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#1 2009-03-25 08:15:22

problemkenner
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Registered: 2009-02-17
Posts: 69

Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Hello anyone,

in the next days I want to explore the possibilities of tiling-wm's, mostly of Awesome, Dwm, Stumpwm and Xmonad because I've think that are the most popular and therefore generally the most recommendable. I looked a bit in the Wiki and found out, that there doesn't seem to be an Awesome3 version for x86_64. Is that right?

Which tiling-wm would you recommend in regard to this needs:

- easy to dive in (former experiences were only with floating wm's like gnome, KDE or Openbox)
- x86_64 compatible
- recommendable for laptop usage
- Accessing programs from a menu not only from terminal
- A systray that shows icons like the running wicd, pidgin and so on.
- And finally a clock with the present date would be also very fine.

That are the most important points the wm sould have implemented.

Thank you. smile

Last edited by problemkenner (2009-03-25 08:16:18)

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#2 2009-03-25 09:02:11

mikesd
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From: Australia
Registered: 2008-02-01
Posts: 788
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Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

They are all goood wm's as far as I know. I wouldn't reccomend stumpwm as a first tiling wm but have been playing with it myself. Can't leave XMonad though as I am just too used to it. As a first tiling wm I would look at Awesome, though I haven't used it my self, simply for it's ease of configuration with LUA. I still struggle a bit with Haskell when it comes to configuring XMonad. XMonad does have a very helpful community though. I don't use a systray and don't know what sort of support those wms have. I know stumpwm works with gnome-panel and kicker so it may work with others. On XMonad I use dmenu for launching applications I don't have bound to a shortcut and a bunch of dzens one of which shows time and date.

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#3 2009-03-25 09:33:01

adamlau
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Registered: 2009-01-30
Posts: 418

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

I have found Musca to be easier than all of the above.


Arch Linux + sway
Debian Testing + GNOME/sway
NetBSD 64-bit + Xfce

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#4 2009-03-25 10:22:54

Dieter@be
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From: Belgium
Registered: 2006-11-05
Posts: 2,000
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Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

add wmii to your list. it's also quite popular and good. i like it.  I also think it's rather easy to get into because it assists the user when you start it the first time.


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#5 2009-03-25 10:55:52

ak-89
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From: Finland
Registered: 2008-08-26
Posts: 86
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Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

I think Awesome is the only one that has systray by default. I don't know about stumpwm, haven't tried it.
And for menu you can use dmenu, if keyboard controlled menu is enough. If you want *box-like mouse controllable desktop menu with categories, Awesome has it. If you make changes to the default config, updating Awesome maybe kind of tricky, because it's config changes often.

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#6 2009-03-25 11:40:56

strankan
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From: Sundsvall - Sweden
Registered: 2006-11-08
Posts: 97

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

I'll recommend ion3 and trayion, works perfectly for me. Using it on my laptop as well as on my ordinarie computer. No mouse menu but it takes about 3 minutes to get used to it. Press F3 and then type firefox and you're done. No need to use the mouse at all smile

It's not in the repositories so I just maintain it by building it by hand.

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#7 2009-03-25 11:53:20

Procyon
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Registered: 2008-05-07
Posts: 1,819

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

- Accessing programs from a menu not only from terminal
- A systray that shows icons like the running wicd, pidgin and so on.
- And finally a clock with the present date would be also very fine.

A menu can be done with external apps. (like xbindkeys and a dmenu script)
Systray is more complex, I haven't tried any pagers myself actually, but most WMs allow padding.
A clock can be shown inside a lot of apps, even firefox with an addon.

Then for actually diving in tiling, you should start with something that has little to configure, like ratpoison or musca. They allow you to supply commands to the running system. You don't even need a start up file or configure anything, just have the website/tutorial in one hand and a command line to run ratpoison -c or musca -c commands to configure.

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#8 2009-03-25 12:10:39

desper
Member
Registered: 2008-04-16
Posts: 9

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

awesome +1
wmii +1

by the way
Is there any way to put wmii statusbar at left/right side of screen, instead of bottom?

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#9 2009-03-25 14:11:44

moljac024
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From: Serbia
Registered: 2008-01-29
Posts: 2,676

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

My recommendation would be XMonad, but many here will tell you to go with Dwm as well.
In the end, the best answer always is - try them all out for yourself


The day Microsoft makes a product that doesn't suck, is the day they make a vacuum cleaner.
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#10 2009-03-25 14:53:39

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

I would say that you should stay away from Xmonad and stumpwm since you have never used tiling wms before. Although extremely good WMs in their own rights, they are not suited for first time users, IMHO. Awesome is a little too heavy for my liking, not to mention the frequent and incompatible changes in the config files between versions.

wmii has two cool features that I really like -- it automatically removes the tags which do not contain any windows. I haven't seen any other WM do that. The other is that it has a good stacking mode which shows the title bar of the other windows. Of course that means that wmii decorates the windows a little more than other tiling WMs. dwm and musca do not have any decoration apart from a 1 pixel border which is colored to show you which window has focus. musca even has the ability to remove that border -- which is especially useful while watching movies -- because a colored border is annoying to see during a movie full screen.


My vote would go for musca. Its amazingly simple to setup and has a lot of features from ratpoison and dwm. you can configure it anyway you like it. Has a simple text based .musca_start file instead of you having to compile the source like in dwm. You also don't have to learn new languages like lua or haskell if you wanted to create some of your own patches etc. Keybindings are nicely supported.

Another tiling wm that I really like is dwm -- it uses the least bit of memory among all the tiling/non-tiling wms that I have used. about 479 KB. musca is not too far off either and it uses about 530 KB. Dwm does however need re-compilation everytime you change some configuration -- but you won't do that after you have set it up the way you like it. Keybinding is a 2 step process since 5.4 where you have to create a pointer and then the shortcut calls to that pointer.

As for your requirements, I think awesome is the only one that gives you a right click menu and a systray by default. Although any systray could be used in any tiling wm. The trick is to make it so that it is not managed by the WM or rather made floating. I would not want a right click menu for a tiling wm anyway, because it would be moot. also the menu would take up a tile (for a true tiling wm) and would be rather useless, IMO.

For time etc. i just have time in my conky which is at the bottom of the screen and i have left a padding so that conky is visible all the time. For a change I will sometimes use lal beside my stalonetray. dwm has the ability to display time and other info in the top panel.

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-03-25 15:09:17)


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#11 2009-03-25 15:44:23

initbox
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Registered: 2008-09-27
Posts: 172

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Ratpoison with some random tray.

Though tiling wm's and trays don't mix...

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#12 2009-03-25 18:56:27

Nepherte
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From: Singapore
Registered: 2008-09-09
Posts: 427
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Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Inxsible wrote:

I would say that you should stay away from Xmonad and stumpwm since you have never used tiling wms before. Although extremely good WMs in their own rights, they are not suited for first time users, IMHO. Awesome is a little too heavy for my liking, not to mention the frequent and incompatible changes in the config files between versions.

[...]

In the end it just comes down to personal preference and perhaps how proficient someone is. When I started using tiling wms, I found XMonad to be the "easiest" of them all. Again, a matter of personal preference.

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#13 2009-03-25 19:18:18

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Nepherte wrote:
Inxsible wrote:

I would say that you should stay away from Xmonad and stumpwm since you have never used tiling wms before. Although extremely good WMs in their own rights, they are not suited for first time users, IMHO. Awesome is a little too heavy for my liking, not to mention the frequent and incompatible changes in the config files between versions.

[...]

In the end it just comes down to personal preference and perhaps how proficient someone is. When I started using tiling wms, I found XMonad to be the "easiest" of them all. Again, a matter of personal preference.

Agreed. That's why I had the "IMHO" appended to it smile


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#14 2009-03-25 19:38:58

problemkenner
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Registered: 2009-02-17
Posts: 69

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Hello guys,

thank you for your posts, especially yours Inxsible. smile

I reduced my choices to Wmii, Dwm and Musca.

They convinced me the most and I think like you already mentioned, I simply will have to test them.

Nevertheless post your opinion or new information if you like, I will carefully read it. smile

See you (maybe with some new questions) cool

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#15 2009-03-25 19:45:58

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

If you do decide to go with musca, be sure to read up on this excellent thread which has the author of musca (aerosuidae) involved as well.

http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=67104

Last edited by Inxsible (2009-03-25 19:46:13)


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#16 2009-03-25 21:09:32

problemkenner
Member
Registered: 2009-02-17
Posts: 69

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

So I installed the three the first time and had a look at them.

What is noticeable:

Dwm and Wmii seem to be more difficult to build until you could use the latest version while Musca can be installed by using only one single package from AUR. What I still don't understand - do I need a special language to configure them to my needs or how does this work?

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#17 2009-03-25 21:14:05

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

problemkenner wrote:

So I installed the three the first time and had a look at them.

What is noticeable:

Dwm and Wmii seem to be more difficult to build until you could use the latest version while Musca can be installed by using only one single package from AUR. What I still don't understand - do I need a special language to configure them to my needs or how does this work?

No you dont need a special language to configure them.

musca -- see the author's website and check the format of .musca_start. I have also posted my .musca_start file in the Musca thread if you want to get pointers. Do read the comments immediately after that because they pertain to the syntax of the file.

dwm - i don't know which method you followed to install, but if you followed the recommended method on the wiki, you should have a config.h file, which you can edit to your needs. Documentation is a little sparse when it comes to dwm and wmii, but you can see the examples that are listed in the config.h and accordingly create your own.

wmii - you can have a wmiirc file in .wmii-3.5 in your home directory for configuration. wmii actually supports other languages for configuration as well.


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#18 2009-03-26 07:49:10

problemkenner
Member
Registered: 2009-02-17
Posts: 69

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

Well I decided to go with Musca and therefore also with parts of Dwm. wink
Wmii is simply to big but has obviously except the statusbar not much more as Musca.

As often seen in screenshot many users of tiling wm's use mostly shell programs and my question is, how usefull would that be in comparison to normal gui programs?

I'm also quite not sure, if there exist for any case a shell program, for example to replace Pidgin.

Could you give me a short overview of the must-have or nice-to-have programs you use in a tiling wm?

Thanks smile

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#19 2009-03-26 09:20:50

robmaloy
Member
From: Germany
Registered: 2008-05-14
Posts: 263

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

problemkenner wrote:

Well I decided to go with Musca and therefore also with parts of Dwm. wink
Wmii is simply to big but has obviously except the statusbar not much more as Musca.

As often seen in screenshot many users of tiling wm's use mostly shell programs and my question is, how usefull would that be in comparison to normal gui programs?

I'm also quite not sure, if there exist for any case a shell program, for example to replace Pidgin.

Could you give me a short overview of the must-have or nice-to-have programs you use in a tiling wm?

Thanks smile

there are lots of nice cli programs, though i don't know what exactly you might need:

irc: irssi or weechat
mail: mutt
instant messaging: finch (pidgin cli version), ysm (ICQ only), mcabber (xmpp), centerim(multi-protocol but no unicode atm), bitlbee (multi-protocol to irc-wrapper)

for web browsing i prefer firefox with the great add-on "vimperator"

a setup like that will make you forget there ever was something as a mouse wink


☃ Snowman ☃

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#20 2009-03-26 13:55:21

Inxsible
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From: Chicago
Registered: 2008-06-09
Posts: 9,183

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

musca supports mouse events pretty well. I use pidgin and skype in musca as well as dwm. cli chat programs just dont interest me. I use firefox, gvim, pcmanfm, geany ....

thts a lot of GUI apps if you ask me smile


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#21 2009-03-26 14:01:14

Gigamo
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Registered: 2008-01-19
Posts: 394

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

bitlbee is imo really nice for cli-based IM.

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#22 2009-03-26 14:20:04

btartsa
Member
Registered: 2004-07-26
Posts: 222

Re: Which tiling-wm for diving in?

I run openbox with the "poor mans tiling window manager" script from community contribs. I set up xbindkeys accordingly...same for my panel.  For me its the most flexible option.

Last edited by btartsa (2009-03-26 14:20:27)

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