Hi there, I’m looking at floating window mangers as an in-between of DEs and escaping configuration hell (somewhat) of tiling Window Managers.
Specifically, I was looking at IceWM and OpenBox, but would love recommendations and discussion on what you like and why.
Cheers!
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I’m pretty sure KDE’s window manager, kwin, can do all of those things through kwin scripts and window rules, except the pager doesn’t show the details of windows on other desktops, just the outline.
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This sounds amazing!!! Too bad it’s gone…
This sounds like my dream windows manager but it’s dead. Happiest and saddest news.
This was a fun one! Now, I use Gnome, after I discontinued my own fork of catwm called ocelot (but this was a tiling wm based on dwm, anyway).
fvwm is super-old-school but incredibly flexible.
Thanks, I’ll try this. I think with a bit of config and a better theme this would be great
Ah, like
bspwmthen.If I was younger, I’d jump on the idea to be able to configure everything to my liking and making a “perfect” setup. However, I want to reach a compromise between a lean system and something which has sane defaults OOTB. Your setup seems fantastic but it’s going to take me a week or so, which is not what I want to do. Thank you for mentioning your project though.
OpenBox & Xfwm. I’m keeping an eye on labwc, which is a new openbox clone for wlroots. It’s already suitable for everyday use.
Thanks for the suggestions. Do you think I can get away with running just
xfwm4instead of the entire XFCE DE? I’m trying to stay light, which is why I would like to avoid DEs for the most part.Isn’t
labwcjust a compositor?You’ll also want a root window which is provided by xfdesktop4 (or you can use an equivalent from another DE). You can use just the window manager if you want but you won’t like it. Or you can use something like Openbox which includes everything needed (it’s a tiny complete DEs not just a window manager).
Thanks, I’m looking at OpenBox, IceWM and FWM for now. I believe there are some other niche floating window managers too, but after attempting to configure ratpoison a while back (after which I realised that it was no longer supported) I don’t want to configure as much for a WM to work.
Try pop_os. It’s gnome tiling can be enabled and disabled from the top bar and it’s defaults are sane and easy to change.
Thanks, but I’m trying to avoid DEs for the most part. I’ll keep this in mind though
For X, I’d probably go for Openbox. For Wayland, I have tried Hikari, but it reminded me why I don’t like floating window managers, so I don’t use it, but it seems really cool! Also, there is labwc which is supposed to be an Openbox replacement for Wayland, but I can’t tell you anything about it cuz I haven’t tried it.
This stick I use so that my window doesn’t slam closed
Awesome or Hikari. Depends on X11 vs Wayland.
Thanks!
The Xfce one. I don’t see the point of simple WM for floating windows. I use a WM because it is the only solution for a proper tiling window manager.
I suggest jwm!
Thanks, I’ll take a look
dwm for anything other than gaming. no close competition imho
What about dwm makes it a more appealing choice compared to XMonad? (Excluding the C vs Haskell argument)
i dont have much experience with xmonad but i tried every wm at some point. usually the things that keep me with dwm is that i found a build with very sane defaults and a number of patches i appreciate like swallowing, fake fullscreen(so you can fullscreen a program inside the assigned window) or xresources/pywal integration . i also love the scratchpad implementation and the tag system with a tag 0. i also like dwmblocks for the status bar . now im sure some of this features are available on other wm but i never found all of them in one like on DWM.
i also use ST as terminal and it works great with dwm while it gives me issues with other WM(usually resizing issues)
XMonad has most of the features you’ve listed though: window swallowing, fake fullscreen (other solutions exist: tabbed layout, fullscreen…), xresources (other solutions exist, just not familiar of them tbh), scratchpad, tags, taffybar and many more features in xmonad-contrib!
Does XMonad have a master-slave layout?
Do you have an image at hand that showcases that layout? The only images I am finding from a little DDG’ing are similar to XMonad’s XMonad.Layout.ThreeColumns, but I am not sure if that is what you are looking for.
Master-slave layout essentially splits your screen into just two windows. Any new window opening gets automatically assigned as the new master and other windows get demoted to slave and moved down the stack.
I also quite like the stack layout dwm offers. It allows me to navigate through my windows with just up and down keys instead of left/right + up/down.
I’ve looked for dwm alternatives before but haven’t found anything that does everything dwm does. XMonad is interesting but seems daunting to set up (also Haskell)
EDiT: A quick search tells me that you can indeed have a master-slave layout on XMonad.
What you are describing for the
master-slevelayout can be achieved with either, XMonad.Layout.Grid or Tall layout (more likely, other ways to achieve this).The stack layout on the other hand can be achieved through the XMonad.Layout.Accordion? And if you are not a fan of that you could always refer to the XMonad.Layout.Tabbed.
Extra:
- mirror functionality where you can rotate your layouts. Mirroring
XMonad.Layout.Tabbedresults in a stack-like layout. - magnifying glass for your layouts and much more!
- Not a fan of a specific layout and want to adjust it a bit? XMonad.Layout.LayoutModifier is your friend!
- XMonad.Actions.WindowBringer to bring window into focus on demand.
- XMonad.Layout.ToggleLayouts toggle desired layout on specified binding.
- mirror functionality where you can rotate your layouts. Mirroring
dwm’s so good. It has pretty much everything one would need and once you’ve set it up, no need to change anything.
