tiling wms

ph0tios · 2008-02-28 07:43:27

Hi, I want to move to a tiling window manager. But from what I have been reading on here they take a lot of time to configure. Well, I'm in the Air Force, and as of late I've been busy with a lot of extra work. So I was wondering which one I should go with. Which will take the least amount of time to configure? Or should I just stay away from them completely then?

Last edited by ph0tios (2008-02-28 07:44:04)

Ashren · 2008-02-28 08:10:44

Awesome configuration is pretty straightforward if you don't want a flashy statusbar.

Dwm isn't that hard to configure either, but you do have to recompile source when you change your config. To get a reasonable statusbar pipe conky-cli output to dwm.

So, I guess awesome would be your best choice.

kendosperling · 2008-02-28 08:12:18

In my oppinion the default configuraion of any tilling wm i tried is quite useable. Even untouched you are able to work with them. I have used wmii, dwm and noadays xmonad and the only thing of configuration so far was adding a wallpaper. There for give it a go.

F · 2008-02-28 11:48:39

dwm is very ridiculously simple. You should definitely check it out.

Sigi · 2008-02-28 15:21:57

F wrote:

dwm is very ridiculously simple. You should definitely check it out.

+1 on that. The recompile is really no big deal.

ph0tios · 2008-02-28 16:52:17

Sigi wrote:

F wrote:
dwm is very ridiculously simple. You should definitely check it out.
+1 on that. The recompile is really no big deal.

Is there a tut beyond the wiki here that explains configuring it in more detail?

Sigi · 2008-02-28 17:02:04

ph0tios wrote:

Sigi wrote:
F wrote:
dwm is very ridiculously simple. You should definitely check it out.
+1 on that. The recompile is really no big deal.
Is there a tut beyond the wiki here that explains configuring it in more detail?

Just have a look at the file config.h - do you have specific questions?

F · 2008-02-28 19:04:10

Yeah there isn't really a tutorial. Dig through the source, man! Its not that much. You probably want to start with config.h. It should (fingers crossed) be pretty self-evident.

awagner · 2008-02-28 20:41:09

also, there's this thread: dwm config

Mikko777 · 2008-02-28 21:11:08

+1 awesome.

Don-DiZzLe · 2008-02-28 21:22:19

+1 xmonad.

shining · 2008-02-28 21:47:28

+1 dwm

It's funny that I find a C header file easier to configure than the others.

barebones · 2008-02-28 21:58:19

I used wmii for a while and while and I never once changed any sort of configuration for it so it's pretty well set up from the get go. Make sure you take a look at the man page of anything that you choose prior to running it though to at least make sure you know how to open a terminal. It's pretty daunting being dropped into a mainly keyboard environment without knowing any of the shortcuts.

ph0tios · 2008-02-28 22:13:43

Thanks everyone for the advice. I installed dwm, awesome, and xmonad so I could try them all out. I was reading that you can use dzen and conky-cli to pipe info. Can you do this on all of them? I'd like to have that so I can at least have the laptop battery and the time. Also, it's a trivial question, but how do you take a screenshot? Do I need to recompile every time I want to change the background, or can I use another program to do it like feh, etc?

Last edited by ph0tios (2008-02-28 22:15:35)

Sigi · 2008-02-28 22:53:49

You can use feh or other programs to change the background with all the mentioned WMs.

About the other issues, only talking about dwm:
you can pipe info like battery time or conky-cli output directly to dwms status bar. (via your .xinitrc)
Search the forum for scrot to find out how to take screenshots.

thayer · 2008-02-28 22:57:47

Yes, you can use dzen/conky-cli with any window manager--even GNOME and KDE. The same goes for dmenu (the application launcher). I find that I use dmenu for just about everything, regardless of window manager--it's great.

ph0tios · 2008-02-29 06:21:19

I am having a problem with xmonad...there is no .xmonad directory in my home folder? do I have to create it myself?

eerok · 2008-02-29 06:54:58

ph0tios wrote:

I am having a problem with xmonad...there is no .xmonad directory in my home folder? do I have to create it myself?

Yes, create it. The default xmonad.hs is on the xmonad website if you want to refer to it. You only need to put what you want to change in your own ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs

I ripped off much of thayer's xmonad.hs from here, which made it simple for me.

ph0tios · 2008-02-29 07:46:55

I'm not much of a programmer, and it is somewhat straightforward, but I find myself getting frustrated with modifying it. I suppose I'm not getting the concept. I initially tried the tutorial linked from the xmonad website on running it in xfce, until I actually had time to sit down and configure dzen, etc. But even then when I tried to modify the config it output errors. Hm.

eerok · 2008-02-29 08:18:02

Well, Xmonad is definitely a good choice if you're interested in learning some Haskell, but if you don't like to code, I'd recommend something like Openbox, which is pretty light and clean and another of my favorite WMs. The tiling WMs are very nice work environments ... however, the work generally implies coding of one kind or another. They're not for everyone.

jonkristian · 2008-02-29 08:52:51

ph0tios wrote:

I'm not much of a programmer, and it is somewhat straightforward, but I find myself getting frustrated with modifying it. I suppose I'm not getting the concept. I initially tried the tutorial linked from the xmonad website on running it in xfce, until I actually had time to sit down and configure dzen, etc. But even then when I tried to modify the config it output errors. Hm.

I was also looking for a good tiling wm, i found dwm to lack some features, and xmonad was kind of good, but hard to get right.
You should check out awesome, it has an easier configuration, and you can use widgets with it, for example, see sen's post/config:

post #291 for screenshot & #303 for configs
http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=43217&p=12

Last edited by jonkristian (2008-02-29 08:53:59)

dolby · 2008-02-29 13:03:59

backgrounds? you dont need a background image with tilling wms. the applications use the whole screen all the time. execption when you use transparency in terminals. then the text on them is most of the time unreadable

Sigi · 2008-02-29 15:32:57

eerok wrote:

Well, Xmonad is definitely a good choice if you're interested in learning some Haskell, but if you don't like to code, I'd recommend something like Openbox, which is pretty light and clean and another of my favorite WMs. The tiling WMs are very nice work environments ... however, the work generally implies coding of one kind or another. They're not for everyone.

I'm no coder either but dwm's config.h is really not that difficult to modify to your needs. Give it a try...

madSergey · 2008-02-29 15:44:29

I'm still a ion3 user, but I'm going to move to xmonad wm to get rid of unpopular and unsupported by arch maintainers ion3. There were many nice screenshots of xmonad in themes like "Febrary 2008 Screenshots".

But I'm not sure that xmonad is very easy in configurated. On the contrary, it can be a quite long process (and may not .

eerok · 2008-02-29 16:21:05

madSergey wrote:

But I'm not sure that xmonad is very easy in configurated. On the contrary, it can be a quite long process (and may not .

It depends on how fancy you want to get at the start. One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the shell scripts (ie, piping to dzen) use zsh, and they don't always tell you that.

Anyway, there are lots of sample configurations around, so you don't have to do all the work yourself.

Arch Linux

#1 2008-02-28 07:43:27

tiling wms

#2 2008-02-28 08:10:44

Re: tiling wms

#3 2008-02-28 08:12:18

Re: tiling wms

#4 2008-02-28 11:48:39

Re: tiling wms

#5 2008-02-28 15:21:57

Re: tiling wms

#6 2008-02-28 16:52:17

Re: tiling wms

#7 2008-02-28 17:02:04

Re: tiling wms

#8 2008-02-28 19:04:10

Re: tiling wms

#9 2008-02-28 20:41:09

Re: tiling wms

#10 2008-02-28 21:11:08

Re: tiling wms

#11 2008-02-28 21:22:19

Re: tiling wms

#12 2008-02-28 21:47:28

Re: tiling wms

#13 2008-02-28 21:58:19

Re: tiling wms

#14 2008-02-28 22:13:43

Re: tiling wms

#15 2008-02-28 22:53:49

Re: tiling wms

#16 2008-02-28 22:57:47

Re: tiling wms

#17 2008-02-29 06:21:19

Re: tiling wms

#18 2008-02-29 06:54:58

Re: tiling wms

#19 2008-02-29 07:46:55

Re: tiling wms

#20 2008-02-29 08:18:02

Re: tiling wms

#21 2008-02-29 08:52:51

Re: tiling wms

#22 2008-02-29 13:03:59

Re: tiling wms

#23 2008-02-29 15:32:57

Re: tiling wms

#24 2008-02-29 15:44:29

Re: tiling wms

#25 2008-02-29 16:21:05

Re: tiling wms

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