Minimalistic WM's! What're your favs?

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kraylus · Post by **kraylus** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:23 pm

http://evilwm.sourceforge.net/

any thoughts on this wm? never heard of it til a few seconds ago. a co-worker told me about a slashdot post.

looks a little too minimalistic...

but i like the slogan they have on their homepage

Post by **pjp** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:34 pm

There's been an ebuild for evilwm for a long time.

I installed it briefly, but thought it seemed a bit kludgy. By that, I mean the appearance of window controls and the like. I probably had it running for less than a minute.

EDIT: After looking at the screenshot on their front page, I'm guessing it wasn't the widget set that turned me off. Maybe I need to give it another shot.

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:42 pm

I use it from time to time and it's pretty cool but I prefer pekwm. If anyone decides to use it put this in your ~/.xinitrc

Code: Select all

xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr &
evilwm

so that you get a nice cursor rather than an ugly big X.
About the slashdot post it must be a slow day as there isn't even a review and it's not as if evilwm is new or anything. Am I missing something?

kraylus · Post by **kraylus** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:50 pm

nrl wrote:I use it from time to time and it's pretty cool but I prefer pekwm. If anyone decides to use it put this in your ~/.xinitrc
Code: Select all
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr &
evilwm
so that you get a nice cursor rather than an ugly big X.
About the slashdot post it must be a slow day as there isn't even a review and it's not as if evilwm is new or anything. Am I missing something?

http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/01/1 ... 04&tid=189

it's the second article on the frontpage.

the fact that you can't have shaded windows or even widgets turns me off to the idea.

i tried pekwm awhile ago but i don't remember at all what happened or even if i liked it... but i remember a really awesome theme that someone had with it, which is why i tried it in the first place.

*sigh*

no matter what wm i try... i always come crawling back to fluxbox

kraylus · Post by **kraylus** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:52 pm

ooo, found another one. a bit better:

http://golem.sourceforge.net/

should rename this to minimalistic wm's....

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 6:59 pm

kraylus wrote:
nrl wrote:I use it from time to time and it's pretty cool but I prefer pekwm. If anyone decides to use it put this in your ~/.xinitrc
Code: Select all
xsetroot -cursor_name left_ptr &
evilwm
so that you get a nice cursor rather than an ugly big X.
About the slashdot post it must be a slow day as there isn't even a review and it's not as if evilwm is new or anything. Am I missing something?
http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/01/1 ... 04&tid=189

it's the second article on the frontpage.

I have seen the article, what I meant was that it is not news and there is not a review (the guy has only written one paragraph) and I am sure most /. geeks have heard of evilwm so why is it on the front page?
I am not really bothered, the /. editors can post whatever the hell they like, but I just thought I would clear this up as it seems you misunderstood me.

Edit: It seems to have evolved into an interesting discussion on minimal window managers so I am glad it was posted

.

d3c3it · Post by **d3c3it** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 7:05 pm

i just looked at it myself, kinda didnt fit my needs either. im messing with pekwm myself right now, i cant get it to do what i want and im completly confused about which version to use cvs, stable or unstable. both the unstable and cvs arnt in portage *in bugs thou* i use fluxbox all the time but i wish i could turn off the toolbar and have embeded tabs *dev version only has them:(*

Post by **pjp** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 7:08 pm

As for minimalistic WMs, I prefer Fluxbox, but that could be because I'm more familiar with it than most. The primary fault to non-fluxbox WMs (for me) is the initial perception that they are ugly.

pekwm and waimea are interesting, but I really don't like having to reformat my config files. Waimea is particularly bad in this regard, because the format seems very similar, but changed just to be different. For example, changing the comment from # to ! (uh, hello!?). Maybe I'll make a conversion script.

gsfgf · Post by **gsfgf** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 10:48 pm

KDE3!!!

on a serious note, i use flux as a minimalistic wm. I use E as my normal wm, i don't know if it counts as minimalist (since it's not a DE) or not.

Lovechild · Post by **Lovechild** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:07 pm

how do you people live without the functionality that a real DE brings?

yes yes, here comes the arguments of deeply underpowered machines that shouldn't be running X in the first place. And the "it's more in the spirit of Linux - plus it makes me feel like an 1337 h4x0r" comments.

Seriously, I cannot come up with one single thing that I would rather use say fluxbox for than GNOME.. Help me understand your possibly twisted minds

nrl · Post by **nrl** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:13 pm

Lovechild wrote:how do you people live without the functionality that a real DE brings?

What functionality? There is nothing in a DE that I need so why bother?

yes yes, here comes the arguments of deeply underpowered machines that shouldn't be running X in the first place.

My machine (P4 2.8GHz, 512 MB DDR) can run a DE fine but I would rather not.

Seriously, I cannot come up with one single thing that I would rather use say fluxbox for than GNOME.. Help me understand your possibly twisted minds

I must say there is not one single thing in GNOME or KDE that would make we want to use them.

At the end of the day it is simply a matter of personal preference.

Help me understand your possibly twisted minds

Jarjar · Post by **Jarjar** » Sun Jun 01, 2003 11:28 pm

pekwm.
I used fluxbox for about 2 years before I switched - and I'll never think of going back.

d3c3it · Post by **d3c3it** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 12:14 am

Lovechild wrote:how do you people live without the functionality that a real DE brings?

yes yes, here comes the arguments of deeply underpowered machines that shouldn't be running X in the first place. And the "it's more in the spirit of Linux - plus it makes me feel like an 1337 h4x0r" comments.

Seriously, I cannot come up with one single thing that I would rather use say fluxbox for than GNOME.. Help me understand your possibly twisted minds

oh i love GNOME and KDE *latest versions* there very powerful and capable DE i just dont need it. i dont need a task bar or a file manager i just like speed, and a console does that for me. i still like having an X setup i just dont use KDE nor GNOME to there full compacity so its a waste of space and an emerge for me. fluxbox does everything for me and once ive got pekwm sorted ill be using that from now on. i dont feel any more leet for using fluxbox i just like a clean desktop, no icons or taskbar:) even my xp desktop is like that ive no icons on it. guess everyone works differently:) ive got a 1.1ghz celery and kde3 with all its bangs and bings worked without a glitch i just didnt see the point of it because i always seemed to just load up flux and use that instead. i do thou like all the hardware type control panel of both those DE's but ive got my system sorted so i would use it.
if i was to install gentoo on my main box *hopefully soon:)* im going for gnome2, its worth it on there:)

gsfgf · Post by **gsfgf** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 1:32 am

I never used desktop icons
i prefer to start thing either by hotkeys or a simple menu accessable with one click or a hot key. both E and flux provide this. The Kpanel had the same function as well. However i never needed the excess features of a DE so i switched to flux. Then i found E which is sexier, so i use it. But i don't use many of the E features. Scrolling desktops, pager, etc. KDE isn't bad, it's just more than i need ad sometimes gets in the way. I've never used gnome.

Evilwm looks like too minimal. I like titlebars. Apps look funny without them. I like being able to shade (and occasionally minimise) windows.

RdsArts · Post by **RdsArts** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 1:43 am

kraylus wrote:ooo, found another one. a bit better:

http://golem.sourceforge.net/

should rename this to minimalistic wm's....

Ooo, that's pretty sharp...

Is there a theme site with screen shots? I might just think about trying that.

RedBeard0531 · Post by **RedBeard0531** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 3:21 am

I love kde apps, I just found kde too slow for my p2 400 lappy. I now runem in flux and its quite skipy. I just tab everything to be 1 big window, and use the tab bar as my taskbar.

Ari Rahikkala · Post by **Ari Rahikkala** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 9:05 am

Heh... I used to use IceWM until three days ago (that's quite coincidentally two days before EvilWM was mentioned at Slashdot) until I found EvilWM. Now, I did love IceWM. IceWM is the sort of window manager that concentrates on just being highly usable and pretty good-looking the very moment you start it up - you never really need to configure it because the defaults just work. EvilWM, on the other hand, is probably used rarely in its pristine form - it's easy to hack* (even for a C newbie like me) but its default behaviour isn't really what I'd call reasonable. But once you've made it work the way you want, it's wonderful. Not because it does everything you need - it doesn't - but because it doesn't do anything you don't need.

Lovechild: Well, geek appeal is one argument... but there's a couple more. I've tried to use both KDE and GNOME. Several times. Versions being KDE 3.1 and GNOME 2.2, IIRC. I did ooh and aah at the features and pretty visuals for a while... but after a while, simply found myself repulsed by the environments. I'm not quite sure of what it was that always made me go back to more minimalistic stuff - I'm inclined to quote Agent Smith here and say something about the smell... maybe it was that the more I tried to theme them, the uglier they looked (and I dislike the default look of KDE already - GNOME looks nice, though). Maybe it was that I did not want my environment to have unexpected and/or useless features. Maybe it was that because they didn't look that different from IceWM, I expected them to run like IceWM but wasn't able to configure them just right. Most probably, however, it was simply that I've grown used to a different way of using a computer; I always start my apps from terminal emulators, I look at the CPU usage meter (previously built-in to IceWM, now in gkrellm) and possibly listen to the HD to tell if my computer is doing anything worthwhile, and I drop to the terminal if I need lots of free memory. Those big, featureful desktop environments are too different for me to use comfortably anymore.

* I made the mouse cursor warp to the window that was last in focus when switching to a workspace, instead of warping to the oldest window. My code is a horrible wart in the otherwise beautiful EvilWM source so I'm not going to publish it (at least before cleaning it up). Anyway, in 0.99.14 I did it by adding "DEFINES += -DVWM_WARP" to the Makefile and by moving the client currently in focus to the head of the list of clients in the beginning of switch_vdesk (using XGetInputFocus(), find_client() and a little knowledge of linked lists). When you switch workspaces, EvilWM goes through the linked list hiding and raising windows depending on whether they are on the workspace you're going to or not, and warps the mouse cursor to the first window that gets raised. This hack makes that window always the one that was in focus when you last switched away from its workspace.

Forse · Post by **Forse** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 1:33 pm

I use Blackbox for daily things. After I put some nice wallpaper and I choose some geeky theme, I feel like I am home. I tired Fluxbox, OpenBox and so, but for some reason (I don't even know why) I always went back to blackbox. KDE and GNOME are for me (this is just personal opinion) are Windowz clones. They're huge in size, take a lot of ram, crash and have useless staff that none of us needs on daily bases.

ggelln · Post by **ggelln** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 1:53 pm

speaking of the /. articles (let us not forget why evilwm was posted). . . it lead me back to fvwm!
oh the joy

there is just something right about retro -- cde widgets, hot salmon active windows . . . feels like *NIX, makes me think ``ahh this was the joy of computing in the 80's''. I open an xterm and it all just feels right. Reminds me why I all that is wrong with OSX's vison of *NIX.

It isn't for everyone, but if you're the kind of person who prefers Mutt to Evolution, prefers typing to clicking, gets annoyed when programs write their config files without asking, and generally expects their WM to do what they say when they say without a fuss, then it might just be for you. And if you're not that kind of person, well...wait for it. Linux tends to have this effect on people

taken from: http://www.igs.net/~tril/fvwm/

Gabriel

kraylus · Post by **kraylus** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 4:05 pm

ggelln wrote:taken from: http://www.igs.net/~tril/fvwm/

Gabriel

dude!

well crafted articles like that really really make an impression on me and i want nothing more than to go home early and emerge fvwm. *drool*

thanks for that!

anyhoo, in the spirit of this thread, i prefer fluxbox (tho i really wanna try fvwm) and no matter what else i try, i always go back to fluxbox.

and like the author of that article, i too started with kde 1.1 and loved it. absolutely.

ah well...

i've tried e16 but it just doesn't cut it. and as a previous poster mentioned... they just don't smell right.

damn, i'm really tempted to say "ooorgh, i dont feel too good guys, i gotta head home for the day".

hehe.

ryan

ggelln · Post by **ggelln** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 6:37 pm

I am also swayed by well written articles . . . why I am not using pekwm at the moment

I would also recommend to emerge fvwm-themes gives you some examples of what fvwm can do (which I found helpful)

if you do this you will have to add exec fvwm-themes,
as it (as far as I realize) calls fvwm for you (and not vice-versa)

Tell us what you think of fvwm

I am so happy . . .

Gabriel

jt42 · Post by **jt42** » Mon Jun 02, 2003 7:02 pm

I pretty much alternate between fluxbox and openbox, with more time spent in openbox. I used to use WindowMaker. I've played with waimea, and some of the others but keep coming back to openbox.

What makes a WM/DE useable for me

1. the ability to bind desktop switch to ALT-1,ALT-2,ALT-3,ALT-4,...

It is now hardwired in my brain that I hit ALT-3 when I go to read my mail, ALT-2 for the web browser workspace, Alt-4 for the editor workspace and so on.

2. bindable maximize, maximize vertical, maximize horizontal, and shade

My brain is similarly hardwired with respect to CTRL-ALT-(A|H|V|S) for maximize, max-horiz, max-vert, shade.

3. some kind of persistant slit|dock|whatever for Temperature.App and WmCalClock

4. Some way to display "click and launch" icons.

I've used wmdrawer, bbbutton, and acidlaunch with varying degrees of success and need this feature.

kermitjunior · Post by **kermitjunior** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 1:34 am

jt42 wrote:I pretty much alternate between fluxbox and openbox, with more time spent in openbox. I used to use WindowMaker. I've played with waimea, and some of the others but keep coming back to openbox.

What makes a WM/DE useable for me

1. the ability to bind desktop switch to ALT-1,ALT-2,ALT-3,ALT-4,...

It is now hardwired in my brain that I hit ALT-3 when I go to read my mail, ALT-2 for the web browser workspace, Alt-4 for the editor workspace and so on.

Sounds like you'd like Screen.

xedx · Post by **xedx** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 1:49 am

nowadays i rarely start X . but if i really need to, i use Fluxbox .
also i would be checking out Ratpoison, which has Screen-like features

S_aIN_t · Post by **S_aIN_t** » Wed Jun 18, 2003 5:54 am

i use pekwm.. although i used fluxbox before that.. but pekwm is really nice.. i like it alot..

EDIT: sorry for the double post.. Opera tricked me.

Minimalistic WM's! What're your favs?

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