30 Window Managers in 30 days

doug piston · 2012-03-08 21:40:32

ivanovnegro wrote:

^ You switched to Awful, noo.

Dynamic tiling + widgets + floating + notifications, PITA to setup compared to scrotwm but I like it. I won't clog his thread about my bs.

@2many thanks for the great reads. smile

Last edited by doug piston (2012-03-08 21:40:47)

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-09 01:06:56

Stay tuned -- pekwm is tomorrow, but I've been playing with evilwm today (I was so curious, just because of its name) and it's so weird I just have to love it...

Yes, it's true, I have no life. hmm

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-09 01:11:30

CBizgreat! wrote:

Update: Looks good, probably keep flux as default Wm for awhile, looks full featured and seems it gives some eyecandy/color w/o adding a buncha overhead to the OS ... sweet, thanks for bringing this up. Now to try n tame it a bit, add shortcut keys and trim out the menu to only the junk I want there.

Good luck man -- there are people out there doing incredible things with fluxbox, and the config files are easy to edit, but hard to get just right... wink

CBizgreat! · 2012-03-09 04:19:44

^Thanks ...

Trying to be easy to please, so flux's set as default for time being and is about as sorted as I need it. Try to use keyboard shortcuts to do most common stuff, so am about set up, the right click menu guide you included helped. Rest is just plainjane default, like that it's only 1 package to install and doesn't need much configing. Freely admit to being lazy. Uses about the same resources as awesome wm here. Kinda nice having more than one installed, just for an occasional change of scenery.

vll ! smile

Update: Had to find and set a complimentary wallpaper to go with the red tint for the default theme, looks pretty good. Fiddle with this n that, to suit personal preference a bit more, didn't take very long. One thing have noticed about flux, seems more sluggish than awesome wm, nothing I can't live with, so not the end of the world. Apps take a bit longer to launch initially and isn't as responsive imo. Also not something intolerable, still works fine.
More babbling, how to set a background wallpaper in fluxbox, in case it helps anyone beautify the sucker. Took me 15mins or so trying to figure it out, so why not share what I'd found. You can always open a terminal and type ...
man fbsetbg
To get to the manpage for this. Will discuss options and help ya choose one right for you. In my case ended up being pretty simple. Opened a terminal and did ...
fbsetup -f /the_file_path/to-the-image/You_wanna_use
Ie.
fbsetbg -f /home/username/Pictures/name_of_image.jpg
Set my image of choice as a nice full screen wallpaper.

Last edited by CBizgreat! (2012-03-14 02:45:23)

cJones · 2012-03-09 08:39:27

Another great post 2Many, I might try out fluxbox...more likely than not I will wait for another couple reviews though
Are WM's easy to get rid of if you don't like it? (like just go to synaptic and unmark?)

rhowaldt · 2012-03-09 08:57:41

^ synaptic is bloat. sudo apt-get remove fluxbox (etc). big_smile

ivanovnegro · 2012-03-09 13:36:23

^ You are the guy. smile

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-09 13:37:06

^^ What rhofuzzy said; apt-get remove. You might need to clean up the local config files yourself, or just leave them in case you decide to re-install the WM. You'll be surprised how little space most of these window managers actually take up though.

The long answer is that if you are really interested in playing with this stuff (and you haven't done this already) you might consider looking for an old Pentium or even Celeron box just for experimenting. Then you can put anything you want on it, add other distros, and experiment with all kinds of things (like upgrades to sid or crazy window managers) without worrying about breaking your important stuff. I've tried things I never would have done on my main machine, and learned a lot in the process (I now know you can fit at least three distros on a 40G drive wink )

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-03-09 14:01:40)

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-09 14:05:56

Day five. Pekwm today.

Pekwm is in the repos, apt-get install works. It creates a .desktop file and shows up in the GDM sessions. Log in as normal, and you get a black screen. Right click and you see a simple menu, with "Terminal" and Run.. as options.

"Run.." launches a simple gmrun-like one-line dialog box where you can enter the name of an app. Under that you get "Go to" which lets you go to a different workspace (pekwm starts with 9 by default, arranged in a 3 by 3 grid) or any running window. Finally, the "pekwm" submenu contains options for selecting a different theme, for reloading or restarting the window manager, and exit (logout).

Right clicking on the window title bar gets you a "window" menu with several window position, size, and stacking control options.

The default theme has a bright orange title bar and identical buttons for shade, minimize, maximize, and close (in that order from left to right):

Default window behavior is a little unusual. Like flwm, windows get the focus when you left-click on them but do not come to the top of the stack until you click on the title bar. This behavior can be modified in a config file, but you can also get the window to the top of the stack simply by holding down the alt key and left clicking. Holding down the super key and left clicking raises the window that is under the current window. It sounds weird, but you get used to it quickly.

There are a lot of useful built-in key and mouse bindings, including bindings for window position and size and for bringing up and selecting options in menus, as well as for selecting and moving to different workspaces and moving apps to other workspaces. There are too many options for me to cover here; I'll just say that it's obvious that someone put a lot of thought into how pekwm could be used from the keyboard and refer you to the "keys" and "mouse" files and to the online documentation in the list at the end of this review.

Pekwm does not have a built-in panel, but conky and the normal panels work fine. Nitrogen and feh both work well for setting the desktop background.

I should mention that pekwm is able to group windows, but I did not have time to learn how this worked. Grouping is covered in the on-line documentation.

Configuration

Pekwm keeps all its config files in ~/.pekwm (with defaults in /etc/pekwm):

config specifies the names of the other config files, and some window behavior settings
menu the main and window menus
keys all the keybindings (and there are a lot of them)
mouse all the mouse-click behavior
autoproperties special application behavior (start maximized, start in a specific workspace, etc)
start the "autostart" file -- runs when pekwm is started (or restarted) but must be make executable first

These are all plain text files. They are all well-commented and easy to modify. I was able to reconfigure the menu in about ten minutes, starting from my fluxbox menu and converting it to the pekwm format. I also added a few custom keybindings for starting some apps.

The "start" file is empty and not executable when you first install pekwm. If you add things you want started with the window manager you must make this file executable or nothing will happen. I added a call to start conky and to randomly select new wallpaper and they worked fine once I did a chmod +x on the start file.

Themes go in ~/.pekwm/themes, and there are a lot of custom themes available online. All you have to do is download them and unzip them in the themes folder. Here is what I ended up with after tweaking the menu and finding a theme I liked (Drakfire-LITE, from box-look.org):

I'm not running a panel in these screen shots, but tint2 and fbpanel both work (and probably others, but I only tested those two).

What I Like About It

It's small and simple, but not too simple. It comes with a lot of very useful default key bindings and intuitive window behavior, but is also very easy to reconfigure if you want or need to change the defaults. It is easy to download and change themes. It is apparent that its developers put a lot of thought into usability.

What I Don't Like About It

Not much -- I thought the default orange-border theme was really ugly at first, but I got used to it after I used it for a little while. I didn't like the default window-stacking behavior at first but after I learned how to use the alt and super keys and how to raise and lower windows with the keyboard I was much happier. Like fluxbox, window movement was a little sluggish on my Celeron box, but it's easy to change movement from opaque to outline and solve this.

Links

pekwm wiki; documentation
installing and using pekwm (ignore the first part about building)
pekwm in the arch wiki
pekwm thread in #! forum
pekwm themes at customize.org
pekwm themes at box-look.org

window grouping in the pekwm wiki

Next: a couple of quirky little window managers for the weekend: twm and evilwm.

back to the top

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-03-22 19:42:21)

earnil · 2012-03-09 14:32:07

^Yay new article of Phileas Fogg arrived:), keep up the good work, i really like your reviews. ^_^

h8uthemost · 2012-03-09 14:56:42

So Pekwm has a window grouping option like Fluxbox? If so, have you had a chance to play around with it yet?

I tried Pekwm for a little while when I first moved to #!, but I believe OB was a bit lighter on my computer so I just switched back. Every MB counts on a 8 year old machine with only 512mb of Ram.

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-09 15:08:31

^ No, I didn't get much chance to play with the window grouping. I linked to what they had to say about it at the end of the review, but here's the link again: window grouping in the pekwm wiki.

I know what you mean about the old machines -- my test machine is a Dell Dimension 3000 Celeron; I bought it with a 40G drive and 512M memory, but I got another 1G of memory on ebay. Memory for these old machines is pretty cheap on ebay if you can use it (ebay, I mean)...

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-03-09 15:15:39)

vicshrike · 2012-03-09 15:35:45

Great work you are putting in here 2Many, maybe you should hook up with some tech site and do WM
testing, your stuff deserves a bigger audience. Good luck further!

h8uthemost · 2012-03-09 19:44:58

2ManyDogs wrote:

I know what you mean about the old machines -- my test machine is a Dell Dimension 3000 Celeron; I bought it with a 40G drive and 512M memory, but I got another 1G of memory on ebay. Memory for these old machines is pretty cheap on ebay if you can use it (ebay, I mean)...

Thanks. I think mine can hold another 512mb. So I better go ahead and get it and have a full 1GB. I'm sure that will make things a lot better. As I remember going from 256mb to 512mb made things nicer.

Anyways, thanks for this:

2ManyDogs wrote:

cd /usr/share/xsessions
sudo nano flwm.desktop

Here's the simplest version:

[Desktop Entry]
Name=flwm
Type=Application
Exec=/usr/bin/flwm

Thanks for this. I just installed ratpoison and it didn't appear in my GDM. So following that put it right on the login menu.

EDIT: Actually, I'm really digging on ratpoison. Except for the fact that I can't seem to restart it or make it quit. The 'restart' or 'quit' commands that are document do not work.

It's so simplistic. It's nothing but a black screen, a small menu, and keybinds. It's incredibly light and fast. I didn't know it tiled as well. I'm definitely spending more time with this WM. I love it's whole basic nature.

EDIT2: Nevermind, found the commands. They were in the Gentoo wiki. To quit or restart ratpoison you hit Control-t :quit/:restart(although I still can't figure out how to set these two commands to a keybind). I was hitting simply quit/restart like the rp wiki tells you to.

So remember that, 2ManyDogs, if you get around to testing out this WM. Like I said, it's incredibly simplistic, but also incredibly lightweight and fast. It's been a pleasant surprise.

Last edited by h8uthemost (2012-03-10 00:20:15)

gutterslob · 2012-03-09 23:45:34

2ManyDogs wrote:

Next: a couple of quirky little window managers for the weekend: twm and evilwm.

EvilWM I already know well.
TWM I'm highly looking forward to. Been ages since I played with it.

Great stuff written so far, btw smile

cJones · 2012-03-10 01:03:28

gutterslob wrote:

2ManyDogs wrote:
Next: a couple of quirky little window managers for the weekend: twm and evilwm.
EvilWM I already know well.
TWM I'm highly looking forward to. Been ages since I played with it.
Great stuff written so far, btw

I'm looking forward to all of them! These are great little reviews and I haven't used any of them except openbox so they are all very informative

Iranon · 2012-03-10 09:58:15

A very nice undertaking, but I'm curious how this will go for the more open-ended ones.

My experience is that power comes with two things:
1) hideous defaults. "If you want, you can have heptagonal windows with pulsating decorations. Why should we care about defaults?"
2) brain-dissolving configuration. "Of course you can do that! There are 100 ways of achieving it, 98 of them glitchy".

SabreWolfy · 2012-03-10 10:03:17

Iranon wrote:

A very nice undertaking, but I'm curious how this will go for the more open-ended ones.
My experience is that power comes with two things:
1) hideous defaults. "If you want, you can have heptagonal windows with pulsating decorations. Why should we care about defaults?"
2) brain-dissolving configuration. "Of course you can do that! There are 100 ways of achieving it, 98 of them glitchy".

Great first post ... "brain-dissolving" smile Welcome to the forums smile

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-10 10:25:00

h8uthemost wrote:

EDIT: Actually, I'm really digging on ratpoison. Except for the fact that I can't seem to restart it or make it quit. The 'restart' or 'quit' commands that are document do not work.
It's so simplistic. It's nothing but a black screen, a small menu, and keybinds. It's incredibly light and fast. I didn't know it tiled as well. I'm definitely spending more time with this WM. I love it's whole basic nature.
EDIT2: Nevermind, found the commands. They were in the Gentoo wiki. To quit or restart ratpoison you hit Control-t :quit/:restart(although I still can't figure out how to set these two commands to a keybind). I was hitting simply quit/restart like the rp wiki tells you to.
So remember that, 2ManyDogs, if you get around to testing out this WM. Like I said, it's incredibly simplistic, but also incredibly lightweight and fast. It's been a pleasant surprise.

I know! I played with ratpoison a little just to see if I wanted to add it to the list, and it took me a while to figure out the quit deal (you're right, the docs are wrong) Thanks for the restart -- that's always useful.

It does look interesting, and will probably make the list.

SabreWolfy · 2012-03-10 10:30:38

Is ratpoison still relevant/useful? My understanding was that stumpwm superceded ratpoison? I've used stumpwm but not ratpoison. They are different from what I've read.

rhowaldt · 2012-03-10 10:51:08

@Iranon: welcome to the community. now go post your proper Introduction in the Introductions-subform! smile

gensym · 2012-03-10 11:04:13

^^ Ratpoison is imo still relevant. Easier to configure, works better with xcompmgr, faster startup time and etc.
(But you lose the lisp addons, which is a huge downer once you got used to them in stumpwm).

ElderV.LaCoste · 2012-03-10 12:37:13

I'm really enjoying this thread and not just because you linked to my Fluxbox screenshot either. wink Seriously, it's fun to see someone else having fun! Keep up the good work. smile

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-10 13:11:44

^ Thanks EVL. Everyone knows you're the fluxmaster smile

Vansgo · 2012-03-10 13:20:29

^ Thanks Dog - this is a fun project, topic - I only get 2 days off - not 30 smile

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