30 Window Managers in 30 days

CBizgreat! · 2012-04-07 07:39:53

Just another good job 2ManyD's ...

Ya still got me stuck on fluxbox here, awesome or lxde when feeling like a change. But was in fact the review and screenies you posted that encouraged me to install this thing. Agree w El_ too ... the stuff you've posted here does trump out many vague mentions of all these gnu/nix wm's around the web. Actually showing folks something about getting started if they feel like giving them a go.

Need 2 try n remind myself to dig through this thread with more attention sometime. Try some of these out someday too. 2ManyDogs #! contrib of the yr +3 ! wink

vll !

SabreWolfy · 2012-04-07 09:20:18

ivanovnegro wrote:

^ Definitely Spectrer, I mean Scrotwm if you install on Stable. Has a text file, really simple, really good choice and sane defaults. Give it a shot, it was my first love.

@simgin: I'm running spectrwm at the moment. I also wanted to test out a "beginner's" tiling window manager. Alt-Shift-Enter gives you a terminal. Alt-Space cycles the layout and Alt-Enter changes the "main" window (the one in the top half or the one on the left, depending on the layout). That's all I've figured out so far, but I'm reading through the conf file now and the man page is useful too smile

Gotcha:: Some shortcuts don't work in Emacs (obviously they are caught by the WM first). M-x, for example, kills the current window instead of running the Emacs instruction 'M-x'.

Last edited by SabreWolfy (2012-04-07 09:25:08)

gensym · 2012-04-07 09:59:43

You can use Mod4 as the escape key (modkey=mod4).

Last edited by gensym (2012-04-07 10:01:13)

SabreWolfy · 2012-04-07 10:54:25

^ Ah, I understand what 2ManyDogs meant now when he mentioned that in his review. I'm back in OB, but I can return to spectrwm now ... smile

SabreWolfy · 2012-04-07 11:17:42

I set "title_name_enabled = 1" in ~/.scrotwm.conf and restarted scrotwm. The bar then showed x-terminal-emulator for a while and then "Navigator". It doesn't change when I change windows though, which is what I expected...?

Last edited by SabreWolfy (2012-04-07 11:35:48)

arpinux · 2012-04-07 11:34:04

hi,
nothing to add or to say .... or just a very big THANK YOU 2ManyDogs ... as some of you already know, i'm a big wmtester too and i'd like to have all of thoose wm on livarp big_smile ...
this thread deserve a complete wiki page !
awesome work man, thx again smile

ivanovnegro · 2012-04-07 13:24:18

@SabreWolfy: You can also change all keybindings to your liking. I never really used the title name just at the beginning but it worked. I see you have some problems, how about going and reading our #! man page "Getting started with Scrotwm", could solve many of your problems. smile Just put that in the search box at the top right.

SabreWolfy · 2012-04-07 13:28:14

^ Thanks, I have searched through that thread already. I'll search more elsewhere; it's not that important right now.

xaos52 · 2012-04-07 14:28:16

@SabreWolfy.
I use the 'windows' key as Mod key to avoid the clash with emacs keys.
Link to my scrotwm.config: http://crunchbanglinux.org/forums/post/206687/#p206687

Last edited by xaos52 (2012-04-07 14:28:37)

SabreWolfy · 2012-04-07 14:39:40

^ I did the same and it's very convenient. Nice to be using the "windows" key to control actual windows smile Thanks -- I'll check out your config file.

dkeg · 2012-04-07 22:44:25

I have begun using scrotwm in stable. I really like it. conky is up and running, made some config changes to the conf file.
workspace 1 -> tmux in sakura
workspace 2 -> browser (been using Midori or Epiphany lately as they seem a lighter than iceweasel. Can't get tabs in uzbl working yet)
workspace 3 -> eclipse (in a java class at the moment)
workspace 4 -> misc
so far I am very happy and honestly, I owe it all to 2MD. I do have to say, as I've said before, an epic thread, just a huge accomplishment, and very inspiring as we have seen.

question: how do you change or set the wallpaper?

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-07 22:59:04

dkeg wrote:

question: how do you change or set the wallpaper?

2ManyDogs wrote:

Scrotwm does not have an "autostart" file, so you will need to use a start script (as described for many of the small stacking window managers earlier in this series) if you want to set the background or run any other apps or daemons with scrotwm.

also see this thread for a scrotwm.sh example (just add nitrogen for the background) and if it's still not clear just ask...

PackRat · 2012-04-07 22:59:16

Nitrogen, feh, and hsetroot all work in spectrwm.

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-07 23:00:13

^ thanks pr (do i say that a lot? seems like i do...)

dkeg · 2012-04-08 01:41:59

2ManyDogs wrote:

dkeg wrote:
question: how do you change or set the wallpaper?
2ManyDogs wrote:
Scrotwm does not have an "autostart" file, so you will need to use a start script (as described for many of the small stacking window managers earlier in this series) if you want to set the background or run any other apps or daemons with scrotwm.
also see this thread for a scrotwm.sh example (just add nitrogen for the background) and if it's still not clear just ask...

yes that was helpful, thank you. I don't know why I didn't notice that, I guess there was just so much to read, and remember reading that before, but wasn't using scrot at that time, and now that I am , i glazed ....
oh well. I got the wallpaper going for now. I used nitrogen --restore, pulling from what I was using in openbox, but still am working to solidify a more workable way to change it.

If I open nitrogen as an app though, it opens, but is empty. Any ideas?

Also I posted that I had issues with getting tabs working right in uzbl-tabbed. Reading thru this is what I needed

go        = load uri in new tab
gt        = go to next tab
gT        = go to previous tab
gn        = open new tab
gi+n      = goto 'n' tab

https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UZBL-Browser

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-08 03:29:15

dkeg wrote:

yes that was helpful, thank you. I don't know why I didn't notice that, I guess there was just so much to read, and remember reading that before, but wasn't using scrot at that time, and now that I am , i glazed ....

no problem; I wasn't trying to be a smartass -- there was a lot of stuff to wade through in those reviews...

dkeg wrote:

If I open nitrogen as an app though, it opens, but is empty. Any ideas?

nitrogen is strange sometimes; it usually works if you start it in the folder where the images are, or specify the path on the command line (that's what the openbox menu entry does):

<item label="Choose Wallpaper">
  <action name="Execute">
    <execute>
       nitrogen ~/images/wallpapers/
     </execute>
   </action>
</item>

or run it once and specify the folder (with preferences/add) and then make sure it saves the folder in ~/.config/nitrogen/nitrogen.cfg

I have a script that sets a random background from a folder:

#!/bin/bash
# script to randomly set desktop background from files in a directory

# directory containing images
DIR="/home/bsh/images/wallpapers"

# select a random jpg from the directory
PIC=$(ls $DIR/*.jpg | shuf -n1)

# use nitrogen to set wallpaper
nitrogen --set-zoom-fill $PIC

Then I call that from the spectrwm.sh start file (or whatever window manager I'm using at the moment) so the WM starts with a random background.

I also have a crontab:

*/10 * * * * DISPLAY=:0.0 /home/bsh/.scripts/random-wallpaper

(use crontab -e to set it) so the background changes at random every ten minutes...

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-04-08 04:42:51)

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-08 03:57:37

dkeg wrote:

Also I posted that I had issues with getting tabs working right in uzbl-tabbed. Reading thru this is what I needed
go        = load uri in new tab
gt        = go to next tab
gT        = go to previous tab
gn        = open new tab
gi+n      = goto 'n' tab
https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/UZBL-Browser

I haven't used uzbl much -- I use luakit. I tried uzbl once and don't remember why I didn't like it; maybe I'll give it another shot...

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-08 03:57:38

[deleted]

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-04-08 03:58:40)

dkeg · 2012-04-08 11:13:03

Thank you 2MD, that worked. Glad I asked. I first just ran it from terminal specifying the path which worked, then set the pref's which also worked. Awesome!. The script is cool man, I'll have to try it out. This makes me think about when you said you may create a script to log you into a random WM at each boot. Did you get that running yet. Makes me laugh when I think about it. I mean, try explaining that to anyone on the outside. Funny.

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-08 12:21:02

^ You're welcome. Glad you got it working. No, I didn't write the random window manager script -- in fact I'm thinking of taking some of the WMs off the test box...

I know what you mean about explaining this stuff -- my wife finally asked me what I was doing in front of the computer all that time last month, and I had to start by explaining what a window manager was... and then try to explain why there are so many of them hmm

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-04-08 14:26:47)

mahatman2 · 2012-04-09 03:54:37

^ ha! Well tell her you were helping a lot of friends out online to figure out what their lives were for! lol but really thanks. It's an invaluble service.

As for a script, would something like this work?

#!/bin/bash

wms=( "herbstluftwm" "openbox" "i3wm" "spectrwm" "awesome" "blah" "blahw2" )

wm=$(($RANDOM % ${#wms[@]}))

exec ${wms[$wm]}

m5 · 2012-04-10 18:47:00

@ 2ManyDogs : What was the lightest and most resource hungry WMs between window managers that you reviewed?

h8uthemost · 2012-04-10 21:13:18

Great write up, 2many. I think I'm going to try out tinywm for my next stacker. But for the tilers you reviewed, I tried the majority of them,(the ones that looked interesting to me), and time and time again I keep returning to Scrotwm. It's incredibly minimal(i can just hit Mod+b to hide the bar if i want), incredibly light, and has the sanest defaults of any tiler I've used. So there's really no reason for me to continue to tile hop as I've found the one that's best for me. So I believe I'm going to remove the rest of them that are on my machine...

But as for stackers, OB/Flux just feels like bloat. I'm into the extremely minimal type of thing right now, so I'm going to go back through your stackers and see if I can find a minimal replacement for OB/Flux. Well, at least #!'s version of OB has too much in it for me. Maybe I'll wipe it out and do a new install of OB since I remember that the wm installs with pretty much nothing. But I'm sure there are minimal stackers out there that's lighter than OB.

Anyways, thanks for sticking through the 30 days for us. I'm sure that was a pain in the ass at times. wink Your work and time is appreciated.

2ManyDogs · 2012-04-25 19:17:05

A little update. @m5, I didn't really keep track, mostly because I was too busy playing with the WMs, but also because I didn't really have a "benchmark" to test against. I tried to show scrots with either conky or htop running, and with fireweasel, thunar, and sakura running. No one WM stood out as being "lightest" or "heaviest" although some were lighter than others...

@h8u, I wonder where you've settled -- we haven't heard from you since this April 10th post -- what's up?

For me, I've been using musca since the end of the great experiment, and I really like it. I had some weird issues that I didn't like -- every once in a while it would decide not to let me switch windows, and force me to restart it. It also seemed to output to the console even when I told it "quiet" in a command. So now I've been using ratpoison for about a week, with top-level keybinds that make it work a lot like musca, only better (in my opinion). I have considered starting a ratpoison thread, but I wonder how many people here might be using rp?

I have to say, when I started the 30WMs thread, ratpoison might have been last on the list of where I'd end up....

Last edited by 2ManyDogs (2012-04-25 20:13:01)

rhowaldt · 2012-04-25 19:18:43

just start the ratpoison thread! who cares if anybody else is using it. your boundless enthusiasm will lure more unsuspecting souls in smile

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#601 2012-04-07 07:39:53

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#602 2012-04-07 09:20:18

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#603 2012-04-07 09:59:43

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#604 2012-04-07 10:54:25

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#605 2012-04-07 11:17:42

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#606 2012-04-07 11:34:04

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#607 2012-04-07 13:24:18

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#608 2012-04-07 13:28:14

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#609 2012-04-07 14:28:16

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#610 2012-04-07 14:39:40

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#611 2012-04-07 22:44:25

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#612 2012-04-07 22:59:04

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

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Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#614 2012-04-07 23:00:13

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#615 2012-04-08 01:41:59

Re: 30 Window Managers in 30 days

#616 2012-04-08 03:29:15

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#617 2012-04-08 03:57:37

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