Catching up with LeftWM: The TWM for Rust Fans

I've been following the development of leftwm for the last few years and, since I first took a look almost two years ago, it's had many additional
features added to it and it now feels like a fully fledged TWM that's fit to compete with the likes of xmonad and qtile.
I'm surprised this window manager doesn't get more attention than it does because it's certainly worth considering. But anyway, watch my video and make your own minds up.
I hope you enjoy the video :-)
For those interested in using the polywins script it can be found here:
github.com/tam-carre/polywins
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Ramble On!

[@taidee]

Sorry to hear about the health issues, get well guys. Thank OTB for this video.

[@gabrieldavid5944]

A few days ago I was asking myself "Is there a WM written in rust?", I didn't do a research, but now you're answering me that, really cool, thanks. By the way, your distro looks awesome. Keep doing these videos really informative.

[@auntiecarol]

I flit back-and-forth between stock GNOME and EXWM, but that does not mean that I am closed to other options. Thanks, Steve, for your videos. And I sincerely hope that both you and Mrs Anelay navigate the troubled waters of our NHS and enjoy better health this new year.

[@peppe540]

Take care Steve (and the missus as well of course)! Intermittent or not, your vids remain highly informative , so it's always worthwhile to have a look at them. And fun. Other things are more important for now, we'll be here but you gotta take care of yourselves first of all now! See you around soon, we're with you.

[@peterjansen4826]

hyprland (tiling window manager) is the new hot thing on Wayland. Not fully mature but interesting development. If you want to have a new toy to play with...

[@TheChrissutcliffe]

Another Tiler for me to try thanks for the quality content; Hope both you and your wife are or the mend

[@tanakahirosi6453]

Tyvm sir for your work

[@toanphuoc5274]

yes it works brother ! many thanks

[@sonopro1]

Nice to see you back again !

[@RobBoudreau]

Hope you and the wife get through it and on the mend soon Steve. Best wishes.

[@Fullbreaks.media10]

Thank you so much Sensei! You are a blessing!

[@richardmonroe4208]

Another source for learning/trying leftwm is ArcoLinux. Erik Dubois is a leftwm addict (self-admitted). I learned a lot about ricing the theme(s) of my choice.

[@RetosSpace]

Eric is a genius, im on Arco, 10 months in and loving the learning curve and a 10 month linux noob!

[@kozas0]

Get well OTB. Thanks for the video.

[@kasper1698]

This was so helpful!! Thank you

[@leonardopisano9575]

Thank you. I'll test it.

[@TheLinuxCast]

Great video, OTB! LeftWM is one that I haven't looked at since that initial first look. Definitely should add it back to my list because that theme thing is pretty neat. Hope life is treating you well.

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks mate, health wise things are very off at the moment but I’ll shake it off. But yes, Leftwm has defiantly come a long way over the last couple of years

[@sortof3337]

yes you should. i have been daily driving it since it came out. so good and stable on non arch distros. I use it on pop, fedora and bsd. No bugs, no complains yet. Also you can rice it pretty easily.

[@thelovertunisia]

Great channel. Greetings from Tunisia.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

Hey Steve, Great video. Sounds like a solid Window Manager. However, I’m quite content with DWM. Sorry to hear about the health issues. I’ll keep you both in prayer. Take care and get well soon.

[@sidewinder040]

Quality over quantity - Well worth waiting for. Good health to both of you :)

[@wolfbloodpictures.7690]

ITS REALLY WORKED LOL THANK YOU DUDE

[@elnombredelarosa1]

This helped a lot thank you

[@jackdebeere7156]

Awesome thank you for the info

[@benceharsasi2309]

Amazing I did it You made my day Thank you!!

[@abhijeetnikhil7314]

thank you so much dude you're a god

[@hasanmahmud2016]

Thank you!

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

While this is a awesome video. The .04.0 now uses the .RON files and not the .Toml setup for the files. It is a hole lot different config than the 0.3.0 and is not as easy to edit if you ask me... While I had to go and change all my themes manually doing the config change was painless but a bit confusing at first. Anyway this old fart manages to understand it... Lol I use LeftWm all the time alongside with SpectrWm and I love the theming part of it. I make a new theme, copy it to the other computer and change to link to it and they just work. I use polybar on both window managers now days too. To me there is nothing basic about LeftWm nor SpectrWm they both do what I need and I don't have to be a brain surgeon to change of config them... 🙂 Thanks OTB! Hope you both get better soon. At 68 7/8ths I understand the health issues to be sure! LLAP 🖖

[@OldTechBloke]

Cheers Bruce

[@fpsrtx]

Mucisimas gracias... funcciona ;-)

[@themroc8231]

It's actually in the repo for Opensuse tumbleweed. Not Leap, though. I hope you and your wife get better. Don't stress yourself out to release videos all the time, take care of yourself.

[@comunicacionsocial5116]

it worked tysm

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

Thanks for another interesting video and I have to agree with you in that dwm is the tiling window manager that I am drawn to at the moment. I run Gentoo Linux anyway, which runs on anything from a Raspberry Pi Zero to a multi-CPU Xeon server in my home (and can run on a whole lot more), and dwm fits in that category of "extremely lite" application that can also run on everything as well - ultimately, my personal goal is to have an identical Gentoo-based desktop running on all devices in my home. (I hate wasting CPU cycles on needless eye candy anyway.) I don't really have an opinion on Rust - ultimately if installation (and compilation in the case of Gentoo) is reasonably transparent and results in as stable and fast applications as a lot of traditional C based ones, then it's fine by me. But I do enjoy taking the "Rust fanboys" down a step or two because of all this constant "it's more secure than C" or "it's means that applications don't crash" nonsense that I keep reading in other channels. I am old enough to remember the same claims being made for Java when it first appeared on the scene and whilst it does have its uses today, everyone with any knowledge of programming knows that Java has a terrible reputation for security. So the fanboys will have to excuse my scepticism - I work in cyber-security and scan and test applications against security compliance against standards like OWASP and I don't believe my job will be getting any easier any time soon just because more and more applications are written is "indestructible" Rust. Bad programmers write bad programs, and there too many people out there who believe they can call themselves "developers" just because they install a programming IDE on their laptops.

[@donaldmickunas8552]

All true. Besides, as long as fallible human beings write code, bugs will be inevitable. LOL

[@uMalice]

will you take a look at crunch bang plus plus?

[@mikael2313]

RIP Steve.

[@dam8976]

After seeing your video im packaging leftwm for Slackware im sending it to SBo, there is rust 1.60 in extra, the Slackbuild build leftwm fine, by the way i really like your videos!

[@OldTechBloke]

Great stuff, I built it but it wouldn’t launch for some reason

[@OldTechBloke]

I couldn’t figure out what the issue was, when I upgraded rust leftwm built but just wouldn’t start. If I went back to 0.3 is started. I’d assumed a dependency issue somewhere

[@007Strings007]

can you make floating windows and titlebars?

[@anadolijamajh4181]

Very nice thank you can you plz explain scratchpads little better...

[@OldTechBloke]

They are terminal apps that you can toggle on and off but aren’t allocated to a specific workspace

[@itsfish8672]

GVOTB.

[@PestisNonSapien_GMO_exHuman]

18:52 If it is not .3 and not .4 then what is it? haha

[@davidwayne9982]

It WON"T be when POP gets their full system written in RUST-- including the POP TILING shell..

[@OldTechBloke]

They could use this as a wm

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

So what do you believe Rust will bring us all as benefits over existing applications written in C and C++?

[@davidwayne9982]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 I"m NOT a programmer but I have family that is- and they all say it will be more stable , faster, and better for working on whenver we mess up something by being stupid!! (which I have a habit of doing>. ha.)

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@davidwayne9982 Bad programming is bad programming - in any language.

[@davidwayne9982]

@@OldTechBloke YEP guess so. forgot about that.. :)

[@breadmoth6443]

Do a video on EMWM - also 1st 1st

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

So not even a "thank you" for this video? Straight on to demanding what you want next from him? I do wish more people on YT were a bit more "self-aware" and realise how rude and self-entitled they sound just demanding "the next thing" without any acknowledgement of what has just been given to them entirely free of charge.

[@breadmoth6443]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 tl;dr;

[@terrydaktyllus1320]

@@breadmoth6443 I've no idea what that abbreviation means and I don't plan on doing "homework" to find out either. It's your comment and your responsibility to make yourself understood.

[@thenextpoetician6328]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 It's a typo for tldr, and the point is it's not your channel, and no one is asking you to police it.

[@breadmoth6443]

@@terrydaktyllus1320 i've gone back some videos looking for your posts specifically, and uh well you don't seem to live by your own standards pal; so... eff- off .

[@dam8976]

@OldTechBloke leftwm is approved on Slackware, i sent you an email from the Slackware forum, kind regards!

[@OldTechBloke]

Brilliant thanks.

[@dam8976]

@@OldTechBloke thank you for your great videos!!, best regards!

[@OldTechBloke]

Out of interest I assume you’ve tested this build and it launches OK. I spent a few hours with Darren Austin (Slackware.uk maintainer) yesterday and neither of us could figure out why version 0.4 refused to start on my machines

[@dam8976]

@@OldTechBloke tested on both stable on current it work fine with startx or using tbsm but it has a problem with SDDM, i opened an issue about that on github. edit: i closed the issue on github because it work with SDDM fine.

[@OldTechBloke]

That’s good news as I just use startx