LeftWM - A Fast and Simple Xmonad Alternative

Works in a similar way to Xmonad and Qtile, written in Rust, simple to configure and fast and lightweight. What's not to like!
When I saw Distrotube reviewing this a few weeks ago I had to take a look for myself. And I've been really impressed.
It isn't that LeftWM does things massively different to any number of other TWMs out there, but the simplicity of configuration is a joy to behold.
It comes with several themes that can be used by simply creating a symbolic link to the one you want, and each of these themes can be customised as much or as little as you desire.
I think we will be seeing more of this WM in the future.
I hope you enjoy the video :-)
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Ramble On!

[@yorik9845]

I hope "Leftwm" will be the next thing. Finally a Rust written WM for the mass.Glad you tested it. Please test umberwm next time.

[@glowingone1774]

@Kyrie Alberto Holy fuck that scam is incredibly terrible.

[@taidee]

I like how it looks and functions, thank you OTB. You’re a great bloke, very clear on topics.

[@aethanfoot2103]

There seems to be a lot of work into creating a package manager for the themes, which will allow you to install and manage themes that are provided on the community themes

[@concretec0w]

Fantastic! Been playing with awesome past few days and pulling my hair out. I've never used a WM before and the size of the config file was way too big. I installed LeftWM this morning and within 30m i was further along with my setup than awesome. I honestly thought I was happy with awesome and was gonna continue working on it to make it mine, but your vid has pushed me over to going full time with Leftwm, so thanks!

[@goldilockszone4389]

Awesome is awful to configure

[@ChaiBronz]

Great review! Appreciate how you actually take time to get familiar with the wm before doing a video on it : )

[@OldTechBloke]

You’re welcome. Seems only right somehow

[@BrucesWorldofStuff]

Well @OldTechBloke. I got LeftWm all sorted.. Took a bit of work and a bunch of chatting on the Github Bug Report but thanks for the Great folks over there we got things working... The polybar was easy. I figured that one out. I looked at othere Themes that had the bar on the bottom and found out how they did that There is a setting you change and it is on the bottom... Like this ; Put the bar at the bottom of the screen-default = false bottom = true The desktop was a 4 day message back and forth / testing and the great help I got was fantastic! LeftWm desktop would not go into 1920x1080 and stayed stuck in 1360x768. Arch's default boot this monitor / Tv at 1360x768 and EndeavourOS changes it to 1920x1080 on booting into Cinnamon. Logging into LeftWm you don't have that and there are things one needs get the resolution set right. Most folks have a xorg.conf that deals with that but AMD does not have any setup for Linux so ya have to do thing manually. When I set the display with xrandr LeftWm would change but the desktop is all squished into the upper left of the screen. In the end to fix my issue after 4 days is they had me created a ".xprofile" and added the xrandr commands in there... This is the commands that I used for my Monitor / Tv... xrandr --output VGA-0 --off --output DVI-0 --off --output HDMI-0 --primary --mode 1920x1080 --pos 0x0 --rotate normal Now LeftWm boots onto 1920x1080 and all is right as rain! :-D As a added Bonus, SpectrWm uses .xprofile too and I did away with 2 scripts I was using for Spectrwm to get the resolution set, so Yall.. Things are great! I hope this may help anyone else that has these issues... :-) Take care OTB! LLAP

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, OTB.

[@T--T]

i like your style. subbed!

[@drumpf4all]

You are the window manager king.

[@OldTechBloke]

I think DT still holds that crown :-)

[@kenba8176]

@@OldTechBloke dt is too busy installing appimages and ranting about politics while configuring emacs. The crown has moved to oldtechbloke👑

[@umka7536]

Xmonad is a quite easy to configure together with Xmobar. Xmonad with Polybar can be a bit more tricky. I also tried Qtile and DWM. For me so far Xmonad provides the most polished experience plus Haskell is not so hard to understand (at least for the needs of Xmonad).

[@deechvogt1589]

Steve, nice and thorough review. I think you presented Left WM better than DT. Nice hat too!! Cheers and stay well!!

[@OldTechBloke]

Thanks Deech

[@davidwayne9982]

POP OS is almost all rust now-- they say it's almost ready-- and I found out many of the major companies all RUN on rust.. so I'm interested... Never used one of these before- but want to check it out..

[@arorei]

I'm not that patient to figure out the configuration so I just modified the keybindings and bar on manjaro i3 and that's good enough for me

[@vladlu6362]

Penrose is more alike to xmonad than Leftwm, though.

[@andrewcarpin2850]

How exactly do you use the awesome icons? Is it the same way you use unicode?

[@OldTechBloke]

I just paste them in from the awesome icons cheat sheet web page

[@aytviewer2421]

Giving LBRY a try!!

[@momomaniac1234]

I like this wm i think by adding fontawesome icons it would be very good looking wm

[@henninb]

I am stubborn, so I am sticking with xmonad for now, however I could see myself using leftwm in the future. When wayland becomes more popular i am curious how the tilers will work.

[@OldTechBloke]

I don't think they will work on wayland unless they're forked. That said, I don't think that's happening any time soon

[@henninb]

@@OldTechBloke makes sense. Thanks again for sharing this type of content. It is fun for me to learn about new things.

[@uuu12343]

Between LeftWM and Bspwm, which would you prefer?

[@OldTechBloke]

Leftwm

[@RobBoudreau]

Good review Steve. I'm curious, does LeftWM share workspaces across the monitors, or does each monitor have it's own set? I'm very spoiled by bspwm, I have 10 workspaces, 5 on each monitor. My primary monitor has the first 5 workspaces, 1 to 5, the secondary has the next 5, 6 to 10. It makes moving around so much easier, instead of having to switch monitor, then workspace, I just switch workspace and it switches to whatever monitor that workspace is on. If I have a window on workspace 2, I can easily send it to workspace 7 on the 2nd monitor, and switch to that, all in a single keystroke. For my work, that's a must-have, I'm so use to it I do it without thought. I only have one problem with Lbry, it seems like the streams can't keep up. I imagine there's not a server near enough to me out here in the sticks, otherwise I think it's a great service. Dealing with the constant video freezes waiting for the stream to catch up is a bit annoying though. Hopefully as it grows it'll gain more servers in more locations.

[@OldTechBloke]

Hi Rob. I have my bspwm set up exactly the same but this breaks from that and shares all workspaces between the screens. So primary monitor opens on 1 and secondary on 2. It’s easy to move an app to the next screen though so it’s just about what you get used to

[@symbianflo]

I was just wondering how much would it take for you without a WM review... :D

[@OldTechBloke]

Not with you Flo?

[@symbianflo]

Well not my fight.. To be honest. I'm a bit radical work in TTY and when not them I need a DE to justify my machines... 😁

[@zeocamo]

22:17 looks like sizes.liguid is to get the width offsetX offsetY so this can be send in to polybar ... so you can have polybar per workspace, if you get more then 1 workspace on a screen ... is my glass here, also ... i just wanted to comment for the youtube giving you more money :)

[@OldTechBloke]

Thank you my friend, appreciated

[@zeocamo]

@@OldTechBloke np

[@Mach7RadioIntercepts]

LOL, LeftWM is not a lock screen, nor is it a cat. It is a themable window manager...

[@voiceofthetrue1849]

I really don't understand what the benefit is behind the intro.

[@OldTechBloke]

I don't understand the point of this comment

[@goldilockszone4389]

Awesomewm has very long and nonmodular config and a hideous default wallpaper

[@Chris-ip8uv]

looks interesting however, I hope politics is not involved in the development and direction of this software. That could end up being the demise of a what looks like promising project. This of course, is just my opinion and in the end, does not matter.

[@OldTechBloke]

I hope not as well Chris