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mikesd

Member

From: Australia

Registered: 2008-02-01

Posts: 788

Website

Xmonad >>> stumpwm

After using Xmonad for the past several months, (year maybe?), I have decided to move over to stumpwm at least for a month or two and see if I like it. I don't have any complaints with Xmonad which I have used since version 0.6 but I have always wanted to do something with Lisp and by using Stumpwm this may give me an easy way to start. I have read a few books on Lisp and been browsing the stumpwm webpage and source code while playing around with it in a Xephyr window. Also watched a short video presentation by someone called Male. When I get home tonight I intend to edit my .xinitrc and run it on my main multihead workstation for the first time. Then begin configuring it. Initially I want it to look pretty much like my Xmonad setup as I'm pretty happy with it. Stumpwm doesn't seem to have quite the user base of Xmonad but I was wondering if there was anyone using it day to day that could answer a few questions:

1. Stability. Xmonad since about 0.7 has been rock solid for me. I have read that stumpwm has stability problems but think the comment may have been referring to an earlier version. Anyone have any comments on its stability? I have been using the git version in my tests and it seems OK in a simple setup to me.

2. mode-line. Is it possible to use a dzen window as the mode-line? I know kicker, bmpanel, etc work with it but I like the simplicity of a dzen window. I also run three other dzen based status bars showing rss feeds, weather, mail, etc so if I could use a dzen window it would make them all uniform. It's not a big deal as the builtin mode-line wndow looks fully configurable and I should be able to make it look pretty much identical to what I have in Xmonad with dzen anyway. I would like to have the benefit of the click areas in the dev version of dzen though. Not sure if the builtin mode-line window handles clicks in stumpwm?

3. Any general tips, urls, etc. for using/configuring stumpwm? I have been googling around and while there isn't a wealth of information about it I have found some tidbits here and there. I have been lurking on the stumpwm mailing list for a couple of months and have picked up some useful info there too.

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