bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

bloom · 2012-09-23 10:28:16

Homepage:
https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm

Mailing list:
bspwm at librelist.com

IRC:
#bspwm on irc.freenode.net

Tutorials:
https://github.com/smlb/dotfiles/wiki/Bspwm
http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=33034&p=1
https://github.com/windelicato/dotfiles … or-dummies

Donations:

PayPal

Last edited by bloom (2015-01-19 10:30:09)

dimigon · 2012-09-23 13:07:24

I am an i3-wm user and I really like bspwm. Good job, looking forward to this project.

FreeTheBee · 2012-09-23 13:40:34

It looks interesting, I will definitely try it out.

Shinryuu · 2012-09-23 13:52:38

Nice! I like when new tiling managers pops out from nowhere, video got my attention

Sirsurthur · 2012-09-23 16:34:08

Hello !

I Wanted to test bspwm but I am doing something wrong while starting it. I took your bspwmrc, autorstart and xbindkeysrc files but I can not start it.

X says "Socket path environment variable is not defined". Where could I define it ?

Thanks a lot for your answer.

Last edited by Sirsurthur (2012-09-23 16:34:28)

bloom · 2012-09-23 16:53:38

Sirsurthur wrote:

X says "Socket path environment variable is not defined". Where could I define it ?

Add the following to your ~/.profile:

export BSPWM_SOCKET=/tmp/bspwm-socket

Beware: if you have a shell specific profile file (e.g. ~/.bash_profile for Bash) it will take precedence over ~/.profile.

Last edited by bloom (2012-09-23 17:28:26)

Sirsurthur · 2012-09-23 18:14:46

Weird, even by adding the BSPWM_SOCKET command to my .bash_profile, it still does not recognize socket path environment variable ?

c00kiemon5ter · 2012-09-23 18:18:38

after adding you either need to re-login to your account or source the profile file for the new setting to take effect

Sirsurthur · 2012-09-23 18:30:40

Indeed it worked ! Thanks a lot ! Bspwm looks very promising !

c00kiemon5ter · 2012-09-23 18:45:44

btw, I had a quick run with this (not sure where autostart file should go )

the focus behaviour is surely unintuitive (for me at least)
as well as the placement of a newly spawned window
especially on monocle layout you have no idea how to get to the "next" window

I understand how this is inherent to the binary-tree design.
I liked that idea when it first came up on the dwm ml iirc
but it seems to have a learning curve to get used to.

one can revert to manual tiling but I (my own opinion) cannot see the point of
having some software to automatically manage your windows, using it to
manually manage the windows a bit of a paradox

I really like the idea of having a socket to communicate with the wm
and thus having the keybinder separate from the wm body
I dont like that you need a separate app to do that, but I guess it's needed

I remember you had asked for a configurable double borders around windows for monsterwm.
seems nice for what you wanted to achieve - make the border stand out no matter the window's
content's color or environment's color (ie wallpaper or underneath window content etc) - but did
not fit monster's ideas I think it's good and if I understand correctly it is configurable so one
can revert to the traditional look of normal borders.

I expected to get floating once trying to resize/move a window,
but one needs to toggle the window to floating before that can work.
That also felt a bit strange. Also, toggling to floating mode, I think it
would be nicer to center the window instead of placing it on 0,0

xinerama support seems to be missing for now, I guess it is planned in the future
It is really simple how it works and I can help out if you want to.

All in all, I'd say you did a good job, it's xcb and I like the concept.
To me, the behaviour feels strange for some things (as I explained)
but I guess this happens with all new software one tries.
Yay for the style - double borders, useless-gaps and the logo look nice.

bloom · 2012-09-23 20:49:23

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

btw, I had a quick run with this (not sure where autostart file should go )

In $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bspwm/: if the README is unclear I'll fix it.
Thanks for giving it a try.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

the focus behaviour is surely unintuitive (for me at least)

Well, I can garantee you that it is not random ;-,

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

as well as the placement of a newly spawned window

In automatic mode, the focus rectangle remain the same, in manual mode, the fat preselection border indicates where the new window will appear.

Maybe I should be more explicit in the README.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

especially on monocle layout you have no idea how to get to the "next" window

Unfortunately it is, in fact I wasn't sure whether I should provide a monocle layout or not.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

I understand how this is inherent to the binary-tree design.
I liked that idea when it first came up on the dwm ml iirc
but it seems to have a learning curve to get used to.

Indeed.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

one can revert to manual tiling but I (my own opinion) cannot see the point of
having some software to automatically manage your windows, using it to
manually manage the windows a bit of a paradox

It could also be seen as compromise: when the automatic mode is not enough, one will switch to manual mode.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

I really like the idea of having a socket to communicate with the wm
and thus having the keybinder separate from the wm body
I dont like that you need a separate app to do that, but I guess it's needed

Yes, I prefer to leave the keyboard handling task to xbindkeys.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

I remember you had asked for a configurable double borders around windows for monsterwm.
seems nice for what you wanted to achieve - make the border stand out no matter the window's
content's color or environment's color (ie wallpaper or underneath window content etc) - but did
not fit monster's ideas I think it's good and if I understand correctly it is configurable so one
can revert to the traditional look of normal borders.

Setting the outer and inner border width to zero should give you plain borders.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

I expected to get floating once trying to resize/move a window,
but one needs to toggle the window to floating before that can work.
That also felt a bit strange. Also, toggling to floating mode, I think it
would be nicer to center the window instead of placing it on 0,0

Good points.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

xinerama support seems to be missing for now, I guess it is planned in the future
It is really simple how it works and I can help out if you want to.

Yes it is missing but planned. I'll be glad to receive some help when I reach the implementation.

c00kiemon5ter wrote:

All in all, I'd say you did a good job, it's xcb and I like the concept.
To me, the behaviour feels strange for some things (as I explained)
but I guess this happens with all new software one tries.
Yay for the style - double borders, useless-gaps and the logo look nice.

Thanks for the compliments.

Beastie · 2012-09-27 13:35:29

This project is nice, I'm tesing it

Earnestly · 2012-09-27 18:48:47

A nice Window Manager for sure. It has a lot of lovely features like the presel command.

Unfortunately it's dependence on external programs like ewmhstatus and xbindkey is a little too much for me to bear at the moment.

This leads me to (possibly a stupid) question. Within your Readme there is no mention of a panel or bar[1]; this leads me to conclude that it's driven by something external.
I've looked through your github and came across 'launchpanel'[2] which seems to rely on 'ewmhstatus'[3] to relay relevant information to dzen. Is there no other way to access information about the WM other than through this program?

(edit: This makes it more difficult to render more traditional views. In essence: )

I only ask as there appears to be no documentation available about how this is achieved.

Thanks for your efforts,
definitely a WM to keep an eye on.

Last edited by Earnestly (2012-09-27 19:10:20)

bloom · 2012-09-27 19:57:14

The informations regarding the focused window / desktop and the desktop names are set by bspwm through EWMH.

ewmhstatus just reads those informations, it means that it will work with any WM that implements the required (thin) portion of EWMH.

The aforementioned view could be achieved by making ewmhstatus more expansive and malleable.

Last edited by bloom (2012-09-27 20:09:40)

bloom · 2012-10-10 21:12:27

bspwm now supports fancy panels (tint2, bmpanel2, etc.).

Jedipottsy · 2012-10-11 14:03:15

I cant get bspwm to work, ive copied your example autostart to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bspwm/autostart and made it executable, setup an xbindkeysrc, set my xinit to exec bspwm. When i startx i get nothing but a blackscreen, trying to execute urxvt doesnt work, as do none of my keybinds. Ive setup the socket, even trying "export BSPWM_SOCKET=/tmp/bspwm-socket; startx" but that doesnt work either.

Thanks

bloom · 2012-10-11 17:50:23

Jedipottsy wrote:

I cant get bspwm to work, ive copied your example autostart to $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/bspwm/autostart and made it executable, setup an xbindkeysrc, set my xinit to exec bspwm. When i startx i get nothing but a blackscreen, trying to execute urxvt doesnt work, as do none of my keybinds. Ive setup the socket, even trying "export BSPWM_SOCKET=/tmp/bspwm-socket; startx" but that doesnt work either.

The example ~/.xbindkeysrc uses urxvtc, so you need to have the following in ~/.xinitrc:

    urxvtd -q -o -f

(Maybe you should have tested the wm-independent part of your ~/.xbindkeysrc in another wm first?)

Setting the socket environment variable is not required anymore.

If it doesn't help, please post all the related configuration files.

bloom · 2012-10-12 08:57:12

Jedipottsy wrote:

urxvt doesnt work, as do none of my keybinds

Of course, you must add this to your ~/.xinitrc:

    xbindkeys

Jedipottsy · 2012-10-12 10:25:43

managed to get it working, after clearing ccache. My xbindkeys were fine, as were the other config files, must have been a compile problem. BTW is there multimonitor support?

bloom · 2012-10-12 10:38:28

Jedipottsy wrote:

is there multimonitor support?

Not yet.

bloom · 2012-10-17 14:33:09

I've created a new branch called xinerama.

However, I only have one monitor, so I can't test it thoroughly...

bloom · 2012-10-22 11:41:48

I wouldn't mind receiving some feedbacks regarding the xinerama branch…

nperry · 2012-10-27 10:59:26

bloom wrote:

I wouldn't mind receiving some feedbacks regarding the xinerama branch…

Has this branch been removed or merged? I was going to give it a go today...

bloom · 2012-10-27 17:39:26

nperry wrote:

Has this branch been removed or merged? I was going to give it a go today...

Merged.

Iao · 2012-11-09 21:46:25

I too was an i3 user and have now started using this new window manager.

I really like the idea behind it! I'll post some more feedback as I become more adapted to it.

Last edited by Iao (2012-11-09 21:46:59)

Arch Linux

#1 2012-09-23 10:28:16

bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#2 2012-09-23 13:07:24

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#3 2012-09-23 13:40:34

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#4 2012-09-23 13:52:38

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#5 2012-09-23 16:34:08

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#6 2012-09-23 16:53:38

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#7 2012-09-23 18:14:46

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#8 2012-09-23 18:18:38

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#9 2012-09-23 18:30:40

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#10 2012-09-23 18:45:44

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#11 2012-09-23 20:49:23

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#12 2012-09-27 13:35:29

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#13 2012-09-27 18:48:47

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#14 2012-09-27 19:57:14

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#15 2012-10-10 21:12:27

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#16 2012-10-11 14:03:15

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#17 2012-10-11 17:50:23

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#18 2012-10-12 08:57:12

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#19 2012-10-12 10:25:43

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#20 2012-10-12 10:38:28

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#21 2012-10-17 14:33:09

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#22 2012-10-22 11:41:48

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#23 2012-10-27 10:59:26

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#24 2012-10-27 17:39:26

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

#25 2012-11-09 21:46:25

Re: bspwm — A tiling window manager based on binary space partitioning

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