4 ms·

One of the reasons I continue development work predominantly in windows OS is its vast support for mouse-free operability. I love vim for the same reason. I tri

One of the reasons I continue development work predominantly in windows OS is its vast support for mouse-free operability. I love vim for the same reason. I tried ratpoison in linux but found it to interfere with application keyboard shortcuts. I also tried AwesomeWM but it wasnt as graceful as the windows key in windows. If someone was to solve this issue elegantly it would compel me to reconsider moving my daily development activities back to linux

rakoo 12y ago
Hum... Are we talking about the same Windows ? Have you tried other tiling window managers ? i3 [0] comes to mind, but XMonad [1] and Awesome WM [2] are 2 other popular choices in this domain. There are plenty of others to pick from, too [3]. [0] http://i3wm.org/ http://i3wm.org/ [1] http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ [2] http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager
- pmarsh 12y ago
  I think like any system once you learn all the shortcuts available and use them on a daily basis trying other setups never seem quite as good.
  - pweissbrod 12y ago
    This might be the case for me
- deweerdt 12y ago
  > There are plenty of others to pick from, too Alternate link for WM reviews: 30 Window Managers in 30 days: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18273 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18273
- sp332 12y ago
  In Windows, Alt-Space gives you a menu that lets you move and resize windows without using the mouse. Also in Windows 7 and 8, holding the Windows/Super key and tapping "left" or "right" causes apps to take up half the screen, and "up" maximizes.
- mcginleyr1 12y ago
  I always liked Ion3 a lot despite the conflicts the author had with distros. http://notion.sourceforge.net/ http://notion.sourceforge.net/ is a fork of it that is maintained.
  - mateuszf 12y ago
    Another vote for Ion3, I tried dozens tiling wm-s, none of them come even close to ion3.
    - aerique 12y ago
      How does it compare to i3? After evaluating quite some tiling window managers i3 ended up as my favourite. However I can't recall evaluating Ion3.
      - mateuszf 12y ago
        ion3 is one of the tools that you start to appreciate only after you use it for some time and you can't just explain it by enumerating features. Because alone those features don't sound that impressive and distinct. But it's the combination that matters.
  - rsync 12y ago
    It's really too bad that I never archived: http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/ http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/ which was his blog, and there are not archive.org copies from 2009 and before. He had a lot of very thought provoking and iconoclastic things to say about OSS and the OSS movement that I found very interesting.
- pweissbrod 12y ago
  Thats a great list thank you! I never heard of i3wm I promise to read the docs. Yes, microsoft windows. I use version 8.1 and while most end users loathe the interface I've studied the "windows" key and "context menu" key and found it quite fast to perform all my daily operations (except web browsing) mouse-free. My experience with linux is that some programs are great but too many dont follow standard on very common keyboard operations such as search, tab navigation, context menu. Also it seems many of these desktop windows managers such as ratpoison come with default key mappings that conflict with many of my application's default key mappings which forces me to re-configure. I invested some time customizing key mappings that would alleviate the issues, but I have a large stack of actual programming work I need to get to, and after awhile I just felt like I was trying too hard at it and decided to go back to the system that works for me. I would like to learn a little more about developer's mouse-free success with linux, vim, browsers and ides such as intellij. 2 years back when i researched this it didnt seem like a very important issue to many people, but to me the little bits of speed gained from keyboard shortcuts add up into great savings in time and cuts in repetitive movement and I consider it to be a crucial part of any development system.
  - Rampoina 12y ago
    I use awesome WM and I didn't need to customize any of the keyboard shortcuts; it uses the windows key as the modifier key and as far as I know no other program uses it. Also I don't get how the Windows 8.1 window management comes even close to the 2 programs you mentioned (Ratpoison and Awesome WM). With both of those (or any other tiling manager) you can do much more than just maximize and snap a window to the sides. (you have virtual workspaces, automatic tiling, better switching, etc)
    - pweissbrod 12y ago
      Maybe I need to invest a little more time into it. I agree with you that the docking keyboard shortcuts are far less powerful in windows. In practice however, this limitation doesnt really become an issue for me. Maybe it is because I have tunnel vision but 2 programs per monitor with a quick means of switching things around hasnt left me wishing I could have 3,4+ programs per monitor
- hunt 12y ago
  > There are plenty of others to pick from, too. If you want to try out lots of different window managers, the LinuxBBQ distro Cream [0] has 76 different window managers installed. [0] http://linuxbbq.org/cream.html http://linuxbbq.org/cream.html
- dllthomas 12y ago
  Having been stuck working with a couple Windows 8.1 servers, through remote desktop from a mouseless linux box, I can confirm that Windows has got surprisingly usable without a mouse. IMO, though, my ratpoison setup still beats it by miles (at least for my work flows).
rkowalick 12y ago
I have used the awesome window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org http://awesome.naquadah.org) for a long time. I think most of the big tiling window managers (DWM, xmonad) are similar. The only things I ever use a mouse for on my linux computers is browsing the web.
- jethro_tell 12y ago
  >The only thing I use my mouse for is browsing the web. I love vimium and vimperator. The only thing I use my mouse for is browsing pages with flash or embedded video. Some other browsing as well, but it's nice to be able to pop back and forth between term and browser, scroll the tutorial page down then pop back without a mouse.
  - rkowalick 12y ago
    It's been a while since I used vimperator/pentadactyl. I recall it not being compatible with newer versions of firefox, but from what I gather those issues seems to be resolved. I should take another look. Most of my day is spent using OSX, and I am quite alright using a mouse in that environment for most things.
    - jethro_tell 12y ago
      Yeah, I haven't really had any issues with it over the last year. I don't always browse with vimporator but it's nice to have the option to follow a link, go back a page or scroll up and down without a mouse. It really depends on the workflow I'm in. Until my daughter was born, I wanted to do everything without a mouse and I worked hard on that. But then I started getting annoyed that I needed both hands to work the machine. Now I have both workflows down pretty well and with my WM I can do most things with either.
sp332 12y ago
I would like Windows' management better if it had more options than just full-screen and half-screen. Have you tried mapping the Windows key as ratpoison's escape key? e.g. http://ratpoison.wxcvbn.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/ChangeEscapeKeyHOWTO http://ratpoison.wxcvbn.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/ChangeEscapeKeyH...
dllthomas 12y ago
"I tried ratpoison in linux but found it to interfere with application keyboard shortcuts." Huh? Rat poison is the only window manager I've used that interferes (meaningfully) with precisely zero application keyboard shortcuts. This is because it only intercepts one key, and having pressed that you there is a key bound in the next map to send the original key. And of course you can pick that top level key. Edited to add: Though having said that, does anyone have any thoughts as to why my compose key doesn't work in ratpoison? I'd like to cut out the switch to unity when I want to study Polish...
- dllthomas 12y ago
  s/\(having pressed that\) you \(there\)/\1 \2/
  - JadeNB 12y ago
    s/(?<=having pressed that )you (?=there)// :-)
    - dllthomas 12y ago
      In perl, yes. Not in sed. :)
djeikyb 12y ago
I use xmonad when I'm on linux. Now that I'm required to use windows, I use python-windows-tiler[0]. The one thing I sorely miss about xmonad is its multi-monitor support. You get nine workspaces. Each of these is monitor independent. It is trivial to put ws1 on m1 and ws2 on m2, then switch m2 to have ws7. The tiling window managers I've found for ms Windows simply don't have any concept of having workspaces independent of monitors. Every workspace always take up all of your monitors. On linux I'll usually have a browser workspace, an ide workspace, an email/chat workspace, a console workspace, etc. And I'm able to rapidly put any combination of workspaces on my set of monitors. [0]: https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler

rakoo 12y ago

Hum... Are we talking about the same Windows ? Have you tried other tiling window managers ? i3 [0] comes to mind, but XMonad [1] and Awesome WM [2] are 2 other popular choices in this domain. There are plenty of others to pick from, too [3]. [0] http://i3wm.org/ http://i3wm.org/ [1] http://xmonad.org/ http://xmonad.org/ [2] http://awesome.naquadah.org/ http://awesome.naquadah.org/ [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager

pmarsh 12y ago
I think like any system once you learn all the shortcuts available and use them on a daily basis trying other setups never seem quite as good.
- pweissbrod 12y ago
  This might be the case for me
deweerdt 12y ago
> There are plenty of others to pick from, too Alternate link for WM reviews: 30 Window Managers in 30 days: http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18273 http://crunchbang.org/forums/viewtopic.php?id=18273
sp332 12y ago
In Windows, Alt-Space gives you a menu that lets you move and resize windows without using the mouse. Also in Windows 7 and 8, holding the Windows/Super key and tapping "left" or "right" causes apps to take up half the screen, and "up" maximizes.
mcginleyr1 12y ago
I always liked Ion3 a lot despite the conflicts the author had with distros. http://notion.sourceforge.net/ http://notion.sourceforge.net/ is a fork of it that is maintained.
- mateuszf 12y ago
  Another vote for Ion3, I tried dozens tiling wm-s, none of them come even close to ion3.
  - aerique 12y ago
    How does it compare to i3? After evaluating quite some tiling window managers i3 ended up as my favourite. However I can't recall evaluating Ion3.
    - mateuszf 12y ago
      ion3 is one of the tools that you start to appreciate only after you use it for some time and you can't just explain it by enumerating features. Because alone those features don't sound that impressive and distinct. But it's the combination that matters.
- rsync 12y ago
  It's really too bad that I never archived: http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/ http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/b/ which was his blog, and there are not archive.org copies from 2009 and before. He had a lot of very thought provoking and iconoclastic things to say about OSS and the OSS movement that I found very interesting.
pweissbrod 12y ago
Thats a great list thank you! I never heard of i3wm I promise to read the docs. Yes, microsoft windows. I use version 8.1 and while most end users loathe the interface I've studied the "windows" key and "context menu" key and found it quite fast to perform all my daily operations (except web browsing) mouse-free. My experience with linux is that some programs are great but too many dont follow standard on very common keyboard operations such as search, tab navigation, context menu. Also it seems many of these desktop windows managers such as ratpoison come with default key mappings that conflict with many of my application's default key mappings which forces me to re-configure. I invested some time customizing key mappings that would alleviate the issues, but I have a large stack of actual programming work I need to get to, and after awhile I just felt like I was trying too hard at it and decided to go back to the system that works for me. I would like to learn a little more about developer's mouse-free success with linux, vim, browsers and ides such as intellij. 2 years back when i researched this it didnt seem like a very important issue to many people, but to me the little bits of speed gained from keyboard shortcuts add up into great savings in time and cuts in repetitive movement and I consider it to be a crucial part of any development system.
- Rampoina 12y ago
  I use awesome WM and I didn't need to customize any of the keyboard shortcuts; it uses the windows key as the modifier key and as far as I know no other program uses it. Also I don't get how the Windows 8.1 window management comes even close to the 2 programs you mentioned (Ratpoison and Awesome WM). With both of those (or any other tiling manager) you can do much more than just maximize and snap a window to the sides. (you have virtual workspaces, automatic tiling, better switching, etc)
  - pweissbrod 12y ago
    Maybe I need to invest a little more time into it. I agree with you that the docking keyboard shortcuts are far less powerful in windows. In practice however, this limitation doesnt really become an issue for me. Maybe it is because I have tunnel vision but 2 programs per monitor with a quick means of switching things around hasnt left me wishing I could have 3,4+ programs per monitor
hunt 12y ago
> There are plenty of others to pick from, too. If you want to try out lots of different window managers, the LinuxBBQ distro Cream [0] has 76 different window managers installed. [0] http://linuxbbq.org/cream.html http://linuxbbq.org/cream.html
dllthomas 12y ago
Having been stuck working with a couple Windows 8.1 servers, through remote desktop from a mouseless linux box, I can confirm that Windows has got surprisingly usable without a mouse. IMO, though, my ratpoison setup still beats it by miles (at least for my work flows).

rkowalick 12y ago

I have used the awesome window manager (http://awesome.naquadah.org http://awesome.naquadah.org) for a long time. I think most of the big tiling window managers (DWM, xmonad) are similar. The only things I ever use a mouse for on my linux computers is browsing the web.

jethro_tell 12y ago
>The only thing I use my mouse for is browsing the web. I love vimium and vimperator. The only thing I use my mouse for is browsing pages with flash or embedded video. Some other browsing as well, but it's nice to be able to pop back and forth between term and browser, scroll the tutorial page down then pop back without a mouse.
- rkowalick 12y ago
  It's been a while since I used vimperator/pentadactyl. I recall it not being compatible with newer versions of firefox, but from what I gather those issues seems to be resolved. I should take another look. Most of my day is spent using OSX, and I am quite alright using a mouse in that environment for most things.
  - jethro_tell 12y ago
    Yeah, I haven't really had any issues with it over the last year. I don't always browse with vimporator but it's nice to have the option to follow a link, go back a page or scroll up and down without a mouse. It really depends on the workflow I'm in. Until my daughter was born, I wanted to do everything without a mouse and I worked hard on that. But then I started getting annoyed that I needed both hands to work the machine. Now I have both workflows down pretty well and with my WM I can do most things with either.

sp332 12y ago

I would like Windows' management better if it had more options than just full-screen and half-screen. Have you tried mapping the Windows key as ratpoison's escape key? e.g. http://ratpoison.wxcvbn.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/ChangeEscapeKeyHOWTO http://ratpoison.wxcvbn.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl/ChangeEscapeKeyH...

dllthomas 12y ago

"I tried ratpoison in linux but found it to interfere with application keyboard shortcuts." Huh? Rat poison is the only window manager I've used that interferes (meaningfully) with precisely zero application keyboard shortcuts. This is because it only intercepts one key, and having pressed that you there is a key bound in the next map to send the original key. And of course you can pick that top level key. Edited to add: Though having said that, does anyone have any thoughts as to why my compose key doesn't work in ratpoison? I'd like to cut out the switch to unity when I want to study Polish...

dllthomas 12y ago
s/\(having pressed that\) you \(there\)/\1 \2/
- JadeNB 12y ago
  s/(?<=having pressed that )you (?=there)// :-)
  - dllthomas 12y ago
    In perl, yes. Not in sed. :)

djeikyb 12y ago

I use xmonad when I'm on linux. Now that I'm required to use windows, I use python-windows-tiler[0]. The one thing I sorely miss about xmonad is its multi-monitor support. You get nine workspaces. Each of these is monitor independent. It is trivial to put ws1 on m1 and ws2 on m2, then switch m2 to have ws7. The tiling window managers I've found for ms Windows simply don't have any concept of having workspaces independent of monitors. Every workspace always take up all of your monitors. On linux I'll usually have a browser workspace, an ide workspace, an email/chat workspace, a console workspace, etc. And I'm able to rapidly put any combination of workspaces on my set of monitors. [0]: https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler https://github.com/Tzbob/python-windows-tiler