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#1 2008-10-23 21:49:50

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Giving tiling WMs a second look... the ones I'm primarily concerned with are AwesomeWM, xmonad, and Stumpwm.

I'd really appreciate an _objective_ comparison of features, hopefully with notes if a certain WM does not come with a certain feature, but can easily be added through a 3rd-party app.

So far, the only real comparisons I've been able to find are the differences in configuration. Awesome uses LUA configs (in v3+), xmonad uses Haskell headers, and Stumpwm uses CLISP. I am willing to learn how to configure any of them - I just would like a rundown of features before I spend a lot of time tweaking one, only to find out it lacks critical feature A that window manager B has wink (BTW: Stumpwm waves the CLISP flag pretty enthusiastically... what are the benefits of this?)

Speed should not matter - I have a fast PC, I just like minimalism, and am willing to try tiling.

Last edited by Ranguvar (2008-10-23 23:06:24)

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#2 2008-10-23 22:30:42

leo2501
Member
From: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Registered: 2007-07-07
Posts: 658

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

i think tiling wm are very similar, as xmonad and awesome are forks i believe from dwm, i start with wmii and end in dwm, i've tryed ratpoison, wmii and finally dwm, and if you're like me, and you like minimalism, i think you'll love dwm, it's source code is 18kb small... (i see icons larger than that) and it's incredibly easy to build using ABS

with dwm you have by default:
- a very customizable status bar which can show you a string of scripts showing different info or even the conky-cli output
- 3 different settings for window management (tile, monocle, floating) (i use monocle by default, because i like one app per tab, previously i used to like 2 or 3 terms, but i don't like it anymore)
- nothing more (hyper minimalism and incredible functionality)

screenshot with no wallpaper and "tile" (default) mode:
desktop20081011104512qy0.th.pngthpix.gif

Last edited by leo2501 (2008-10-23 22:31:08)


Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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#3 2008-10-23 22:42:55

SamC
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From: Calgary
Registered: 2008-05-13
Posts: 611
Website

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

XMonad is certainly not a fork of DWM, seeing as it's written in a different language. They're definitely conceptually similar, though. Stumpwm is different, however. I tried it for a while, and instead of showing all the windows on a workspace at once, it puts them all in one fullscreen "frame". It expects you to decide where you want to put your windows, and manage that arrangement yourself. This works well as long as you don't have something like a chat program, which pops up windows somewhat often. I currently use XMonad.

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#4 2008-10-24 02:07:21

ric
Member
Registered: 2008-10-10
Posts: 2

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

wmii, mostly because it was the first tiling WM I tried and it does *exactly* what I want, which is almost always an 80 char wide emacs on the right and xterm filling the left. Any extra xterms get stacked behind the current xterm on the left. I like seeing the titlebar on these to remind me what is there.

I rarely use any graphical apps that pop new windows, but when I do wmii tends to do something reasonable, and the floating layer works fine for random transients. I think having titlebars, mouse support and floating layer makes wmii a good WM for transitioning to tiling, rather than jumping in at the deep end with ratpoison or stumpwm :-)

Since I don't really customize, I should try dwm sometime.

Someone mentioned chat programs. I do as much as possible on the command-line, and use irssi + bitlbee for AIM chat. Highly recommended.

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#5 2008-10-24 05:31:43

pauldonnelly
Member
Registered: 2006-06-19
Posts: 776

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ranguvar wrote:

...and Stumpwm uses CLISP. I am willing to learn how to configure any of them - I just would like a rundown of features before I spend a lot of time tweaking one, only to find out it lacks critical feature A that window manager B has wink (BTW: Stumpwm waves the CLISP flag pretty enthusiastically... what are the benefits of this?)

StumpWM uses Common Lisp. CLISP is one Common Lisp implementation you could use. Common Lisp is abbreviated CL, and never CLISP, because that would be extremely confusing. StumpWM waves the CL flag because to a Lisper, it's a big draw. The benefit is that you can configure/modify StumpWM with CL, rather than some horrible config file format or some lame programming language. And you can do it while StumpWM is running. And if you run StumpWM in a multithreaded Lisp, such as SBCL (CLISP does not do multithreading), you can connect to your running StumpWM from Emacs to hack on it even more easily, or control it if you like.

As for features, Awesome and Xmonad come from the dwm school of tiling: you've got one main window and a bunch of little windows off to the side, and you can "spin" through the ring. They both support floating mode for windows. Awesome does window tagging that allows you to group any arbitrary set of windows together for viewing, and Xmonad does a more traditional workspace arrangement.

StumpWM (and Ratpoison)'s tiling style is to let you split any window horizontally or vertically to get a new window. I think most users either make up some window config that they like or else they run with one full-screen window 90% of the time. I do the latter, and set up my window switching to be easy and direct. It has window groups which are your basic virtual desktops, but I never use them since unused programs are "out of sight, out of mind" anyway.

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#6 2008-10-24 08:50:31

Gigamo
Member
Registered: 2008-01-19
Posts: 394

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Awesome started out as a fork of DWM, however since its origin last year over 16,000 lines of code have been added, which is pretty damn impressive. I myself find Awesome the easiest to configure (next to DWM, but DWM is pretty limited without editing the source code itself).


A screenie of my current awesome3 desk:

currentdeskt.png

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#7 2008-10-24 10:43:51

mentallaxative
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From: Australia
Registered: 2008-07-14
Posts: 134
Website

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Dwm is pretty minimalist. If all you want is to experience tiling window management, I suggest trying out Awesome, because it has a lot of features and libraries to go with it. Dwm has only one method of tiling, whilst Awesome and Xmonad get a bit more creative (the Fibonacci spiral layout was a novelty for me).

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#8 2008-10-24 12:25:59

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Gigamo wrote:

Awesome started out as a fork of DWM, however since its origin last year over 16,000 lines of code have been added, which is pretty damn impressive.

Considering that one of the goals of dwm design is never to exceed 2000 lines of code...

I use xmonad. The main thing I find appealing in XMonad is its modularity. The basic xmonad is pretty barebones, but you can customize/add functionality for pretty much everything beyond the main concept of tiling. Xmonad community is pretty creative, so most of the things are already written, so the modifications are just a matter of weaving the right hooks into the config file. However, some knowledge of haskell is preferable.

Last edited by bender02 (2008-10-24 12:26:22)

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#9 2008-10-24 12:39:34

Gigamo
Member
Registered: 2008-01-19
Posts: 394

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

bender02 wrote:
Gigamo wrote:

Awesome started out as a fork of DWM, however since its origin last year over 16,000 lines of code have been added, which is pretty damn impressive.

Considering that one of the goals of dwm design is never to exceed 2000 lines of code...

Which was never a design goal for awesome. smile

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#10 2008-10-25 02:44:16

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Thanks, everyone!

@Gigamo: Where can I find that wallpaper? tongue

@pauldonelly: Thanks very much for the info about the style of tiling. Sorry about the confusion, I was actually just making up an acronym for Common Lisp, had no idea there was an implementation called CLISP xD

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#11 2008-10-25 03:51:01

skottish
Forum Fellow
From: Here
Registered: 2006-06-16
Posts: 7,942

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ranguvar wrote:

Thanks, everyone!

@Gigamo: Where can I find that wallpaper? tongue

@pauldonelly: Thanks very much for the info about the style of tiling. Sorry about the confusion, I was actually just making up an acronym for Common Lisp, had no idea there was an implementation called CLISP xD

What did you finally decide on?


By the way, you're the same Ranguvar at doom9, right?

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#12 2008-10-25 05:03:54

pauldonnelly
Member
Registered: 2006-06-19
Posts: 776

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ranguvar wrote:

@pauldonelly: Thanks very much for the info about the style of tiling. Sorry about the confusion, I was actually just making up an acronym for Common Lisp, had no idea there was an implementation called CLISP xD

It happens all the time. roll

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#13 2008-10-28 01:48:43

cardinals_fan
Member
From: /dev/null
Registered: 2008-02-03
Posts: 248

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

I love dwm.  Its defaults are pretty much perfect for me: I set a couple apps to float, change some colors, and that's it.  With dwm, you get powerful tiling and no bloat.

Xmonad is also solid, and is quite like dwm.  I find it a bit more complicated, but I have to admit that it has the coolest site on teh interwebs.

Awesome left me confused and disheartened.  Its config file causes cancer.

Wmii just made me kind of sick.  Window titlebars?  Moving on...

I've never tried stumpwm.

Gigamo wrote:

Awesome started out as a fork of DWM, however since its origin last year over 16,000 lines of code have been added, which is pretty damn impressive.

I find that pretty damn revolting, but maybe I'm a bit too minimalistic.

Last edited by cardinals_fan (2008-10-28 01:49:43)


Segmentation fault (core dumped)

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#14 2008-10-28 02:53:28

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

@skottish: The very same smile Are you also on Doom9?

Right now, I'm using Awesome, since I would like to learn Lua anyways for quick'n'dirty PSP apps. After I've mastered Awesome somewhat, I'll check out the others. I am definitely warming to tiling quickly though, and it's becoming more and more unlikely I'll switch back to stacking smile Especially since I'll be getting a nice 22"-26" monitor soon, and the greater the space, the greater the advantage of tiling, it seems.

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#15 2008-10-28 13:28:55

fuscia
Member
Registered: 2008-04-21
Posts: 398

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

i've used xmonad, awesome, wmii, ion3 (oh boy!) and ratpoison, but it's the straight up simpleness of dwm that i prefer. i love the philosophy behind it. it reminds me of the russian solution to pens not working well in space. while NASA developed a rather elaborate pen that would work in zero gravity, the russians just switched to pencils.

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#16 2008-10-28 16:21:10

Ranguvar
Member
Registered: 2008-08-12
Posts: 2,544

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ah, but NASA made back the money and more by selling the quirky "gravity-defying" pens to people wink tongue

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#17 2008-10-28 17:02:42

bender02
Member
From: UK
Registered: 2007-02-04
Posts: 1,328

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ranguvar wrote:

Ah, but NASA made back the money and more by selling the quirky "gravity-defying" pens to people wink tongue

Well, in Russia you can't really make money by selling things to people...

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#18 2008-10-28 17:33:27

mhd
Member
Registered: 2008-02-06
Posts: 21

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Ranguvar wrote:

Ah, but NASA made back the money and more by selling the quirky "gravity-defying" pens to people wink tongue

Urban legend. Those pens were developed without NASA funding (and actually were cheaper than the mechanical pens used before).

But getting back on topic, I wish there was a window manager somwhat between wmii and dwm.  I really don't care about configuration languages, 9p file systems or obscure implementation languages, but some features of wmii were quite nice. dwm is all about automatic management, but I find myself having to spend more time adjusting things because of that. Well, there's the source, I wouldn't be the first one forking dwm...

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#19 2008-11-11 21:55:45

jorpheus
Member
Registered: 2008-11-07
Posts: 98

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

I tried wmii, awesome and ratpoison a few days ago, and while I won't be switching to a tiling WM any time soon, I'll continue toying with the concept, most likely using wmii (I just loved dmenu (so much, in fact, I plan on using it in Openbox)).

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#20 2008-11-12 00:54:37

elmer_42
Member
From: /na/usa/ca
Registered: 2008-10-11
Posts: 427

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

I use wmii because it was easy for me to configure, allows me to resize windows while keeping them tiled (I'm looking at you, dwm), and is fairly simple to use. Awesome scared me a lot when I first tried it, but now that I'm a little more accustomed to tiling WMs I may try it again. I don't want to try Xmonad, though, because of the Haskell install.


[ lamy + pilot ] [ arch64 | wmii ] [ ati + amd ]

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#21 2008-11-12 04:37:08

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

I use Awesome right now, and basically like it, although I rather dislike the config file... Also, it seems a little bit buggy. Lots of features though.

I tried WMII... Not much of a fan. I don't like the way it handles windows, and it doesn't work properly with skinned applications like MPlayer. (Not that skins are a good thing - they suck - but hey, they're there, and there's no real substitute for MPlayer.) Also... title bars.

XMonad: I think I would like it better than Awesome, however, xmobar isn't in the repositories, and compiling it is annoying. Don't know why it isn't in [community], it probably has enough votes. Also, Haskell looks a little tough.

DWM: I like the way it handles windows, though it has some annoying habbits by default (read: fullscreening stuff on the bottom layer when you go into floating mode). The big problem is compiling it to configure.

Haven't tried Ratpoison or Stumpwm; I get the feeling I wouldn't like them, as I make significant use of the mouse (though less of it now that I use tiling window managers).

I think my ideal WM would be DWM with an external config file...

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#22 2008-11-12 10:24:04

leo2501
Member
From: Buenos Aires, Argentina
Registered: 2007-07-07
Posts: 658

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

Gullible Jones wrote:

I tried WMII... Not much of a fan. I don't like the way it handles windows, and it doesn't work properly with skinned applications like MPlayer. (Not that skins are a good thing - they suck - but hey, they're there, and there's no real substitute for MPlayer.) Also... title bars.

i used/use mplayer with wmii and dwm and it doesn't have a skin hmm

Gullible Jones wrote:

DWM: I like the way it handles windows, though it has some annoying habbits by default (read: fullscreening stuff on the bottom layer when you go into floating mode). The big problem is compiling it to configure.

i really like the compile thing, because it's impossible to disconfigure it by mistake or by some kind of bug like other wm


Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.
-- Antoine de Saint-Exupery

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#23 2008-11-12 12:43:54

Gullible Jones
Member
Registered: 2004-12-29
Posts: 4,863

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

D'oh... I forgot about MPlayer CLI. yikes

Anyway I just discovered the Arch Haskell overlay repository, I think I'll give it a try...

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#24 2008-11-16 06:37:45

abhidg
Member
From: City of Kol
Registered: 2006-07-01
Posts: 184
Website

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

The Arch Haskell overlay is out of date. Also, xmobar cannot be moved to [community]
until all its makedepends are already in [community]. There's a plan for a haskell-platform
group which will be packaged; that should pull in most haskell packages into community/extra.

http://www.haskell.org/pipermail/arch-h … 00051.html

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#25 2009-02-02 20:59:39

yvonney
Member
Registered: 2008-06-11
Posts: 671

Re: Objective comparison of tiling WMs?

um, a total newbie to compiling. took me 4 minutes to follow the DWM wiki (using recommended ABS method using exactly the code suggested - ie. creates root/home folder called dwm ... add new code, recompile and install. any future mods will take under 20 seconds about.

I guess for Xmonad I need to leave the haskell AND the GHC (?) installed. very nice to operate i found. I'm hoping to stay with dwm. default key command the same as Xmonad i ws happy to discover.

Last edited by yvonney (2009-02-02 21:02:36)

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