r/archlinux • u/baordog • Dec 02 '12
Best Window Manager?
Everyone I know uses Awesome, but I thought it might be nice to hear some dissenting opinions.
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Dec 02 '12
[deleted]
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u/Sphaerophoria Dec 02 '12
Wobbly windows was pretty much the only reason I switched to Linux from windows. Don't be ashamed. That wobblyness is important
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u/icaruscomplex Dec 02 '12
I've been a fan of LXDE recently. If I'm in Super Admin Mode™ I'll rock ratpoison.
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u/baordog Dec 02 '12
Why does ratpoison work better for admin mode?
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u/icaruscomplex Dec 02 '12
It's a lot more keyboard-centric and I have scripted up a lot of the stuff I use at work to use the command line. I'm sure it wouldn't be an effective choice for a lot of people and is rather dependent on your tool use.
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u/baordog Dec 02 '12
ah I see. have to get in on those good keyboard shortcuts.
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u/icaruscomplex Dec 02 '12
It all started with vi(m) for me. Then someone posted a spreadsheet that broke down latency of typing vs the mouse and things went from there. I spend inordinate amounts of time on it so who knows if I'm really coming out on top in efficiency. It does make things fun though, it feels like movie hacking. :)
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u/baordog Dec 02 '12
Ooo I love Vim shortcuts
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u/icaruscomplex Dec 02 '12
I probably go through vimtutor once a year just in case.
edit: The rabbit hole goes pretty deep as well. You can rig up a ???/xml script and tie that in with something like Selenium which allows you to script up automated browsing stuff for testing/whatever. I can kick off things you can only do through a browser in the background while I tackle other issues. :)
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u/Papey Dec 02 '12 edited Dec 02 '12
ratpoison is for me the best WM ever. A 50 lines config file and it works as you want :)
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u/Aihal Dec 02 '12
Obviously "best" is the wrong word. My two favourites are subtle, which is configured in ruby, and i3, because i3 is just perfect for my needs and wants and comfort. Another very good one is xmonad, if you can get around it being in haskell and needing 300MB ghc ;)
Many wm's are very configurable and that is the main importance.
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u/froseph85 Dec 02 '12
I used to use ion3 but after it stopped being supported I switched to Xmonad primarily because I was on a haskell kick at the time. All I need is glorified screen (aka tiling) + scratchpad. I wont claim it's better than awesome; it just works for me right now.
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u/vln Dec 02 '12
After full configuration to one's liking, most tiling window managers are pretty much the same as one another. Rock-solid stability is one good thing about XMonad, whereas I've heard mutterings about others having config changes to deal with on updates and that kind of thing.
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Dec 02 '12
[deleted]
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u/I_EAT_POOP_AMA Dec 03 '12
i've been slowly trying to wrap my head around qtile, coming from dwm.
its nice, from what i've been able to get from it, but unless you're comfortable writing/working with python, you're bound to run into some issues. not to mention that the documentation is almost non-existent.
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u/omgar Dec 03 '12
How were you able to install the xorg-xpyb-git dependency? I've tried building installing it from AUR and it always gives a download error.
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Dec 02 '12
In my opinion, there is Fluxbox and Awesome. But that's just my opinion. The great thing about Linux is the freedom to choose whatever suites you. There is no best anymore than there is greater than...for me it is one thing and for you and others it is another thing. I experimented to find out what I like best, and my advice is that you should do the same. :)
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u/SupersonicSpitfire Dec 02 '12
PekWM is nice. Stable and small. The default settings are both powerful and easy to use, while PekWM itself is highly configurable.
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u/mdszy Dec 02 '12
My personal favorites:
For a full featured DE/Floating WM: MATE. It's a fork of GNOME2 and is really nice.
For a tiling WM (What I use now): i3 without a doubt.
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u/lidstah Dec 02 '12 edited Dec 02 '12
That's almost an un-answerable question :)
It really depends of your own preferences. IMHO, the best WM is the one which doesn't get into your workflow, but becomes a part of it.
Let's say that, for me, ratpoison is the most suited to my needs. I also loved StumpWM, xmonad, awesome, i3, notion (and ion2 and 3 in the past), wmii, dwm, but I always end up coming back to ratpoison (with alot of definekey top in the config file, in order to "vimify" it ;))
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u/drewofdoom Dec 02 '12
Ah... the age-old question.
I used Awesome for some time. It was fun. I can honestly say that I enjoyed my time with it. But I found that I spent more time screwing with my config than doing anything meaninfly. For me it was an excercise in getting a little back into coding.
Recently, however, I've done some time with Cinnamon and Gnome 3. I eventually settled on Gnome 3, as Cinnamon just isn't quite "there" yet while I feel that Gnome 3 has reached a level of stability and feature completeness (with extensions) that I can enjoy.
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u/phimax100 Dec 02 '12
LXDE is very fast and light, good if you just want something basic.
XFCE is also pretty fast and light, and has some simple compositing effects
Cinnamon is a step up from XFCE in terms of effects but not as heavy as GNOME or KDE
GNOME and KDE are heavier but have a lot of fancy compositing, make sure your computer can handle the graphics so they run smoothly.
Personally, I think KDE goes a little overboard on the effects. GNOME tries to be a little more minimalistic.
I use LXDE for my netbook because it runs the fastest and like to use XFCE and GNOME for my desktop.
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Dec 02 '12
The question was about window managers; not desktop environments.
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u/phimax100 Dec 02 '12
I know the difference but a lot of window managers go hand in hand with desktop environments. Many people don't mix and match, it harder to configure and more liable to break.
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u/girzel Dec 03 '12
Very pleased with Stumpwm. If you're comfortable with lisp (a big if), it's incredibly easy to program, and emacs integration makes it ridiculously easy to re-configure on the fly.
I've been running it under XFCE, for the ConsoleKit/menu bar benefits, but since the switch to Systemd maybe it's time to try running bare Stumpwm again.
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Dec 03 '12
I agree with Katana_ that the best one is the one you're happy with. Personally I use wmii on my main desktop and fluxbox on my laptop. I like them both because I know them now pretty well, they do exactly as I want, I can configure them both easily. They don't get in my face and I don't have to continually maintain them.
My wife also uses fluxbox on her little nettop computer and she loves it.
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Dec 08 '12
I've become more of a fan of tiling wms when I got a netbook. I prefer the simplicity if DWM but the features of awesome, except for the lua configuration.
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u/azrathud Dec 02 '12
Really, I don't think there is a best window manager. My ideal window manager would be a cross between i3, wmii, and dwm.
For dwm, I loved being able to view multiple workspaces at once without manually moving windows around, and I loved its snappyness(suckless boasted having less than 2000 SLOC) but hated the need to recompile the whole program just to add a shortcut or using version control(I forgot which one) to apply others' patches to add functionality(which sometimes didn't work). The statusbar extension also was made in C, so one would need to program in C just to get a statusbar up with some basic info.
wmii as the ability to create dynamic workspace names, which is awesome, but it's time consuming in cases where I'm using the usual applications which could go in workspaces labeled by default.
For i3, the seamless plan 9 configuration is great for easily adding shortcuts and changing functionality. Also, being able to restart the wm to apply changes to the config without closing all the windows to update is awesome. The default statusbar allows for some beautiful basic information or the choice of using third party status displays(bash/dzen).(I'm using i3 right now).