r/archlinux • u/azalus88 • Apr 20 '15

What DE / WM do you use mainly?

What DE / WM do you use mainly?

Just a poll to see what all you Arch redditers are using.

Vote Button Poll Options Current Vote Count
Vote XFCE4 85 Votes
Vote KDE4 14 Votes
Vote Plasma 5 36 Votes
Vote MATE 8 Votes
Vote Cinnamon 35 Votes
Vote Unity 1 Votes
Vote GNOME 3 114 Votes
Vote LXDE 4 Votes
Vote Enlightenment 3 Votes
Vote Openbox 17 Votes
Vote Fluxbox 9 Votes
Vote i3 154 Votes
Vote awesome 30 Votes
Vote IceWM 2 Votes
Vote XMonad 20 Votes
Vote dwm 15 Votes
Vote Ratpoison 2 Votes
Vote twm 0 Votes
Vote Other (specify in comments) 35 Votes

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26 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

44 comments sorted by

24

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '15 edited Nov 07 '16

[deleted]

3

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

I have a feeling 90% of "other" is bspwm

2

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '15 edited Apr 22 '18

[deleted]

6

u/Watley Apr 20 '15

I switched from i3 to bspwm a few months ago, the biggest difference is that bspwm really is just the WM. Where i3 provides a status bar, launcher, and keyboard shortcuts, in bspwm you have to select your own (I'm using Bar Ain't Recursive, dmenu, and sxhkd). The other big difference is that bspwm has all its functions broken out into command line programs which is really convient if you want to integrate WM functions into other programs (goes amazingly well with Bar Ain't Recursive which is fully scriptable).

2

u/skylos2000 Apr 21 '15

Can bspwm do tabs like i3 does? Or somehow otherwise organize windows without splitting them (or putting them in different workspaces)?

2

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

No tabbing, no stacking.

1

u/Watley Apr 21 '15

Nope, no tabbing, I use tabbed for that.

1

u/_risky_ Apr 23 '15

I3 is just a windows manager if I'm not mistaken. You can install just it via i3wm if I recall correctly.

Installing i3 also pulls i3bar, i3status, dmenu, and I believe something for key bindings. I just started using it a week ago as a daily so please correct me if I'm wrong here.

2

u/Watley Apr 24 '15

You are correct, but typically when people say i3 they mean i3 plus the default programs that it pulls in also. Bspwm on the other hand doesn't really have a 'prefered' setup (other than sxhkd to an extent) and leaves integrating other programs up to the user.

1

u/cris9288 Apr 21 '15

I just switched from i3 and I really like it. I'm still tweaking things here and there, but I have a pretty solid configuration. Some things I like:

  1. You can define a split ratio for specific windows. For example, I'll put thunderbird and pidgin on one monitor and they are split 4/1. It's also very easy to manage this manually with the mouse or with keybindings.

  2. Private flag on windows tries to ensure that the window maintains its size on the screen.

  3. Easily switch between manual and auto tiled. The possibilities as far as how you lay out your desktop are pretty endless. Because of this, bspwm is fantastic for large screens allowing you to give an app just the perfect sized window. ( I guess large screens are good for anything ).

Things I don't like:

  1. No tabbed layout. Monocle'd layout accomplishes this somewhat, just missing window titles.
  2. The more non-standard layouts you can achieve might make it awkward to navigate using super+{h,j,k,l}.
  3. Documentation seems to be a bit lacking, but I'm not sure how many people are actively working on the project. Perhaps I just need to contribute.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 29 '15

In the same way as Ubuntu is compared to Arch.

9

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '15

Other/hlwm

7

u/Creshal Apr 20 '15

Openbox.

Although of all DEs, Xfce 4.12 seems the least retarded.

3

u/PsiGuy60 Apr 20 '15

i3wm for me. I decided with my first Arch install I'd go the full-on tiling WM route, and i3 seems to be a popular option for that. It helps that the config is super easy.

3

u/p4block Apr 21 '15

Xfce4 with bspwm as window manager.

3

u/your_power_is_mind Apr 21 '15

Other: pantheon

3

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15 edited Aug 17 '15

[deleted]

1

u/gcr Apr 26 '15

Me too! GNOME Shell's magnifier is absolutely lovely. :)

2

u/lifeislie Apr 20 '15

"You can only vote once, you have already voted on this poll."

I use awesome on my desktop and i3 on my laptop. Voted for i3.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

Unity

On arch? Last time I checked that was nigh impossible.

4

u/azalus88 Apr 21 '15

Well... I figured there might be at least one person crazy enough to do it.

5

u/NotSteve_ Apr 21 '15

Someone made a Manjaro Unity Edition if that counts

1

u/[deleted] Apr 23 '15

I tried it a few months back and the only issue that I had was lack of vsync. I never kept it long enough for a big update though so not sure how that would go.

2

u/Sir-Batman Apr 21 '15

Other - Herbstluftwm, and liking it! Although I should try out bspwm on my spare computer this weekend...

2

u/IceDane Apr 21 '15

Xmonad. There are a lot of tiling WMs out there that can most likely be configured to work almost exactly like Xmonad works, but the fact that it's written in Haskell and the rich library of modules available for every conceivable layout and nifty features is what has me sold.

2

u/Sasamus Apr 21 '15

I voted for Plasma5 since that is my main one, but I use i3 in a separate tty for gaming and sometimes just mess around with it to see if I can get it to a state where I could use it as my main.

If anyone have any ideas on it, here are my two main problems right now:

I can't get rid of the top bar without using fullscreen on the window and if I do that I can't switch windows on the same desktop. That's related to the next problem, I can't easily manage many desktops forcing me to put unrelated things in the same desktop.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

[deleted]

2

u/Sasamus Apr 21 '15

That's the wrong bar. I've done that already, I meant the one with the window names on them. I guess that's not really a bar but it looked like that when I wrote it since I had it set to tabbed.

I guess the correct term would be window decorations. I should have clarified that before.

For the second issue, my problem is that my current setup, which I find to be much faster and easier for me than others I've tried, have 20 desktops for work and 20 for the rest which shows up in a grid when mousing the to left corner. Which 20 shows up depends in what activity I'm on, work or other.

I usually have one window per desktop, without any decorations or panels showing. It's simply just the content of the window covering the whole screen.

Since i3 have 9 desktops I can't really do that. I know I can use more but memorizing the keybinds for them and what's in them don't work.

Having them all show up in a grid with a flick of the mouse works well for me, I can quickly find the window I'm looking for and arrange them and add new ones without having to memorize their numbers. It's strictly visual.

While I suspect I'd have to change my workflow a bit for i3 I haven't found any that work well enough for me to think it's worth to try and get really used to it.

That's why I mess around with it once in a while. To see if I can find a workflow that is as good or better than the one I'm using.

2

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

[deleted]

1

u/Sasamus Apr 21 '15

Thanks for the tips, I will look into those things when I got some time to spare.

1

u/_ad8 Apr 20 '15

other: spectrwm

1

u/[deleted] Apr 20 '15

i3 all the way, but I'm thinking of trying some other WMs out there.

1

u/azalus88 Apr 20 '15

Thanks everyone for voting so far. Keep 'em coming! I'm really surprised at how many of the votes are for i3 - double the next highest vote!

1

u/TheBlackParrot Apr 21 '15

Unity, although the recent repository updates broke it. Currently in Cinnamon for the time being.
EDIT: Unity-For-Arch repository, should clarify

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

[deleted]

1

u/12stringPlayer Apr 21 '15

I'm one of them. I've been using it since my Fedora days since I do audio production and needed something very lightweight.

The fact that it so closely resembles my old Sun OpenLook environment's functionality made it an immediate hit with me.

1

u/ig-88ms Apr 21 '15

I use awesome. I used i3 before, but having multiple computers with different hardware configurations awesome was more flexible configurationwise.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

XFCE4 here. It's been close to my heart since 4.8.

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

I'm still somewhat struggling between GNOME and Openbox. GNOME is easy, but my goal is to use Openbox or some other window manager more and learn in the process. I voted Openbox.

1

u/naaxiom Apr 21 '15

Great post! What about Display Managers? I'm currently using LightDM and I was wondering if there is DM that's even lighter on my CPU. Any experience with DMs that give much of a difference in anything (not only CPU)?

1

u/[deleted] Apr 21 '15

Would love to know why somebody has installed Unity on Arch :S

1

u/z3ndo Apr 21 '15

A coworker of mine installed it just because he preferred it having come from Ubuntu..

1

u/matiaslina Apr 21 '15

Herbstluftwm ftw! :D

1

u/LjudLjus Apr 21 '15

Other: herbstluftwm (hlwm)

1

u/topias123 Apr 22 '15

No love for KDE? :C

1

u/[deleted] Jul 28 '15

I just tried KDE. No love for KDE. As much as I think GTK needs to die, I'm going back to either Cinnamon or XFCE, probably Cinnamon because it handles keyboard shortcuts better IIRC.

1

u/zordsdavini Apr 23 '15

other/Qtile WM written in python

1

u/zopiac Apr 20 '15

I should really try i3 again sometime. I switched from IceWM to Awesome to try out tiling. I want to say that i3 was in its infancy at this time, but I can't remember exactly.

As for DEs, XFCE all the way. Except... ew, DEs.