Awesome vs. Xmonad

Arm-the-Homeless · 2009-11-26 01:47:52

I've been thinking about trying a tiling window manager (I currently use Openbox) and am thinking especially about trying awesome and xmonad.

I mostly use 5 main apps (ranked in how much I use them, 1 being the most):
1. Urxvt
2. Firefox
3. Songbird
4. Pidgin
5. XChat

I'm looking for it to have a lot of configurability as far as hotkeys go, I want to try and use the mouse as little as possible.

Feel free to recommend any other WMs if you want.

sand_man · 2009-11-26 02:31:25

Windows XP vs. My lawnmower

Umm, seriously, just try it. Read the wiki. Search the forum. There is a **** load of info about all kinds of window managers.

MrBlueSky · 2009-11-26 02:48:38

They're both very similar. I'd imagine that a big factor would be whether you feel you'd be more comfortable customizing with Lua or Haskell.

I know that customizing Xmonad's config file has a bit of a learning curve if you don't use a pre-configured template. Editing a template is pretty trivial.

Last edited by MrBlueSky (2009-11-26 03:39:48)

Ogion · 2009-11-26 11:07:25

Both are very configurable and will probably serve your needs. For me the difference is mainly the config file, and somehow (i'm not a programmer) i find xmonads Haskell config easier than awesomes Lua config.
I'd say try both and you'll see which you find more to your needs and taste.

Ogion

mikesd · 2009-11-26 11:13:15

MrBlueSky wrote:

I know that customizing Xmonad's config file has a bit of a learning curve if you don't use a pre-configured template. Editing a template is pretty trivial.

Yeah. If you go with XMonad start with a simple config and slowly add to it. Browsing through the config archive is a good way to go.

the_isz · 2009-11-26 11:31:17

I refrained from trying out XMonad because of its large space requirement. The
haskell compiler takes about 500Mb of space. Though its only needed to compile
the config file (you could ditch it later), I didn't want to pay this cost.

While trying awesome and wmii I eventually found out that tiling window managers
aren't for me (yet?). In most cases, I'm perfectly fine with openbox.

For the situations I'm not, I now use PyTyle, which I can recommend if you (like
me) want to sniff into the world of tiling without getting completely lost.

jelly · 2009-11-26 13:34:28

the_isz wrote:

I refrained from trying out XMonad because of its large space requirement. The
haskell compiler takes about 500Mb of space. Though its only needed to compile
the config file (you could ditch it later), I didn't want to pay this cost.

That's an non-argument, just because the compiler is rather big it's a useless WM, crap argument indeed.

Nobody is talking about the main difference between Awesome <-> XMonad
-haskell versus lua
-stable API + WM, guaranteed by Haskell against a changing API and config from Awesome
-XMonad has a rather good docs, much extra functions , in Awesome i didnt find those things.
-Easy integration in common DE's like Gnome and KDE
And last but not least, the XMonad community is very helpfull even for noobs. With Awesome i didnt have that.

the_isz · 2009-11-26 13:44:50

jelly wrote:

That's an non-argument, just because the compiler is rather big it's a useless WM, crap argument indeed.

Maybe my English isn't good enough. I thought I only argued that I didn't
try out XMonad because of its large dependency, not that it's crap in any way
(which I can't judge, as I didn't try it).

The author asked for recommendations and so I recommended PyTyle and explained
how I got to try it and the reasons for not choosing another one.

I hope this clearifies this.

llcawthorne · 2009-11-27 06:10:02

I like xmonad alot personally.

Sounds like you run some of the same stuff as me constantly, not that it matters. I am sitting here with Firefox, three urxvtc terminals and thunderbird open, with pidgin and deluge sitting in my tray.

I really like in tiling window managers being able to have my browser in its nice little 65% pane, and my three 80 char wide terminal windows on the right-hand side of the screen showing as many lines as they can with no wasted space. I have pidgin easily set to auto float above everything when I bring it up for something, and then put it away, and it doesn't change my nice stable layout of everything else. I can hop to other workspaces to do other things and come back to my main WS with my nice happy setup. I can even "swap screens" with what's on my television, open something, and then swap back.

Plus Haskell is pretty fun to mess with really. If you don't want to learn it, it is easy to base your config on others that are available (which is what I initially did), but I have been working through some Haskell tutorials just because it is a pretty neat language.

Awesome can act weird when you misconfigure its file though. So can everything else, really... But I found that Awesome handled typo's and problems less gracefully than xmonad most of the time. Xmonad would just chugging with your old config if you typo'd in your new config, unless you messed something up fierce. Sometimes Awesome would check my file and say it was fine, and then just blow up when I tried to load it. I am sure that would go away if I learned the syntax better, but I preferred xmonad's more graceful way of dealing with most of my learning mistakes.

Awesome works though. It's handy if you like clicking on your bar, and if you prefer configuring in lua (and fixing your config often on update, if you don't hold back the package). It's notification daemon is a neat touch, and the customizable widgets are sort of fun to play with (after you choose which of the three libraries you want to use to manage updating them, and cross your fingers that it will still be there next release). I didn't run it terribly long, since I missed xmonad when I tried it and decided to come back and stop trying lots of wm's. Awesome has pretty sane defaults, I like that. YMMV.

droog · 2009-11-27 06:59:31

I like tiling, but the one drawback was being able to easily resize the tile in any way i wanted, xmonad contrib was the only thing that was able to do this the way i wanted with ResizableTall. I've since gone back to fvwm but definately recommend xmonad.

Gigamo · 2009-11-27 08:56:09

llcawthorne wrote:

the customizable widgets are sort of fun to play with (after you choose which of the three libraries you want to use to manage updating them, and cross your fingers that it will still be there next release).

You don't necessarily have to use external libraries, you can just write your own widgets.

droog wrote:

I like tiling, but the one drawback was being able to easily resize the tile in any way i wanted, xmonad contrib was the only thing that was able to do this the way i wanted with ResizableTall. I've since gone back to fvwm but definately recommend xmonad.

Awesome can do this too, since version 3.2 I believe .

Last edited by Gigamo (2009-11-27 08:57:59)

beepressure · 2009-11-27 20:34:30

llcawthorne wrote:

I have pidgin easily set to auto float above everything when I bring it up for something, and then put it away, and it doesn't change my nice stable layout of everything else.

I have pidgin set to float also but it always starts fullscreened and if i minimize and then go back into it it full screens. very annoying.

What in your config sets it so pidgin will stay small in size, not full screen?

llcawthorne · 2009-11-28 01:38:10

That's weird. I don't have that problem. I don't have anything special in my xmonad.hs, other than a standard looking doFloat by class. I just had to resize it once (with Mod4+Right Mouse), and it has remembered the size fine, even through reboots and such.

Arch Linux

#1 2009-11-26 01:47:52

Awesome vs. Xmonad

#2 2009-11-26 02:31:25

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#3 2009-11-26 02:48:38

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#4 2009-11-26 11:07:25

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#5 2009-11-26 11:13:15

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#6 2009-11-26 11:31:17

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#7 2009-11-26 13:34:28

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#8 2009-11-26 13:44:50

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#9 2009-11-27 06:10:02

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#10 2009-11-27 06:59:31

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#11 2009-11-27 08:56:09

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#12 2009-11-27 20:34:30

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

#13 2009-11-28 01:38:10

Re: Awesome vs. Xmonad

Board footer