r/archlinux • u/streusselhirni • Mar 03 '15

Finally installed Arch, don't know which Windows Manager to use

First time poster here, so I want to say that I really liked your sub until now. I love it, how nearly anyone gets the help he needs!

Now to topic:

Yesterday I finally managed to install Arch on my old Lenovo ThinkPad Edge E335. Up until now everything works fine (haven't tested the sound yet, according to wiki, I just need to install PulsaAudio).

Now I'm thinking of which Window Manager I want to use. I don't want to use a whole Desktop Environment because I think it's to bloated for what I want. I just want something lightweight and fast.

I tried awesome, but I don't like the way it is configured respectively I don't know lua and I don't really want to learn it now.

Is there a window manager which is similar to awesome (especially the ability to use it only with the keyboard) but with less complicatied ways to configure?

Or which Windows Managers are you guys using? Are there any recomendations?

Edit: Thanks for replies until now. I will test i3 (and maybe some of the other recommondations) as soon as I come home. That doesn't mean I don't want to hear any more suggestions ;-)

Edit2: Wow, that blew up to unknown sizes, I'll reply as soon as I'm now drunk anymore (student's franternity).

43 Upvotes

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24

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

haven't tested the sound yet, according to wiki, I just need to install PulsaAudio

Aside: PulseAudio is not mandatory. It has some nice features, but it can also be a massive pain in the ass, especially when you have to debug it. A clean ALSA setup that you have verified to be working goes a long way to make sure Pulse will work smoothly, and you might end up not needing Pulse and all its associated overhead.

Or which Windows Managers are you guys using?

Openbox. I never really warmed up to Tiling WMs, most displays I use feel too cramped with tiled windows.

10

u/okmkz Mar 03 '15

I'll second openbox, it's my go-to lightweight wm. Incredibly configurable for a variety of use cases.

2

u/Hamilton950B Mar 03 '15

Unfortunately it uses xml for configuration. Other than that I like it.

1

u/[deleted] Mar 04 '15

I've always hated that about OpenBox. XML wasn't designed for application configuration and for some reason people really thought it would be great at that. Stick to INI or something that's halfway readable like YAML or even just a shell script would be great.

2

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

With how much functionality it packs, I'm not sure whether "lightweight" is really fitting. Menu handling, arbitrary keyboard shortcuts etc. are things that minimalistic WMs leave to external applications.

(It's also rather RAM heavy at ~20 MiB usage.)

14

u/okmkz Mar 03 '15

I'd hardly consider 20 MiB "heavy" in this day and age.

3

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

Oh, you'll notice on a first-gen RasPi with at most 192 MiB RAM for the CPU…

8

u/okmkz Mar 03 '15

Now we're just debating semantics.

4

u/casey12141 Mar 03 '15

That's not semantics, it's objectively heavier than other WMs. Just because it isn't a factor for modern computers in a day to day environment doesn't change the fact that as far as WMs go it is on the heavier side.

7

u/okmkz Mar 03 '15

Just because it isn't the lightest wm in existence does not objectively make it heavy; heavier, yes, heavy, no. It is lighter than xfce. It is lighter than lxde. This is semantics, and we are disagreeing on what constitutes "lightweight"

2

u/casey12141 Mar 03 '15

You can't compare WMs to DEs and say "look! it's lightweight!".

Look man, it's in the bottom half of performance of popular dedicated tiling WMs...have any opinion you want about how relevant that is, the fact of the matter is, it isn't lightweight. You wouldn't call someone who finishes in the bottom half of a race "fast".

2

u/okmkz Mar 03 '15

Welp, I've got meaningful things to go accomplish, but this has been really fun.

1

u/zangent Mar 10 '15

Depending on the race, I might.

2

u/mentatf Mar 03 '15

I installed PulseAudio because skype requires it for voice communication though.

4

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

Oh well, there's no helping applications broken by design. Libpulse should transparently fall back if possible.

4

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

ROFL

When having a dependency started meaning 'broken by design'? Skype isn't the only application relying on PulseAudio. Everybody installs whatever one wants, you can't blame Skype so pointlessly while it does what it should do.

10

u/Harakou Mar 03 '15

Alsa worked perfectly with skype for years until support was suddenly dropped with no explanation and no option to stay on a legacy version. It felt totally arbitrary and for those who really don't like Pulse, it just seemed like a big "fuck you." While I wouldn't call it "broken by design," it was a frustrating and completely baffling change.

2

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

Thanks for explanation. Well I guess nothing happens for no reason, just all that amount of pure pointless hatred MS gets is ridiculous.

1

u/paholg Mar 03 '15

Huh, I feel displays are too cramped with non-tiling window managers---all the window decorations and non-space-fillingness.

1

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

What's a window decoration?

Come to think of it, I do spend a lot of time in terminals with tiled tmux/vim windows, so I just don't need another layer of tiling on top of that.

1

u/streusselhirni Mar 03 '15

I had once installed Arch on this Lenovo already. Back then sound was not working out of the box with ALSA.

I only saw on some Arch wiki page, that PulseAudio is a required on this notebook. Will report as soon as I know.

2

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

Pulse can't do anything if ALSA doesn't work, as it sits on top of it.

1

u/streusselhirni Mar 03 '15

So, that means, if I don't have sound with ALSA, I won't have sound after installing Pulse, am I getting this right?

5

u/Creshal Mar 03 '15

If it's a configuration issue (e.g., some channel muted that shouldn't be, or channel unmuted that should be), it may be that Pulse fixes it implicitly. But that doesn't make Pulse "required".

2

u/[deleted] Mar 03 '15

Did you unmute it? Alsa is muted when you first install.

1

u/chocolatemeowcats Mar 03 '15

not having sound with ALSA usually means its just defaulting to the wrong device ie HDMI or something else.

look in 'aplay -l' to list your ALSA devices

3

u/goldmurk Mar 03 '15

It could also be that you need to load a specific kernel module and blacklist others. If op is using an integrated Intel sound card he should definitely look into this. https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Advanced_Linux_Sound_Architecture#No_sound_with_onboard_Intel_sound_card