I don't understand anything about wmiir, wmiirc, rc.wmii, etc etc

I was a little confused with all the exec quit wmii wmiir commands in the config file. I like to keep is simple (KISS). dwm and musca are perfect for me

Have never used ratpoison -- but musca derives features from ratpoison and dwm -- so its the best of both worlds

randy80016 · 2009-03-18 21:59:24

I second ratpoison. This is by far the best setup to be using for laptops or other scenarios where your screen real estate is limited and you would rather not use the mouse/touchpad if it can be avoided.

I would use ratpoison all the time if not for the fact that it doesn't nicely handle multiple monitors. Sometimes I will Xnest a ratpoison on one monitor and just use the other for fluxbox or some other window manager.

Berticus · 2009-03-18 23:37:30

I don't have any plans to do multiple monitors. But what would prompt you to conclude that ratpoison is the best for laptops and screen real estate savings?

Also, I did read about the issue of wmii and dmenu. I thought someone wrote a solution for that though.

Procyon · 2009-03-18 23:54:12

What ratpoison can do is display a small window list on top of everything in a corner. So it's not an entire bar.

vogt · 2009-03-19 00:31:27

Berticus wrote:

I'm currently using xmonad, and I absolutely love tiling window managers. The only issue I have with xmonad is it's written in Haskell, so I couldn't write my own extensions.

There are still simple (easy) extensions to be written for xmonad? I think that most features you'd want are already in xmonad-contrib, thus bypassing the need to code anything...

pauldonnelly · 2009-03-19 03:04:38

Berticus wrote:

initbox wrote:
Ratpoison is the awesomest and is written in C.
I'll be sure to check it out

Although if you're going down the Ratpoison road, it's worth noting that StumpWM, its successor, is written in Common Lisp and is thus easier and more pleasant to hack on than anything written in Haskell or C.

Nikitka · 2009-03-19 08:06:01

echinus is a window manager for X in spirit of dwm. It is written in C.

It is configured via one config file in Xresources format. It supports the smallest possible subset of EWMH to be useable with panels/pagers.

No scripting. No statusbar.

Gigamo · 2009-03-19 10:03:10

Inxsible wrote:

Dieter@be wrote:
my vote goes for wmii. i haven't tried ratpoison or anything yet though. I only tried awesome and found it to be way too complicated/overengineered.
Awesome is more like a Desktop environment of the tiling WMs

Ignorance is bliss.

Inxsible · 2009-03-19 15:50:24

Gigamo wrote:

Inxsible wrote:
Dieter@be wrote:
my vote goes for wmii. i haven't tried ratpoison or anything yet though. I only tried awesome and found it to be way too complicated/overengineered.
Awesome is more like a Desktop environment of the tiling WMs
Ignorance is bliss.

And opinions differ !

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-18 16:55:46

Tiling window managers written in C

#2 2009-03-18 16:59:44

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#3 2009-03-18 17:05:59

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#4 2009-03-18 17:14:20

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#5 2009-03-18 17:22:36

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#6 2009-03-18 17:25:31

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#7 2009-03-18 17:26:47

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#8 2009-03-18 17:47:21

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#9 2009-03-18 18:22:03

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#10 2009-03-18 18:50:13

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#11 2009-03-18 18:50:46

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#12 2009-03-18 19:12:47

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#13 2009-03-18 19:27:15

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#14 2009-03-18 19:47:20

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#15 2009-03-18 20:06:05

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#16 2009-03-18 20:09:53

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#17 2009-03-18 21:59:24

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#18 2009-03-18 23:37:30

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#19 2009-03-18 23:54:12

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#20 2009-03-19 00:31:27

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#21 2009-03-19 03:04:38

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#22 2009-03-19 08:06:01

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#23 2009-03-19 10:03:10

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

#24 2009-03-19 15:50:24

Re: Tiling window managers written in C

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