From: Carl Alexander Subject:Help me find the window-manager of my dreams Date: May 22, 2012 Hi all--- I sat in front of an X head of one sort or another most every day from about 1992 to 2005, but not since --- until a few months ago. I've been using Xubuntu (11.10 and now 12.04) without customizing the UI, so as to get comfortable with the new normal. Now I have a pretty good idea what I love about the new --- and what I miss about the old. So I'm looking for some advice, which I suspect will take the form of recommendations for window-managers. My old X setup was already long-in-the-tooth in 2005, and I already know that my old window-manager (ctwm) is not the right answer. (Not least because one of the main reasons I gave up having an X head was that I spend easily half my time on Macs these days, and switching back and forth between click-to-focus and focus-follows-mouse was making me crazy. Claude (the c in ctwm) hates click-to-focus, and ctwm's support for it is lacking.) So I'm hoping people can tell me about modern window-managers that can DWIW. There are two critical features ctwm that I want from a new window-manager: DontMoveOff, and Occupy. DontMoveOff (which IIRC goes all the way back to twm) prevents windows from being dragged off the workspace --- not even partway off: if you grab a window by the titlebar and drag it in ctwm with this flag set, it will stop when its leading edge meets the edge of the desktop. (This is sort of the antithesis of the feature in xfwm where draging a window to the border between workspaces will switch you into that workspace, bringing the window with you.) (I've been told edge resistance in compiz may be close enough to suit me --- but I'd love to hear about modern window-managers that explicitly support DontMoveOff.) Occupy lets you set which applications are allowed to place their windows in which workspaces. I use some applications that spawn a lot of little windows, and I very much prefer having them show up in their own workspace, so I can stay focused on work in another. (I suspect a tool like wmctrl or devil's pie might let me do this even with window managers that don't specifically support it --- but I'm holding off on looking into those for now.) Other ctwm features I would really _like_ in a new window-manager, but aren't critical, include windows that are literally tabbed (that is, the titlebar occupies a fraction of the top of the window --- like the tab on a file folder). Another is "NoTitle", which sets a list of apps whose windows won't be given titlebars. that won't be given titlebars). And configurable menus, bound to various kinds of clicks on the workspace background. Those are the things I'm really feeling the lack of. This next one I'm not even sure exists, and it's very much a "boy it would be nice" rather than a "not having this is driving me batty". But where better to float the idea than here? I've started using xrandr with two identical monitors, and what I would totally love would be a virtual workspace manager that integrates with it. So, say I have 7 vitrtual workspaces, each 1920x1200; w1 is in my left monitor; w2 in my right; there's a workspace manager widget in each display. I click w5 in my left workspace manager; it takes over that screen. I move my mouse to the right, and it crosses into w2 on that display.... I'm sure you get the idea. Does anything do this? If this sounds like a window-manager you know and love, please let me know. Thanks in advance! ---Alex From: Aaron W. Hsu Date: May 22, 2012 Carl Alexander wrote: > DontMoveOff (which IIRC goes all the way back to twm) prevents > windows from being dragged off the workspace --- not even partway > off: if you grab a window by the titlebar and drag it in ctwm > with this flag set, it will stop when its leading edge meets the > edge of the desktop. (This is sort of the antithesis of the > feature in xfwm where draging a window to the border between > workspaces will switch you into that workspace, bringing the > window with you.) (I've been told edge resistance in compiz may > be close enough to suit me --- but I'd love to hear about modern > window-managers that explicitly support DontMoveOff.) You do not need to stick just to Compiz to get that sort of thing. KDE's Kwin also support snap edges, which basically do what you want, except that they give up on forcing you if you keep trying to move the window off the screen. A quick check has not revealed to me whether you can configure DontMoveOff on Kwin, but you might want to check out one of Gnome 3 or KDE 4.8 and see how they serve your needs. I know that some of the alternatives should support what you want, but I have never actually wanted to do this, so I do not know which ones do. Some popular modern WMs are OpenBox, FluxBox, Fvwm2, WindowMaker, StumpWm (if you like tiling window managers), among others. You might want to check out www.xwinman.org. > Occupy lets you set which applications are allowed to place their > windows in which workspaces. I use some applications that spawn a > lot of little windows, and I very much prefer having them show up > in their own workspace, so I can stay focused on work in another. > (I suspect a tool like wmctrl or devil's pie might let me do this > even with window managers that don't specifically support it --- > but I'm holding off on looking into those for now.) Both KDE and Gnome allow you to configure a click action on your program launchers, so that when you launch a given program, it will launch in its own workspace. This works very well in Gnome, where you have arbitrary workspaces that are created on demand. Otherwise, I think there are some advanced settings in KDE that will let you have some control over how windows are placed, and where. I do not use these features, so I have only seen them in the System Settings. Other window managers might require that you explicitly set this somehow when you launch the application, but again, I do not know how you might do it, but I would be surprised if some of the other WMs could not do this. > Other ctwm features I would really _like_ in a new window-manager, > but aren't critical, include windows that are literally tabbed > (that is, the titlebar occupies a fraction of the top of the > window --- like the tab on a file folder). Another is "NoTitle", > which sets a list of apps whose windows won't be given titlebars. > that won't be given titlebars). And configurable menus, bound > to various kinds of clicks on the workspace background. I think FluxBox and some other WMs have this sort of thing, and nearly all of the tiling window managers support this to one degree or another. In the System Settings of KDE you can set up custom rules for windows that indicates whether to allow them to have title bars or not, with different ways of matching what windows should trigger the rule. > I've started using xrandr with two identical monitors, and what > I would totally love would be a virtual workspace manager that > integrates with it. So, say I have 7 vitrtual workspaces, each > 1920x1200; w1 is in my left monitor; w2 in my right; there's a > workspace manager widget in each display. I click w5 in my > left workspace manager; it takes over that screen. I move my > mouse to the right, and it crosses into w2 on that display.... > I'm sure you get the idea. Does anything do this? Many WMs have a notion of sticky windows, which allow them to stay visible even when you change workspaces. KDE has a very powerful Plasma concept that allows you to do all sorts of things with your desktops, and even have multiple desktops doing different things (such as holding icons, widges, menus, images, and so forth). I think in general that you will find nearly all of the modern Desktop Environments and popular window managers can do at least some of this stuff, though for some it might require some reading and careful hacking to get it just right. I have been very pleased with the latest releases of both the Gnome and KDE desktop environments, and the old standby WMs continue to be good choices. In other words, things are really pretty good in the Desktop world of Linux right now, IMO, and you are spoiled for choice and options, even within a single DE, like KDE, which is amazingly configurable. -- Aaron W. Hsu | arcfide@sacrideo.us | http://www.sacrideo.us Programming is just another word for the lost art of thinking.