6 ms·

XMonad as IDE

20 points by snippyhollow 16y ago

jeebusroxors 16y ago
I was thinking I was going to read about some crazy hack utilizing one of the layouts or something (it's early), but it turns out the author has just discovered the awesome (no pun intended) that is tiling WMs. If you'd like to journey down this road and do not want the large ghci dependency look into dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/) (~28KB binary), wmii or awesome.
- garply 16y ago
  StumpWM is another one for you lispers out there. Tiling WMs are indeed awesome. However, some applications just don't play nice with them - if you use one of these apps frequently, you will have problems and probably end up switching to something else (Enlightenment in my case).
  - keithhanson 16y ago
    I'd be interested in knowing what programs you've had trouble with? In Awesome, you can switch your layout to a floating-based one (oddly default without some rc tweaking) and get around most issues these programs face. Or just switch it to a full screen-based layout :) Anywho, figured some examples might give others' a heads up before devoting hours and mind share to trying it out.
    - garply 16y ago
      Ah, the ability to switch is a good thing. I had issues with Pidgin, for one.
    - yummyfajitas 16y ago
      Java (at least swing) apps behave oddly, by which I mean they show up as grey boxes. According to the xmonad faq, the problem is that Java uses a hardcoded list of wm's (rather than properly responding to wm events) which does not contain xmonad. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Frequently_asked_questions#Problems_with_Java_applications.2C_Applet_java_console http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Frequently_asked_q... Even with the suggested fix, Java still has some focus issues.
  - alec 16y ago
    There are two things that set StumpWM apart from the others I've tried, like dwm and xmonad. First, you can name desktops. I find this very handy for quickly switching; I don't have to remember that desktop 5 is where my tests are running. Second, there aren't preset tiling algorithms, but rather it works like emacs - split a window horizontally or vertically, and then resize. I find it easier for the limited amount of splitting I do than cycling through layouts.
    - gwern 16y ago
      > First, you can name desktops. I find this very handy for quickly switching Xmonad has extensions for naming and renaming workspaces. And I think you over-exaggerate how Stumpwm/ratpoison tiling differs from Xmonad.
- keithhanson 16y ago
  I've been using AwesomeWM in Ubuntu 10.04 since pretty much the day Ubuntu 10.04 came out. My hesitancy with Ubuntu always lay in a good browser (I'm a web developer), but with Chrome/Firefox as good as they are, I didn't really have an excuse anymore. I used to be a Mac/TextMate zealot (Rubyist, go figure), and have wholly switched over to AwesomeWM, Vim, and a host of other open source tools and will never look back. I just feel like an incapable two year old with a messy desk trying to work in a floating WM like OS X/Windows now. If you want to try AwesomeWM, but don't want to risk going crazy from setting up xinit scripts or scrapping all that vanilla Gnome install gives you, follow this wiki article and it'll side side-by-side in Gnome: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_with_Gnome http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_... I get NetworkManager support, audio support, bluetooth, and battery life all out of the box. As long as you're not a purist about what's running in your WM and what's not, this setup works great with little risk/time investment.
  - snippyhollow 16y ago
    Try out the molokai theme for Vim. ;-)
    - sad 16y ago
      Thanks for this. I just pulled down the molokai theme and it is very pleasant.
  - frou_dh 16y ago
    > I just feel like an incapable two year old with a messy desk trying to work in a floating WM like OS X/Windows now. http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ It's not a tiling WM, but augments the standard OS X window management keyboard shortcuts with grid stuff, and doesn't have any odd side effects with GUI apps. Personally I think OS X and its app population comfortably swing the overall usability balance vs desktop Linux so I won't follow your footsteps :-)
    - keithhanson 16y ago
- snippyhollow 16y ago
  I really begin to like suckless (and tried wmii in the past)! I don't think that's about the fact that I discovered the awesome (ahah) of tiling WMs but about the fact that: 1) it creates an isolation bubble in the middle of my current WM/setup. 2) I'm now way better at using Vim than I was back in the days. 3) while hacking (a little) XMonad (or dwm or awesome or...), one can quickly create a light IDE to work in, just adding the very few missing features to my "no mouse, Vim centric" development environment. (Did I mentioned I can't bother using Eclipse/Netbeans/VS? Now I did.) But I still need a classic WM for some tasks (unfortunately).
- gwern 16y ago
  > If you'd like to journey down this road and do not want the large ghci dependency look into dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/) (~28KB binary), wmii or awesome. If you don't like the GHC dependency, then install xmonad & GHC, customize Xmonad to your liking, and then compile your xmonad.hs to a static binary (in the same way you would any other Haskell program). There, now you don't need GHC anymore and can remove it. (What's that? You lose the ability to customize/recompile your xmonad.hs? But this is exactly true if you replace 'dwm' for 'xmonad' and 'gcc' for 'ghc'. And I'm not sure how one would make a static awesome binary, because of the Lua stuff.)
dman 16y ago
One note - many gnome based linux distros now use NetworkManager for providing wireless access which does not work once you move to a different window manager like XMonad. So read up on wpa_supplicant and XMonad bindings before you nuke gnome and install xmonad.
- cpach 16y ago
  I haven't tried it myself, but it's possible to use XMonad as your Gnome WM: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gnome http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gn...
  - dman 16y ago
    Thats great! I did not know about this.
  - gwern 16y ago
    Seconded. I do this myself. (And I set the gnome panel to autohide as well.)
- keithhanson 16y ago
  AwesomeWM has a similar guide for working inside Ubuntu, which gets around the issue you speak of: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_with_Gnome http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_...
- thomas11 16y ago
  What makes you think that? NetworkManager is independent of the UI, it has a command-line client, too. And you can even run the Gnome NM applet in any panel-thingy/dock that implements the right spec, I believe it's EWMH. I have it in stalonetray (http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net) under OpenBox, it also works under XMonad.
- thingie 16y ago
  That's completely wrong (and never was right). NetworkManager is a system-wide deamon and it's user interface is pretty much just a single applet, which you can run absolutely anywhere. There is also a CLI now (nmcli). (I've been using xmonad and NM on my laptop since xmonad 0.3 or something like that, which should be 3 years now, wow.)

20 points by snippyhollow 16y ago

I was thinking I was going to read about some crazy hack utilizing one of the layouts or something (it's early), but it turns out the author has just discovered the awesome (no pun intended) that is tiling WMs. If you'd like to journey down this road and do not want the large ghci dependency look into dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/) (~28KB binary), wmii or awesome.

garply 16y ago
StumpWM is another one for you lispers out there. Tiling WMs are indeed awesome. However, some applications just don't play nice with them - if you use one of these apps frequently, you will have problems and probably end up switching to something else (Enlightenment in my case).
- keithhanson 16y ago
  I'd be interested in knowing what programs you've had trouble with? In Awesome, you can switch your layout to a floating-based one (oddly default without some rc tweaking) and get around most issues these programs face. Or just switch it to a full screen-based layout :) Anywho, figured some examples might give others' a heads up before devoting hours and mind share to trying it out.
  - garply 16y ago
    Ah, the ability to switch is a good thing. I had issues with Pidgin, for one.
  - yummyfajitas 16y ago
    Java (at least swing) apps behave oddly, by which I mean they show up as grey boxes. According to the xmonad faq, the problem is that Java uses a hardcoded list of wm's (rather than properly responding to wm events) which does not contain xmonad. http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Frequently_asked_questions#Problems_with_Java_applications.2C_Applet_java_console http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Frequently_asked_q... Even with the suggested fix, Java still has some focus issues.
- alec 16y ago
  There are two things that set StumpWM apart from the others I've tried, like dwm and xmonad. First, you can name desktops. I find this very handy for quickly switching; I don't have to remember that desktop 5 is where my tests are running. Second, there aren't preset tiling algorithms, but rather it works like emacs - split a window horizontally or vertically, and then resize. I find it easier for the limited amount of splitting I do than cycling through layouts.
  - gwern 16y ago
    > First, you can name desktops. I find this very handy for quickly switching Xmonad has extensions for naming and renaming workspaces. And I think you over-exaggerate how Stumpwm/ratpoison tiling differs from Xmonad.
keithhanson 16y ago
I've been using AwesomeWM in Ubuntu 10.04 since pretty much the day Ubuntu 10.04 came out. My hesitancy with Ubuntu always lay in a good browser (I'm a web developer), but with Chrome/Firefox as good as they are, I didn't really have an excuse anymore. I used to be a Mac/TextMate zealot (Rubyist, go figure), and have wholly switched over to AwesomeWM, Vim, and a host of other open source tools and will never look back. I just feel like an incapable two year old with a messy desk trying to work in a floating WM like OS X/Windows now. If you want to try AwesomeWM, but don't want to risk going crazy from setting up xinit scripts or scrapping all that vanilla Gnome install gives you, follow this wiki article and it'll side side-by-side in Gnome: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_with_Gnome http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_... I get NetworkManager support, audio support, bluetooth, and battery life all out of the box. As long as you're not a purist about what's running in your WM and what's not, this setup works great with little risk/time investment.
- snippyhollow 16y ago
  Try out the molokai theme for Vim. ;-)
  - sad 16y ago
    Thanks for this. I just pulled down the molokai theme and it is very pleasant.
- frou_dh 16y ago
  > I just feel like an incapable two year old with a messy desk trying to work in a floating WM like OS X/Windows now. http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ http://irradiatedsoftware.com/sizeup/ It's not a tiling WM, but augments the standard OS X window management keyboard shortcuts with grid stuff, and doesn't have any odd side effects with GUI apps. Personally I think OS X and its app population comfortably swing the overall usability balance vs desktop Linux so I won't follow your footsteps :-)
  - keithhanson 16y ago
snippyhollow 16y ago
I really begin to like suckless (and tried wmii in the past)! I don't think that's about the fact that I discovered the awesome (ahah) of tiling WMs but about the fact that: 1) it creates an isolation bubble in the middle of my current WM/setup. 2) I'm now way better at using Vim than I was back in the days. 3) while hacking (a little) XMonad (or dwm or awesome or...), one can quickly create a light IDE to work in, just adding the very few missing features to my "no mouse, Vim centric" development environment. (Did I mentioned I can't bother using Eclipse/Netbeans/VS? Now I did.) But I still need a classic WM for some tasks (unfortunately).
gwern 16y ago
> If you'd like to journey down this road and do not want the large ghci dependency look into dwm (http://dwm.suckless.org/ http://dwm.suckless.org/) (~28KB binary), wmii or awesome. If you don't like the GHC dependency, then install xmonad & GHC, customize Xmonad to your liking, and then compile your xmonad.hs to a static binary (in the same way you would any other Haskell program). There, now you don't need GHC anymore and can remove it. (What's that? You lose the ability to customize/recompile your xmonad.hs? But this is exactly true if you replace 'dwm' for 'xmonad' and 'gcc' for 'ghc'. And I'm not sure how one would make a static awesome binary, because of the Lua stuff.)

dman 16y ago

One note - many gnome based linux distros now use NetworkManager for providing wireless access which does not work once you move to a different window manager like XMonad. So read up on wpa_supplicant and XMonad bindings before you nuke gnome and install xmonad.

cpach 16y ago
I haven't tried it myself, but it's possible to use XMonad as your Gnome WM: http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gnome http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Using_xmonad_in_Gn...
- dman 16y ago
  Thats great! I did not know about this.
- gwern 16y ago
  Seconded. I do this myself. (And I set the gnome panel to autohide as well.)
keithhanson 16y ago
AwesomeWM has a similar guide for working inside Ubuntu, which gets around the issue you speak of: http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_with_Gnome http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Quickly_Setting_up_Awesome_...
thomas11 16y ago
What makes you think that? NetworkManager is independent of the UI, it has a command-line client, too. And you can even run the Gnome NM applet in any panel-thingy/dock that implements the right spec, I believe it's EWMH. I have it in stalonetray (http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net http://stalonetray.sourceforge.net) under OpenBox, it also works under XMonad.
thingie 16y ago
That's completely wrong (and never was right). NetworkManager is a system-wide deamon and it's user interface is pretty much just a single applet, which you can run absolutely anywhere. There is also a CLI now (nmcli). (I've been using xmonad and NM on my laptop since xmonad 0.3 or something like that, which should be 3 years now, wow.)