tiling WM

[matt3o]

ok I'll bite the bullet and adventure in the tiling wm.

Any suggestion/preference (possibly motivated)?

Compositing support would be nice, as support for notifications and floating windows (gimp anyone?). Easy and quick to configure would be a huge plus since I don't want to spend weeks configuring everything.

I'll be testing the following

- i3
- Awesome
- bspwm
- qtile
- [maybe] Snapwm

missing something?

[sth]

dwm isn't too bad - they say you have to know C to configure it but as long as you pay attention to the syntax you can customize without knowing too much.

[wlhlm]

I really enjoy using i3. It's super stable, fast, easy to configure and with the best documentation I could find for any wm.

I'm using it in combination with compton.

BTW, gimp has a single window mode.

[andrewjoy]

Another vote for i3 .

You can break the floating rules for certain applications and for pop up boxes in i3 so you can use things like GIMP no problem. Or you can use it in single window mode. DWM is very fast but it lack of documentation is a pain.

[scottc]

Another for i3! I'm on my phone now but will explain later. I previously used Awesome and DWM (back in my Arch days) and I was never as happy with them as I am with i3.

[andrewjoy]

Indeed , i3 is an app that someone has looked at software like awesome and DWM and has said right , ok lets re make this cool idea into software that people who are not programmers can actually use .

[wlhlm]

Another useful tool in combination with all of the wms is dmenu.

[andrewjoy]

yes dmenu is awesome! well its not part of awesome but it is awesome, in that is very good not part of the oh god ......! Gah stupid name

[matt3o]

i3 seems the way to go

I actually like bspwm and qtile but haven't played much with any of them extensively.

PS: I know there's a single window mode in gimp, but there are certain applications that I simply like them floating. Inkscape is another one. I like to be able to move the "align panel" near the work area to reduce mouse movements.

[aaron]

I've using i3 for 5+ Years now and still super happy with it.
i3 has a extremely clean and stable codebase (I know Michael in person, he is very precise and acurate on this ). There are unit tests to ensure the window manager perform within certain time bounds, so code changes which makes i3 slower are detected immediately. It's a "Made in Germany" product

Configuration is easy and extendable. Multi monitor support is great. You can configure which window lands on which workspace under certain conditions. To make the Gimp-Toolbar always floating, just add this into your config:

for_window[title="Toolbox"] floating enable

The windows on the screen are managed internally as a tree you can view and manipulate on the console. A lot of windows (if proper set) are automaticaly floating (The boot windows for Gimp for example). Notifications also comes "out of the box" if the application sends a "hint" like pidgin etc.

In combination with i3bar, i3lock and dmenu It works extremely well for me.

[amospalla]

Used Awesome for years, moved to i3 a couple of years ago. The best one I've used.

[matt3o]

what file manager do you guys use?

[wlhlm]

I mostly use coreutils and occasionally ranger. No GUI file management for me.

[aaron]

what file manager do you guys use?

emacs dired or zsh

[scottc]

I do it on the command-line but if I absolutely need a GUI one I'll use Thunar.

[wlhlm]

what file manager do you guys use?

emacs dired or zsh

Yeah, zsh is definitely helpful as well.

[ramnes]

Used awesome, then moved to i3, and then Qtile, which I'm currently using everywhere.

awesome and i3 are both great and excellent in their respective domain (awesome in fixed layouts, i3 in manual tiling), but they both lack a lot of hackability, and their upstreams are not as I would like.

Qtile is way younger and sometimes buggy, but upstream is fast, guys are fun, and Python rocks.

In the future I might try stumpwm and bspwm.

As for file manager, well, coreutils also.

Compositing : xcompmgr/compton, definitely the best out there.

[XMIT]

I use spectrwm at work. I enjoy how the default key bindings don't assume that you have a Logo key. It is all written in C. You don't need to learn some ridiculous new language just to write a config file.

File management: coreutils
Compositing: don't need it.

[RoastPotatoes]

I use frankenwm. It isn't the most popular but it's like dwm but more useful.

[flabbergast]

On linux I tend to use awesome, mainly because it's usually provided in repos, doesn't require recompiling and has a system tray. But after reading this thread I had another look at i3 and looks really good. Maybe I should reconsider (for a hundredth and fourth time

[SL89]

if any of you are redditors check out the SFW sub /r/unixporn to be inspired by the riciest rice of all time

[jonlorusso]

I'm a big fan of bspwm, it's very simple. What I like most is the clear separation between window manager stuff and the keybinding stuff (done through sxhkd). Most other WMs lump them together and you end up with a mess.

[SL89]

1) get ratpoison
2) use mechboard to navigate UI
3) ????
4) profit?

[sth]

I'm a big fan of bspwm, it's very simple. What I like most is the clear separation between window manager stuff and the keybinding stuff (done through sxhkd). Most other WMs lump them together and you end up with a mess.

i am die hard openbox but i'm currently in the process of moving to sxhkd for all hotkey stuff in combination with wmutils for basic window management. i like the idea of a portable environment that acts predictably no matter what WM is running

[davkol]

derp

[Redmaus]

What language are you people speaking???

I feel so dumb...

[SL89]

now that #! is in its death throes i need to find a new distro to call home, but i've been thinking of just trying to clone #!'s configs. ik it was built off debian, but isn't debian itself hella stodgy and old?

[scottc]

Nah, you can run Debian testing or unstable (not so unstable, usually a bit more stable than Arch in my experience) which are both fairly up-to-date. I've used Debian for years, it's great. To be honest, if you install openbox, conky, tint2 and whatever xfce utils #! needs and just don't wipe your home directory, it'll probably work out of the box.

[matt3o]

latest debian stable is pretty bad ass. just came out of testing few weeks ago and it is pretty up to date.

but anyway, Arch is the way to go.

[Muirium]

An Italian would say that…