[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>

On Wed, 17 Dec 2008 21:52:37 +0530
Man Shankar <man.ee.gen.TakeThisOut@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

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>
>
>

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

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>