On Sat, Mar 13, 2010 at 05:50:23PM -0500, Andrei Thorp wrote:
> Hello,
>
> So as many of you know, Awesome's Wikipedia page was deleted[1] for
> really dubious reasons. But most notably, it has been very difficult
> to find a reputable source online that has reviewed Awesome in any
> way. Most press has been just blogs and nothing special. In fact,
> Awesome has terribly marketing in general.
how many 'tiling*' wm are really popular though? I mean seriously,
awesome's page was deleted but in the discussion i thought many other
tilers had their pages in jeopardy too. For wikipedia exactly how can
people say that awesome is 'notable' software? Because its a scripted
wm using lua? Nope.. Maybe the use of xcb, but sooner or later all X WM
will be using xcb.
(*yes i know, its a framework window manager, please nobody tile my face :)
>
> I think we, as a sizable community, have a chance to turn things
> around though.
Are we that sizable? Perhaps as much as xmonad even? Its difficult to
tell really - i know there are scant many defenders of awesome in
#archlinux these days.
Maybe my confusion arises from what awesome was and what its now
intended to be? Originally awesome was this small sort of window
manager aimed at power users.. I think that is nearly a direct quote
from early website.
Now awesome seems to be trying to capture more of the wm market? If
thats true then I think there are some fundamental problems.
part of the difficulty marketing awesome is more related to the
difficulty to configure it. Until this problem(?) is solved then the
userbase will remain small, and marketing it is pointless.
Before I get flames about 'how easy it is to configure' please people
understand i have been using awesome since 2.3 and have seen many
config/paradigm changes - and still here after many broken configs.
A 'stock' rc.lua is 300+, add in about 100 for theming...
400+ lines should probably be considered unacceptable for a window
manager config. If we really want to market awesome, I think making
headway here is necessary. Why not have a set of scripts that are each
optional instead of a monolithic config file? e.g.
~/.config/awesome/{keys, tags, clients}
Also we are missing some basic features other wm offer - titlebars with
proper buttons, a grip for resizing windows without having to touch
keyboard at least a minimum for stacking window managers. Yet awesome
has none and we currently default the user into a nearly useless
floating mode.
And, fwiw we did have at one time titlebars, then they dissappeared! How
many other applications do that to users?
> - I am interested in putting together the article for the upcoming
> Arch Magazine. I WOULD LIKE HELP. Why do you, the users, think that
> Awesome is great? What fantastic things have you done with it? I'm
> pretty well connected in the community, but I'd like to hear your
> ideas! :)
what is great?
1. that i can write new behaviors into the window manager
2. devs that listen
3. helpful community
4. fast
Perhaps we could glean some starting material for the article form the
2009 survey?
I agree at one time it seemed awesome was guaranteed meteoric rise in
popularity due to its flexibility and even its somewhat novel use of
xcb. But xcb is going to be proliferated (there are dwm-xcb patches) and
the rampant configuration changes and here today gone tomorrow
features erode the userbase.
This in the face of an apparent dichotomy between difficult to
configure/elite wm and default to stacking/startup-notify/newbie type
wm is difficult to market period.
I hope this mail has come off as more constructive than critical - Im
definitely a happy awesome user..
-p
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