30 Window Managers in 30 days

ivanovnegro · 2012-03-27 07:59:24

I still want to see Xmonad mentioned here. big_smile

kri5 · 2012-03-27 09:27:41

dkeg wrote..

so far I have remained in openbox using tmux. pretty happy so far. works out too, cause was finally happy with my setup so sort of just gave me the best of both worlds.

Never thought of that, sounds like an interesting idea. I have spent some time and effort configuring Openbox and although I'm playing with some of the tilers I'm still not prepared to move away from Openbox. On the other hand I do see how useful tilers can be when using multiple terminals or editing multiple files etc.

@2ManyDogs.. Thanks for the tip on running Conky in Musca, shall give it a shot later (not on my PC at present.)

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 13:06:46

ivanovnegro wrote:

I still want to see Xmonad mentioned here.

We did mention it for a little while here. smile

I might review it, but it looks and feels like spectrwm when you run it...

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 13:09:46

Athos wrote:

May I suggest you to review the epic window manager FVWM?
As far as I know, it's a hard one to configure, but also offers great rewards for those who manage to configure it...
What do you think??

Do you know of a particularly good online reference for FVWM? There is a lot of information out there, and I'm not sure where to start...

Athos · 2012-03-27 15:25:07

2ManyDogs wrote:

Do you know of a particularly good online reference for FVWM? There is a lot of information out there, and I'm not sure where to start...

There are too much configuration pages...omg

There is the official page, and the manual...but I think that if you try, you'll spend the whole day reading documentation...XD

http://fvwm.org/doc/unstable/index.html

Just look at that manual O_o
http://fvwm.org/doc/unstable/fvwm/fvwm.man.html

I don't know, 2Many, probably, for the sake of the 30 days, it would be better to just let this for the future... XD

If you take a look at the screenshots, you will see the configuring options you have with this WM
http://www.fvwm.org/screenshots/desktop … php?num=50

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 15:49:33

Athos wrote:

I don't know, 2Many, probably, for the sake of the 30 days, it would be better to just let this for the future... XD

You might be right. We'll see you the week goes...

Iranon · 2012-03-27 16:18:28

FVWM is very open-ended with few assumptions about your workflow (well... getting it to do dynamic tiling can be a bit of a drag). And that's before piperead and script wizardry... it's more of a "desktop construction kit" than a window manager, you can make a fairly faithful clone of many other environments if that's what you desire.
Hence, a guide outside the (rather good) manual would be either inadequate or a doorstopper. I'd have a look at the default, claw my eyes out, grab a contemporary configuration file and start playing from there.

But tbh, "FVWM in 30 days" would still be a daunting project, unless you just want to review the general configuration syntax and test other people's setups.

dkeg · 2012-03-27 16:19:11

kri5 wrote:

dkeg wrote..
so far I have remained in openbox using tmux. pretty happy so far. works out too, cause was finally happy with my setup so sort of just gave me the best of both worlds.
Never thought of that, sounds like an interesting idea. I have spent some time and effort configuring Openbox and although I'm playing with some of the tilers I'm still not prepared to move away from Openbox. On the other hand I do see how useful tilers can be when using multiple terminals or editing multiple files etc.

what i do is set roxterm as maximized with no decoration, on desk1, with my conky as horizontal on top then my tint2 as autohide and clear, then all tasks commented out / with only system tray remaining. Then when I hover tint2 shows and since clear does not block the conky, still visible. ( I have it spaced properly the sys tray when showing doesn't cover any of the conky). I have the top margin set accordingly as well so maximized apps don't cover the conky. I think you @kri5 helped me that little nifty trick!

since mod f1, f2 etc change desktop, I set desktop1 as my full page terminal using tmux with however many panels, then desktop two as iceweasel, then desk3 as ? , and so on. I also un-decorate iceweasel as well as I just keep it maximized and the master of that desktop.
this has been a great setup for me.
with this set up I basically have a tiler and stacker and openbox all in one.
I'm not on that machine, but hope to get some screenies together later.

thanks to @2ManyDogs for the motivation and ideas. I've also played a bit with scrotwm and awesome wm, but keep coming back home to openbox.

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 16:22:15

dkeg wrote:

I'm not on that machine, but hope to get some screenies together later.

Please do. It sounds pretty sweet...

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 16:29:09

Day 23. I promised I'd get back to some window managers from the repos, so today we are looking at a stacker called oroborus (the tail-chasing snake). It's in the repos, and apt-get works. It's a window manager, and that's all. It doesn't do menus, and it doesn't have built-in key binds for launching apps. But it does work with panels and other key-binding apps, and it has some nice themes, so I thought it was worth a look.

As I said apt-get install works, but oroborus does not create a .desktop file, so you will need to create one for it before it will show up in the GDM sessions list (see the flwm review if you're not sure how to do this). You will also want to install xbindkeys if you have not already done that for one of the previous window managers where I used it (like this one). To get started, just bind a key sequence to start your terminal emulator, and maybe one for dmenu.

When you start oroborus, it's just a black screen. Use the keys you bound with xbindkeys to start a terminal, and you'll see the big difference between oroborus and some of the other minimal window managers we've looked at -- this one actually makes some nice-looking windows. The mouse works as you'd expect it to -- left-click and drag on the title bar moves the window, left-click and drag on the lower right corner resizes the window. Double-click on the titlebar shades the window, and there are titlebar buttons for close, minimize, and maximize.

In the default oroborus configuration, focus follows mouse, and focused windows are automatically raised to the top of the stack. This leads to a lot of windows popping to the top of the stack and popping back down as you move the mouse around, but it can be changed to click-to-raise.

While there are no built-in keybindings for starting apps, there are a lot of key sequences for window movement and resizing. You can cycle through windows (including minimized windows) with the usual alt+tab, you can raise and lower windows in the stack, shade windows or make them full screen, and move or resize windows, all with key sequences. There are key sequences to move or resize in small increments, move to the four corners of the screen, and maximize only in the vertical or horizontal directions.

By default, oroborus has nine virtual workspaces, accessed with the ctrl+F<n> sequence, where <n> is a number from one to nine. You can also move windows from one workspace to another. When you move a window to a different workspace, oroborus activates the workspace (this is what some window managers call "follow to workspace"). This is a very usable window manager even without major modifications.

Configuration

All of the bound keys and basic configuration options for oroborus are kept in one plain text file. Copy the default config file to your home folder before modifying it:

cp /usr/share/oroborus/defaults .oroborusrc

This file contains basic information such as the titlebar font and title placement, titlebar button layout, and color specifications for active and inactive window elements. I changed the titlebar button layout to move the "close" button over to the right side of the titlebar away from the other buttons.:

#button_layout=CHM|
button_layout=HM|C

The .oroborusrc file also contains all the default key sequences. In its default configuration, oroborus does not use the super key as a modifier, so there are some complex sequences. For example, the default full-screen toggle command is alt+shift+ccontrol+f. This code in .oroborusrc changes the sequence to simply super+a:

#toggle_fullscreen_window_key=Mod1+Control+Shift+f
toggle_fullscreen_window_key=Mod4+a

Some of the move commands are equally complex (for example, move window up is shift+control+alt+up), so I changed these:

#move_window_left_key=Shift+Control+Mod1+Left
#move_window_right_key=Shift+Control+Mod1+Right
#move_window_up_key=Shift+Control+Mod1+Up
#move_window_down_key=Shift+Control+Mod1+Down
move_window_left_key=Mod4+Left
move_window_right_key=Mod4+Right
move_window_up_key=Mod4+Up
move_window_down_key=Mod4+Down

Other key sequences are just as easy to modify.

I mentioned the "raise on focus" behavior. I found this annoying, so I changed it, and I changed the move and resize behavior so that a window being resized or moved is shown as an outline until the move or resize is complete:

#box_move=false
#box_resize=false
#click_to_focus=false
box_move=true
box_resize=true
click_to_focus=true

Oroborus also uses "schemes" and "themes" for configuration. A scheme contains all the color information for active and inactive window elements. A theme contains all the xpm files for buttons and window elements. Oroborus installs 18 themes and eight schemes in /usr/share/oroborus, and I think there may be more available online. The current theme and scheme are specified in the .oroborusrc file, so they may be changed. A theme-changing application is also available online. I installed this and used it it test the themes. I think some of them are very ugly, but others may like them. Here's one I'm not fond of:

As I mentioned in the first paragraph, oroborus works with all the panels I tried, and works with conky. It is supposed to work with deskmenu, an app that can provide a right-click menu, but I could not make this work and there are several posts from other people online who also could not make it work. I wanted to see what kind of desktop I could build with oroborus, so I installed lxpanel, conky, and used pcmanfm to manage the desktop wallpaper and icons. Sort of LXDE on oroborus, I guess. It worked pretty well:

I probably would not use a desktop like this, but it can be done. In fact, I just found out that Xfwm, the window manager for Xfce, and OroboROX, the window manager for ROXDE, were both based on oroborus.

What I Liked About It

It's small and fast. It doesn't try to do too much. Its default windows are not ugly. It works with the panels. It has "normal" move and resize mouse and alt+tab behavior. It has a lot of useful keybindings that can be changed. It's very configurable, but not overwhelming. It uses themes so I didn't have to try to change all the colors myself. It doesn't have "wm" in its name.

What I Didn't Like About It

I wish I could make a right-click menu work. I bound aemenu to F1 so I can get a desktop menu with a keypress, but it's not quite the same. I think some of the themes are really ugly.

Links

"man oroborus"
"man xbindkeys"
oroborus home page

tomorrow: icewm
back to the top

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-03-28 15:51:29)

PackRat · 2012-03-27 17:02:28

2ManyDogs wrote:

Athos wrote:
May I suggest you to review the epic window manager FVWM?
As far as I know, it's a hard one to configure, but also offers great rewards for those who manage to configure it...
What do you think??
Do you know of a particularly good online reference for FVWM? There is a lot of information out there, and I'm not sure where to start...

For what you're doing, this should work:

http://zensites.net/fvwm/guide/

And this is a pretty good read:

http://forums.debian.net/viewtopic.php? … on#p144475

Just set up the default theme (not the win95 one) and start tweaking away.

Another good write up on Oroborus -- although I would argue that setting up dmenu with a key binding is a must not a maybe for these minimal wm's. big_smile

Last edited by PackRat (2012-03-27 18:03:22)

PackRat · 2012-03-27 17:59:46

ivanovnegro wrote:

I still want to see Xmonad mentioned here.

+1 big_smile

At least one of Xmonad, Awesome, or Stumpwm since the programing language is so much different than what's been done so far.

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 18:05:40

PackRat wrote:

Another good write up on Oroborus -- although I would argue that setting up dmenu with a key binding is a must not a maybe for these minimal wm's.

Thanks. I was trying to be diplomatic with the dmenu comment -- and I usually just start everything from a terminal anyway.

I promise one of awesome, xmonad, or stumpwm before the end of the series.

(edit) and there's nothing that says I'm the only one who can write WM reviews. I'd personally like to read one from an experienced user of one of the more complex ones...

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-03-27 18:23:23)

dkeg · 2012-03-27 18:13:40

2ManyDogs wrote:

dkeg wrote:
I'm not on that machine, but hope to get some screenies together later.
Please do. It sounds pretty sweet...

desktop1 with tmux only

desktop2 with iceweasel. i'm hovering at the top to show tint2 and the system tray on the right. the icons are small, but I don't need to see them really, just hover over or click them. I really hardly ever use them for anything, but since they are out of the way, i just leave, that way, if I do need 'em, i have 'em

gutterslob · 2012-03-27 19:05:36

2ManyDogs wrote:

I'd personally like to read one from an experienced user of one of the more complex ones...

Problem is, my writing is nowhere near as eloquent as yours, but I'll give it a go anyways....

2ManyDogs wrote:

stumpwm

Lisp makes me scream and cry like a rape victim.
/end

Not very balanced a review, is it? tongue

gutterslob · 2012-03-27 19:37:50

With regards to xmonad, I tried searching for a review I did in the past, but that forum I posted in seems to be dead now. Can't find the article.

To be frank (imho), I don't think you could cover xmonad or fvwm in a day. Out of all the WMs out there these 2 are the most full-featured and provide the most modularity. FVWM, in particular, is a beast. It's almost like an entire OS in itself (not quite Emacs, but then again, Emacs outlived the great plagues). I'd love it if someone took the time to create some sort of FVWM guide for simpletons.

A short write-up is definitely possible, but it wouldn't really give you much beyond what people have got via reading online man pages or articles.

Awesome is probably difficult to cover simply because they could decide to change everything with the next version, which in turn would render your impressions useless. Who knows, Awesome in 2 years time might be written in Objective C and be available via Apples' App Store tongue

Last edited by gutterslob (2012-03-27 19:43:25)

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 19:45:10

^ Thank you. I agree completely, and that's why I have avoided these so far. Maybe I'll retract my promise to PackRat smile

gutterslob · 2012-03-27 19:54:13

^Oh drat... now he's gonna kill me >_<

You could cover installation and default behaviour of each, though. Basically just going with what's given (and in the man page) without any customization. Should provide a basic idea, at least. I don't think you'll need to download most GHC libs and dependencies if you're just going to use stock Xmonad without any modifications, though don't quote me on this.

Last edited by gutterslob (2012-03-27 19:54:51)

gensym · 2012-03-27 19:59:32

gutterslob wrote:

2ManyDogs wrote:
stumpwm
Lisp makes me scream and cry like a rape victim.
Not very balanced a review, is it?

Once you get the hang of it, it is not really that bad.

Edit: Haters gotta hate hmm

Last edited by gensym (2012-03-27 23:38:41)

Iranon · 2012-03-27 20:45:30

Lisp or... the other thing?

gensym · 2012-03-27 21:07:30

^ Screaming and crying? No.

apprentice · 2012-03-27 23:02:44

gutterslob wrote:

I'd love it if someone took the time to create some sort of FVWM guide for simpletons.

and how

i tried to follow tartan's thread (with rstrcogburn and thomas adams) but way too out there for me

i thought i could do the austrumi thing but the sparse forum, language and slackware cooled me on it

30 days of FVWM sounds good to me
for simpleton's o course

if the mood strikes ya 2MD

2ManyDogs · 2012-03-27 23:08:51

gutterslob wrote:

^Oh drat... now he's gonna kill me >_<
You could cover installation and default behaviour of each, though. Basically just going with what's given (and in the man page) without any customization. Should provide a basic idea, at least. I don't think you'll need to download most GHC libs and dependencies if you're just going to use stock Xmonad without any modifications, though don't quote me on this.

When I did apt-get install xmonad, it downloaded about 68 M and took up an additional 360 M of disk space. I think it did install all the GHC libs.

Now that I have it on my machine, I might as well at least write a basic guide to starting it up and some minor config tweaks. I think I can do that...

Might even get to the same for awesome if I have time.

PackRat · 2012-03-27 23:11:20

2ManyDogs wrote:

^ Thank you. I agree completely, and that's why I have avoided these so far. Maybe I'll retract my promise to PackRat

No problem - gutterslob is correct; it would be hard to do justice to any of those in a day beyond the default configurations.

@gutterslob - we apparently have the same allergy to Lisp.

SabreWolfy · 2012-03-28 07:20:56

Has anyone who uses tmux tried byobu? It supports either screen or (more recently) tmux as a backend.

CrunchBang Linux

SEARCH

#476 2012-03-27 07:59:24

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#477 2012-03-27 09:27:41

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#478 2012-03-27 13:06:46

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#479 2012-03-27 13:09:46

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#480 2012-03-27 15:25:07

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#481 2012-03-27 15:49:33

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#482 2012-03-27 16:18:28

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#483 2012-03-27 16:19:11

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#484 2012-03-27 16:22:15

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#485 2012-03-27 16:29:09

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#486 2012-03-27 17:02:28

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#487 2012-03-27 17:59:46

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#488 2012-03-27 18:05:40

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#489 2012-03-27 18:13:40

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#490 2012-03-27 19:05:36

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#491 2012-03-27 19:37:50

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#492 2012-03-27 19:45:10

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#493 2012-03-27 19:54:13

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#494 2012-03-27 19:59:32

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#495 2012-03-27 20:45:30

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#496 2012-03-27 21:07:30

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#497 2012-03-27 23:02:44

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#498 2012-03-27 23:08:51

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#499 2012-03-27 23:11:20

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#500 2012-03-28 07:20:56

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

Board footer