A new release of dwm is out, dwm-4.3. “dwm Is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed.”
A new release of dwm is out, dwm-4.3. “dwm Is a dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled and floating layouts. Either layout can be applied dynamically, optimizing the environment for the application in use and the task performed.”
“# You don’t have to learn Lua/sh/ruby or some weird configuration file format (like X resource files), beside C, to customize it for your needs: you only have to learn C (at least editing header files).
# Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it’s pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.”
From the site. And I’m not speaking sarcastically, this really is one of the great things – they have their own point of view, which may not be ours, and the open architecture has given them the freedom to do it, and for the rest of us to admire and use or not.
You do gulp a bit however on learning that to configure it all you have to do is learn C, not one of those weird scripting languages…! Oh well, nothing is perfect. Better break out those manuals. Wouldn’t want to be accused of being some clueless novice!
Be interesting to know what other people think about these WMs in practice. I’ve put wmii and ion on, and tried living with them. I find Fluxbox perfectly usable and a real alternative to the majors, but the tiling ones don’t somehow seem comfortable. It may be to do with tabs. The multiple desktop has the advantage that you can drag your windows from one to the other, so if you want to have two side by side, and then a different two, you can.
Also, the desktop does get cluttered, but you can have all the folders you’re working on right there and ready to use in the same places, just by going to an empty desktop.
Its hard to beat for convenience and transparency. In Fluxbox for instance, you can have a file manager open in a desktop, which works ok, but it doesn’t feel quite as nice.
Well, be interesting to know what other people think.
Edited 2007-07-16 07:50
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I think having a special window manager that “keeps its userbase small and elitist” would be a nice to keep the diversity of Linux community.
However, as a software engineer, I’d prefer a more customizable, and less elitist one. This would allow a larger user base, which means having more eyes on the program and receiving bugs exposed early. The more the program used, the more it becomes stable.
Anyways, I’d previously used fluxbox and friends, and had been a long time WindowMaker user. Having a menu system for customization is also good (for me).
Edited 2007-07-16 08:06
> However, as a software engineer, I’d prefer a more
> customizable, and less elitist one. This would allow a
> larger user base, which means having more eyes on the
> program and receiving bugs exposed early. The more the
> program used, the more it becomes stable.
The more you follow the “user friendly way”, the more you add LOC, the more you add bugs
dwm is ~1800 LOC, there’s a good and skilled community around it and the source is so nice and clean that you can easily implement your own layout if you feel the need (flexibilty).
Just take a look here: http://www.suckless.org/wiki/dwm/patches
If anyone is looking for a video demonstration, I have recorded this session: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F2sYPwuRPvc
(youtube resolution really sucks for this kind of task, I’m sorry)
Cheers
You do gulp a bit however on learning that to configure it all you have to do is learn C, not one of those weird scripting languages…! Oh well, nothing is perfect. Better break out those manuals. Wouldn’t want to be accused of being some clueless novice!
8^D
The clueless novice may find helpful this dwm configuration howto that some fellow debianista has written:
http://devnulll.blogspot.com/2007/05/dwm-debian-howto.html
Even though their wm is not targeted at novices, I think the 1337 users would still prefer to change an ini file in 5 minutes that hack the sources for days.
dwm is a window manager, that’s all it is. It does that out of the box without any changes to the source. If you feel like modifying the few parts that there are to change(colour scheme, key bindings, tag names) you just edit the config.h file, which has a very easy to understand syntax, and make && make install
You would only have to hack the sources for days if you wanted to make a large change to how the window manager functions and if you were making such large changes then you probably should be using a different window manager.
Thanks for this, and will have a go. It does all slightly remind you of the old joke:
Linux Airlines
————–
Disgruntled employees of all the other OS airlines decide to start their own airline. They build the planes, ticket counters, and pave the runways themselves. They charge a small fee to cover the cost of printing the ticket, but you can also download and print the ticket yourself. When you board the plane, you are given a seat, four bolts, a wrench and a copy of the seat-HOWTO.html.
Once settled, the fully adjustable seat is very comfortable, the plane leaves and arrives on time without a single problem,the in-flight meal is wonderful. You try to tell customers of the other airlines about the great trip, but all they can say is:
“You had to do what with the seat?”
One good thing about Linux though is that it attracts programmers like that and keeps them from operating systems more geared towards users.
As quoted from http://suckless.org/wiki/dwm “[dwm] is the little brother of wmii”, which indicates that the author isn’t one of “those kind of people” since he has another version of the window manager that DOES include configuration without source modification, just that dwm is focused on being small, not configurable.
If you want something that works like dwm and doesn’t require source editing, you should give wmii (dwm’s “bit brother”) a try. I recently had heard a lot about ion3 but after some reading found out the developer appeared to have a similar “I don’t want to answer questions from stupid users” attitude (which I wonder if the quote from dwm is actually poking fun at). I have been using wmii for about a month now and I love it. I have one desktop with an editor and two terminals open for coding, then another desktop with firefox, pidgin, and irssi for web stuff, then a third desktop with vmware and a few terminals for various things. The thing I like most about it is that you can quickly resize windows with the mouse in a way that makes sense and just gets everything else out of the way so you can see what you want. It takes a bit of adjusting to the concept of never seeing your “desktop”, but once I realized that all of my screen real estate was taken up by useful information, I stopped caring.
Perhaps I am alone in this, but there are a few groups of users who manage to tie a knot of mess using any configurability options available. Mostly they are just dangerously benign.
For such people it is wonderful to know that it might be possible to nail the configuration to the floor using a compiler.
Of course they need to switch away from windows first.
“Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it’s pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.”
Sorry, wrong attitude for me.
>> No novices asking stupid questions.
> Sorry, wrong attitude for me.
I doubt they will miss you on their mailing lists.
On the other side, you will be wasting your prescious time answering questions like “How to turn off the spatial file manager?!?” or “Where are the hidden files and how to type in the path in my file dialog?” 100 or 1000 times a day.
I have a NEC MobilePro 780, running Netbsd 3.1, with limited resource, expecially a 640×240 screen, I figured that dwm was the best fit window manager, I even modified the source code to remove the status bar for more screen space.
You don’t need anymore to modify source to hide status bar.
0 $ grep BARPOS sources/dwm/config.h
#define BARPOS BarTop /* BarBot, BarOff */
Cheers
Edited 2007-07-16 18:52