Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
On 17:11 Mon 22 Dec , Andreas Niederl wrote:
Hi,
Man Shankar wrote:
Hello,
I want to try out the tiling window managers. I would want to know the
experiences of the users about awesome and xmonad. Primarily i would
like to know which of those two tiling WMs has worked for you guys. The
hurdles you encountered and the gains you got thereof.
Currently i am a happy e16 user, but the fact that the tiling WMs
manage the windows makes me attracted to them. Please comment.
I switched from e16 to xmonad last summer and haven't regret it so far.
One important thing though is to get used to the tiling paradigm, i.e.
letting the wm do all the resize and positioning work. I suggest you try
it some time and see if it fits you.
Personally I started using it only on my home pc while I kept e16 on the
laptop for work until I couldn't resist a complete switch to it anymore.
Thanks everybody for replying. I am sorry i am late on this as i was having
trouble with a hard disk (thats for later). In the uptime that i got, i
have managed to figure out that the 'fairh' tiling algo suits me. I have also
realized that now only seldom i use the mouse and also e16. Although i miss the
native transparency of e16 but apart from that i have absolutely nothing against
awesome. When i have time (someday) i will xcompmgr a try. Hopefully a git
ebuild
of it exists somewhere.
I've recently also started using awesome in a few virtual machines,
mainly due to the large size of the xmonad dependencies (GHC takes up
quite some space).
From my point of view they both look fairly the same with awesome having
a few more features (tagging, widgets).
It also helps to regard the configuration file (xmonad and =
awesome-3.0) as the main program, e.g. my xmonad.hs looks a bit like a
Haskell program where different modules get imported and the main window
manager module loaded at the end.
You can do quite a lot with those two.
Aside from that, the main difference between them are the programming
languages they're written in because you have to use it for the
configuration file.
Awesome uses Lua which is a simple but powerful imperative scripting
language and xmonad uses Haskell, an advanced functional programming
language which many consider as rather hard to learn.
Personally, I didn't know anything about Haskell before using xmonad and
I have to admit that I had a few very hard times with it when I wanted
to do some advanced (or even simple) configuration changes. But once you
wind your head around the functional paradigm (and all those operators
and monads) you can do a lot with it.
Have a look at the xmonad config archive[1] for some examples.
I agree for someone new to the functional paradigm(me!!) it is initially
daunting. But once i am against such a situation i try to pick up someone
else's config and start from there. And besides, to use xmonad you just
perhaps need to remember your key-shortcuts, once a config file is set.
There is not much to interfere with these tiling beauties!!
If you're going to use awesome I'd recommend having a look at
x11-misc/dmenu as I didn't see any default integration of it in the
awesome config (though I might have missed it).
Regards,
Andi
[1] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive
Oh dmenu is a beauty, used it during my openbox days; who needs fancy
menus?? In awesome-3.1 i have
keybinding({ modkey }, z, function () awful.util.spawn(exec `dmenu_path |
dmenu -b`) end):add()
works well.
So, awesome it is for the moment until I get the itch to switch !!
By the way Greetings and Happy New Year:2009 to everybody.
--
Regards,
Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
On 12/17/2008 05:51 AM, Man Shankar wrote: I want to try out the tiling window managers. If you're not already fixed to Awesome or Xmonad you might also want to have a look at ion. [1] I am using it on my notebook which has a relatively small screen resolution of 1024x768, so most time I was rearranging windows to see two or more at once. Since I use ion3 there (which I learned to use very fast) work was sped up considerably. -cf [1] http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/ signature.asc Description: OpenPGP digital signature
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
Hi, Man Shankar wrote: Hello, I want to try out the tiling window managers. I would want to know the experiences of the users about awesome and xmonad. Primarily i would like to know which of those two tiling WMs has worked for you guys. The hurdles you encountered and the gains you got thereof. Currently i am a happy e16 user, but the fact that the tiling WMs manage the windows makes me attracted to them. Please comment. I switched from e16 to xmonad last summer and haven't regret it so far. One important thing though is to get used to the tiling paradigm, i.e. letting the wm do all the resize and positioning work. I suggest you try it some time and see if it fits you. Personally I started using it only on my home pc while I kept e16 on the laptop for work until I couldn't resist a complete switch to it anymore. I've recently also started using awesome in a few virtual machines, mainly due to the large size of the xmonad dependencies (GHC takes up quite some space). From my point of view they both look fairly the same with awesome having a few more features (tagging, widgets). It also helps to regard the configuration file (xmonad and = awesome-3.0) as the main program, e.g. my xmonad.hs looks a bit like a Haskell program where different modules get imported and the main window manager module loaded at the end. You can do quite a lot with those two. Aside from that, the main difference between them are the programming languages they're written in because you have to use it for the configuration file. Awesome uses Lua which is a simple but powerful imperative scripting language and xmonad uses Haskell, an advanced functional programming language which many consider as rather hard to learn. Personally, I didn't know anything about Haskell before using xmonad and I have to admit that I had a few very hard times with it when I wanted to do some advanced (or even simple) configuration changes. But once you wind your head around the functional paradigm (and all those operators and monads) you can do a lot with it. Have a look at the xmonad config archive[1] for some examples. If you're going to use awesome I'd recommend having a look at x11-misc/dmenu as I didn't see any default integration of it in the awesome config (though I might have missed it). Regards, Andi [1] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
Hi Man, I was a huge fan of FVWM (loved the flexibility of it) and I tried to switch to awesome. After trying a bit to understand how the configuration script work (about three days in my spare time), I understood how awesome (this one was easy :-p) this wm is. You can do pretty much what you want as the configuration script, which is using the Lua script language, can load system commands (such as conky, even thought I couldn't get it to work, but used native lua scripts with the wicked.lua library) or run native code (I use this to see the disk space, mpd songs, battery life, cpu usage with a graph, ...). One of the other things I really like in awesome, it's the fact that you can mix up tiling windows and floating ones. You can define, for certain window titles in the configuration file, the fact that they are floating. Then, when you start them, they appear as floating windows and not tiled as the rest of them. This is pretty much interesting for applications such as Skype, gitk, mplayer, ... As for other tiling wm, you can also assign tags (sort of virtual desktops) to window titles so when you start it, it goes directly there, leaving your actual tag clean with what you were doing. I have never tried xmonad, I can just share my experience with awesome. HTH, Greg On Wed, Dec 17, 2008 at 5:51 AM, Man Shankar man.ee@gmail.com wrote: Hello, I want to try out the tiling window managers. I would want to know the experiences of the users about awesome and xmonad. Primarily i would like to know which of those two tiling WMs has worked for you guys. The hurdles you encountered and the gains you got thereof. Currently i am a happy e16 user, but the fact that the tiling WMs manage the windows makes me attracted to them. Please comment. -- Regards, Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
On 09:39 Wed 17 Dec , Gregory SACRE wrote: Hi Man, I was a huge fan of FVWM (loved the flexibility of it) and I tried to switch to awesome. After trying a bit to understand how the configuration script work (about three days in my spare time), I understood how awesome (this one was easy :-p) this wm is. You can do pretty much what you want as the configuration script, which is using the Lua script language, can load system commands (such as conky, even thought I couldn't get it to work, but used native lua scripts with the wicked.lua library) or run native code (I use this to see the disk space, mpd songs, battery life, cpu usage with a graph, ...). Sounds great but when i customize the file and save it in ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua and reload, nothing seems to happen. I am trying to get working with awesome-3.1. Am i missing anything. One of the other things I really like in awesome, it's the fact that you can mix up tiling windows and floating ones. You can define, for certain window titles in the configuration file, the fact that they are floating. Then, when you start them, they appear as floating windows and not tiled as the rest of them. This is pretty much interesting for applications such as Skype, gitk, mplayer, ... As for other tiling wm, you can also assign tags (sort of virtual desktops) to window titles so when you start it, it goes directly there, leaving your actual tag clean with what you were doing. That is a required feature because some stupid programs dont go well with the tiling concept. Another neat feature i found in default xmonad was the fact that there was no gap between adjacent windows. I am sure awesome should be able to do that as well, just that the default conf doesnt. But, then again i really haven't dug in. -- Regards, Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:52:37 +0530 Man Shankar man.ee@gmail.com wrote: On 09:39 Wed 17 Dec , Gregory SACRE wrote: One of the other things I really like in awesome, it's the fact that you can mix up tiling windows and floating ones. You can define, for certain window titles in the configuration file, the fact that they are floating. Then, when you start them, they appear as floating windows and not tiled as the rest of them. This is pretty much interesting for applications such as Skype, gitk, mplayer, ... As for other tiling wm, you can also assign tags (sort of virtual desktops) to window titles so when you start it, it goes directly there, leaving your actual tag clean with what you were doing. That is a required feature because some stupid programs dont go well with the tiling concept. Another neat feature i found in default xmonad was the fact that there was no gap between adjacent windows. I am sure awesome should be able to do that as well, just that the default conf doesnt. But, then again i really haven't dug in. Look at point 3.3 in http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/index.php?title=FAQ Like Gregory, I really like awesome but I have never tried xmonad. However I have recently switched from Ion3. Cheers, Dede
Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
I am an xmonad user now. I installed awesome once, but didn't try to understand much details of it, so no comment on awesome. On Wed, 17 Dec 2008, Man Shankar wrote: On 09:39 Wed 17 Dec , Gregory SACRE wrote: Hi Man, I was a huge fan of FVWM (loved the flexibility of it) and I tried to switch to awesome. After trying a bit to understand how the configuration script work (about three days in my spare time), I understood how awesome (this one was easy :-p) this wm is. You can do pretty much what you want as the configuration script, which is using the Lua script language, can load system commands (such as conky, even thought I couldn't get it to work, but used native lua scripts with the wicked.lua library) or run native code (I use this to see the disk space, mpd songs, battery life, cpu usage with a graph, ...). Sounds great but when i customize the file and save it in ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua and reload, nothing seems to happen. I am trying to get working with awesome-3.1. Am i missing anything. One of the other things I really like in awesome, it's the fact that you can mix up tiling windows and floating ones. You can define, for certain window titles in the configuration file, the fact that they are floating. Then, when you start them, they appear as floating windows and not tiled as the rest of them. This is pretty much interesting for applications such as Skype, gitk, mplayer, ... As for other tiling wm, you can also assign tags (sort of virtual desktops) to window titles so when you start it, it goes directly there, leaving your actual tag clean with what you were doing. That is a required feature because some stupid programs dont go well with the tiling concept. Another neat feature i found in default xmonad was the fact that there was no gap between adjacent windows. I am sure awesome should be able to do that as well, just that the default conf doesnt. But, then again i really haven't dug in. In xmonad default, the size hint of some programs are ignored. Like terminal staffs, urxvt, xterm, gvim. So sometimes they will leave a half line on the bottom after certain resize action, as of new windows opened. Solved with an HintedTile tiling mod in xmonad-contrib. -- Regards, Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
[gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad
Hello, I want to try out the tiling window managers. I would want to know the experiences of the users about awesome and xmonad. Primarily i would like to know which of those two tiling WMs has worked for you guys. The hurdles you encountered and the gains you got thereof. Currently i am a happy e16 user, but the fact that the tiling WMs manage the windows makes me attracted to them. Please comment. -- Regards, Man Shankar man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com
