LeftWM Is A Tiling Window Manager Written In Rust

Left is a tiling window manager written in Rust for stability and
performance. LeftWM is very minimal by design. Because you probably want more than just a black screen, LeftWM is built around the concept of theming. With themes you can choose between different bars, compositors, background images, color themes, etc.
REFERENCED:
► github.com/leftwm/leftwm
► github.com/leftwm/leftwm-comm...
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Your support is very much appreciated. Thanks, guys!

[@marioschroers7318]

Presenting a tiling window manager written in Rust! Oh yeah!

[@tokiomutex4148]

No buffer overflow

[@swirl6996]

holy shit if people have to rewrite ANOTHER THING WRITTEN IN RUST I AM GOING TO SCREAM

[@tokiomutex4148]

@@swirl6996 sudo needs to be rewritten im Rust

[@swirl6996]

@@tokiomutex4148 why? sudo was written by competent coders, it doesn't need a language to give them the illusion of safety because they already know how to do memory safety in C

[@tokiomutex4148]

@@swirl6996 CVE-2021-3156 is clear example of how sudo developers know to do memory safety in C

[@twb0109]

I though it was for left-handed people :(

[@illuminaut9148]

I thought it was for left-wing people. XD

[@KakugenKun]

@@illuminaut9148 Same! hahahahaha

[@twb0109]

@Fallen Archangel Seems about right

[@thelazt16]

I thought it was for someone who want to left (past tense of leave) other wm/dm

[@nswayze2218]

legit thought it was for left handed people as well :(((

[@thingsiplay]

6:37 I am sorry, but the cheat code is in another castle. The correct Konami cheatcode works as: Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A. Here is my VIM mapping: nnoremap kkjjhlhlba iKONAMI

[@thgreenshaman8503]

Just as I'm reinstalling arch from scratch to try out new WMs! Thank you DT!

[@hogstudio4819]

The liquid template is to parse the output of letwm-state (xmonad-log), which is a binary that outputs info about the tag/workspaces/etc. That way you can translate that output to the colorized output in the bar.

[@SenthilBabuji]

I always wanted to try this. Thanks for checking this out.

[@Malware01]

Written in rust let's go. I don't know why i start loving rust after distrotube video.

[@CJ123]

its shit

[@yorik9845]

So time for wtftw, penrose and umberwm, I guess. I'm using leftwm+arch for a month, satisfied but still DWM+void on my main production machine. Great video BTW.

[@julkip]

We need a polybar replacement that is written in Rust…

[@katech6020]

I am sure someone is working on it

[@awwastor]

Well... if you’re using i3 there is i3status-rust and for others there is cnx. There is also dwm-status(as a crate) and i3monkit(framework for creation)

[@auroradraco9974]

Someone is making it 1000%

[@johnnyblack4261]

@@awwastor Can any of these taskbars be configured using Rust?

[@NVRRL]

I mean eww is kind of a replacement

[@auroradraco9974]

At last, I was expecting this. The only thing that was missing for rust applications was a WM

[@ArnaudMEURET]

I get that you want this to fit under 20 mins but this presentation is too shallow. What are the built in layouts? Does it support mouse-based click-anywhere resize and move? Is it Wayland or X? How do you customize the runtime behaviors? Does it have an automatic key bindings cheat sheet like AwesomeWM? Etc.

[@marcovirtual]

Yeah hopefully part 2 will come soon.

[@ArnaudMEURET]

@@ino3809 Not when a well thought out video can provide me with a synthetic, efficient, thorough and reliable list of key features, forces and weaknesses. That’s the whole point. Are you new to YT? 🤣🤣

[@apoorv9492]

This is a really interesting project, I will definitely check it out.

[@pyntux]

Nice one... I will try LeftWM... For now, my favorite is Qtile because of python, but this one is so user friendly because of those config files and themes...

[@ad_sidera_virgines]

When I saw "written" in the title I self completed with rust X)

[@ozjuanpa]

Nobody: The WM: *Left*WM DT: T h i s i s C o m m u n i s t i n t o n e .

[@SENOJKCID]

It's a stupid name.

[@erwinjitsu_3706]

lol good one Hope they make rightWM soon!

[@WaylonWalker]

What application makes the asciiart on startup?

[@hogstudio4819]

The features I'm missing with leftwm is a full screen layout (open issue, although it plays nicely with windows that want to be on full screen) and some glitches with Slack video-call and startup loading badges of some applications. Other than that, it is very cool and it has an easy codebase to play with!

[@mustafacakar8537]

Hey dt, can you make a full guide for leftwm installation, even its github page does not cover the all sections of installing?

[@robertobautista2171]

Yeah it doesn't surprise me, I was expecting this haha

[@JKhalaf]

What is the bar at the bottom of your VIM? Can you do a video on your VIM setup, please?

[@Flash136]

Noticed you're also hitting a bug with Alacritty at 5:12 that I was trying to fix a few months ago. Are you using the modesetting driver with Xorg or amdgpu?

[@hanspetervollhorst1]

do you have vim symlinked to emacs or did you switch again?

[@jandrews377]

I am an i3 user. I have tried to get on to the 'dynamic tiling wm' bandwagon, but cant seem to get a workflow for multi-monitor working as well as i3. On i3 I send a window (or send and follow) to another workspace, which may be on another monitor. I can do this in one action. On dynamic WM's, its seems to be multiple steps. Am I missing something?

[@NaviciaAbbot]

dt: my terminal is my file manager also dt: *uses pcmanfm to show files, rather than vifm, ranger, or exa*

[@user-od3dw8uk1k]

or ls

[@NaviciaAbbot]

@@user-od3dw8uk1k dt aliases ls to exa.

[@KingZero69]

you had me at “rust”... 😏

[@bew]

i saw rust, didn't had to read the rest of the title x)

[@wp6007]

Can you explain the RUST meme, afaik it isn't actually even more stable and faster than C++

[@davidjohn3633]

@@wp6007 More stable? yes, faster than C++? debatable

[@khai96x]

@@wp6007 Not faster, but safer and easier to maintain.

[@swirl6996]

@@davidjohn3633 more stable? hell no, faster? no

[@JKhalaf]

13:15 Must one have the feh package installed? I don't have that package when I run pacman -Qi feh. I do however have sxiv, can I simply replace command -v feh with command -v sxiv?

[@boyscout399]

Commenting to help spread in KZbin

[@ohmyv3gatron]

Sold! That’s what I wanted

[@alurma]

pretty nice

[@elijahpotter7657]

I wonder if there's a bar written in rust to go along with it? Would be nice to pair with it.

[@arcadesoft294]

Eww. Elkowars wacky widgets

[@cicada-ft6eb]

What do you think of serenity os ?

[@akshatvats7992]

I feel so proud when my friend's Windows machine consumes 4.6G RAM just opening one browser tab with Telegram desktop, while my Arco setup uses 3.1G with 10 tabs across three windows of two browsers, one IDE, one Ebook reader, Spotify and Telegram-desktop open.

[@Lmao-ke9lq]

Or gentoo with dwm consuming 40 MB of RAM with some programs turned on :D

[@rbtmdl]

I used larswm back in the 2000s. Is larswm still a thing? It's really the only tiling wm I have ever used.

[@0hate9]

how did you get your alacritty to show that tab-complete preview? it looks awesome and super useful.

[@eldyj]

fish shell

[@dond3lta]

can you tell us a bit about tiling window managers regarding ("super-") ultra-wide displays?

[@fakedeltatime]

I probably missed it, but what;s the multi monitor support like? Is it a single set of shared workspaces? Because I really need to get of awm.

[@DistroTube]

One set of workspaces.

[@killermonkey1392]

Might be a bit late for you to see this, but you can set fish as your default shell (that also includes TTY) using "chsh -s $(which fish) dt"

[@BankruptPizza]

He knows but changing his system default shell messes up his bspwm config

[@ashwinisahubashmaster5256]

the Elfman in the thumbnail 🥰🥰

[@sogens]

hey dt where did you get those cool little graphics that pop up when you open a terminal and how did you do it ??

[@DistroTube]

Check out the Shell Color Scripts repo on my GitLab: gitlab.com/dwt1/shell-color-scripts

[@sogens]

@@DistroTube thanks!

[@leandroperalta]

Hey DT! I am trying to decide what tiling window manager to learn first. I feel once I've made a choice I will want to stick with it until I streamline my workflow, which may take some time. What factors should I consider to make my decision?

[@barutaji]

If he does not respond I will leave some things here: -if you like the way the system is configured: recompile (dwm) or config file? Which language is used? -manual or dynamic? -if it is dynamic, what are the layouts, and how to change them? -is the wm ultra minimalist and have to add a lot to make it functional or it comes already up and running (which one you prefer?). Wm are pretty light and easyto switch between. Maybe it hard to choose one definitive just by reading specifications. Install two ir three and explore them a little. Then decide and unninstall what you will not use.

[@barutaji]

Also there is not al that much difference between them actually

[@peacemekka]

use something basic first. Use it for a while for working and not just use it to use it. Eventually you will understand what *you* want from a wm.

[@SadeeshSenevirathne]

Hey DT, will you do a 100k subscriber youtube play button unboxing? Would be really nice to see!

[@anantgupta7916]

Yeahhh I am now a window tiling hopper

[@mjdxp5688]

When in doubt, Rust it out

[@torspedia]

Might have to give this one a go, ta! :-)

[@riseabove3082]

I wish you would do a free -h on all of these TWM's to show how much memory they use. Why don't you ever do that?

[@hydejel3647]

6:37 the konami code is actually: up up down down left right left right b a enter (you messed you first part)

[@jeremyottley4141]

I'd be interested in a comparison of the Nimdow window manager and LeftWM from a configuration point of view since they both are modeled after DWM and both use TOML configuration

[@ricardokullock2535]

So Alacritty in rust, starship prompt in rust lsd, fd, bat and ripgrep, all in rust Now exploring nushell, and I find out there's a wm in rust..... sounds like soon I`ll just use one language and I don't even know how to program in it! :D

[@furiousfellow1583]

I hope this works with tint2, for sure i will give it a try

[@circuitlover853]

Title should be DT: The only WM that left to try :LeftWM

[@sambird7]

LEFTwm you say? Sounds like my kihd of WM!

[@johndoe973azazaz]

>gommunism fug :^DDDDDD

[@erwinjitsu_3706]

Oh shit, Now I really hope they make rightWM!

[@lorenzocabrini]

@@erwinjitsu_3706 Well if they do it's not going to be written in Rust, that's for sure. Rust is for SJWs.

[@stefankyriacou7151]

Can you do a video on the hikari window manager?

[@maverik0071]

The Konami cheat code. Haven't seen that in a while. Good one

[@heroe1486]

Actually running i3wm for a year, I'm happy with it but I'm searching for a manual tiling windows manager with a powerful "tabbed mode" with a config written in a proper programing language to hack on it a little bit. Tried herbsluftwm but no tabbed mod unfortunately, I might check the suckless "tabbed" script by the way. What do you guys recommand ?

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

What's wrong with max layout? You can cycle them just like tabs but I didn't tried to pair it with suckless "tabbed"

[@DannyMexen9]

2021 the year of rust

[@krtirtho]

* "Rust is a meme programming language" * You're lucky that people are still subscribed to your channel

[@atommixz]

Wayland?

[@anikbiswasarnob]

Hey DT, make a video on wtfwm (also written in rust)

[@withuniverse8523]

Has anyone found a powerful tiling for Windows 10?

[@overshifted]

"Right" in Persian is pronounced exacly like "Rust". And "Left" is the opposite of "Right" :)

[@parasbhanot]

Does these windows managers have night mode ? This is the must have feature for me .

[@halbgefressen9768]

You have to theme it yourself, so you can make it night mode if you like

[@himalpoudel7558]

Rust is skyrocketing. Maybe i should take a look at it too

[@brainplot]

Yeah, I don't know why he called it a meme programming language. Rust is rising purely due to its quality as a language. I don't think AWS would invest in a "meme" programming language.

[@sohn7767]

@@brainplot I think it's a meme because of how many common programs get rewritten in rust. "Hey you like [insert program] for a really long time right? Here is a better version written in Rust"

[@censoredterminalautism4073]

Suddenly the Konami code shows up. Funny because I just played some Gradius the other day. Can't beat that even with the code because I suck. But I did beat Contra without the code and without dying, so it's fine.

[@vorrnth8734]

Hm, a tiling wm is mostly invisible. Are themes really such a huge topic?

[@supercheetah778]

Why not just set fish as default for your user with `chsh`?

[@DistroTube]

Because a lot of scripts have the shebang as /bin/sh (which will use your default shell) instead of pointing it to a specific shell like /bin/bash. Those /bin/sh scripts will not work with fish because they will use bash-like syntax that fish can't handle. So leave bash as the default and just make your terminal always run fish upon opening.

[@willadams6217]

Looks like you could do with some syntax highlighting for toml files - Plug 'cespare/vim-toml'

[@Valeriooooh]

I tried this like a year ago it was really snappy and fast, then I went to bspwm but now I miss left

[@moofymoo]

cool! if only someone paid me every time I spend days to re-configuring my gui/console/code editor with next shiny thing. :D

[@matthewpaolini]

The config file looks very easy compared to other WMs. However, changing themes is sort of adhoc, IMO. Maybe write a small script to change the theme using the run command or something?

[@smeqwack7337]

Can't wait for rightwm

[@chicosereza3217]

basedwm

[@n4p3r0]

RustOS when

[@n4p3r0]

Well, redox os is kind of that, right?

[@n4p3r0]

@Dane Black lmao

[@w_shakes_]

Anyone else installed the basic polybar theme and their polybar looked kinda similar but not like dereks

[@ricardosteijn4693]

Usually things written in Rust are advertised as the "fastest" , but really there is no noticeable speed difference between Rust and C/C++. Rust is safer by default than C/C++ however, as in C/C++ safely issues like thread race conditions and memory violations are up to the programmer to prevent from happening.

[@katech6020]

I don't think they are comparing to C/C++ here because as you said they are similar. I think they are comparing to Python/lua... which are used for many other WM

[@vladlu6362]

Unfortunately, leftwm isn't playing nicely on my system! I'll have to retry it sometime!

[@jupiterho11ow]

lol i thought you were joking about the emacs lisp window manager

[@peterarbeitsloser7819]

He's using it

[@halbgefressen9768]

do you mean Emacs? xD

[@peterarbeitsloser7819]

@@halbgefressen9768 he is or was (I don't know for sure) literally using the emacs wm.

[@millankumar9245]

Ok, so it's not for left handed people?

[@kaktoffel2193]

Rust isnt a meme, its a lifestyle

[@lorenzocabrini]

Wasn't Ruby a lifestyle? Or Javascript? In a few months time all the Rust zealots will have found a new silver bullet and Rust can finally Rust in Peace.

[@GreyDeathVaccine]

@@lorenzocabrini LMAO. I find it suspicious that a guy using emacs wrote this (emacs lisp is a meme).

[@lorenzocabrini]

@@GreyDeathVaccine Perhaps, but Lisp itself is an old language that has stood the tests of time. Emacs Lisp isn't exactly a new implementation either, so it has also stood the tests of time. It serves us well and is a joy to program in. Rust fanatics want everything rewritten in a language that is yet but a hype. It's only used to create new versions of old programs with a bunch of useless features, such as emojis everywhere. As a language, I don't have anything against Rust. It does what it's meant to do. It even has a few things going for it. I quite enjoy programming in it. However, it also has a community full of zealots who think they somehow have discovered something earth shattering and that the rest of us are too dumb to realize. It's just a programming language. It takes inputs, processes it and produces output. It's not orgasm-inducing.

[@TheDrunkenAlcoholic]

LeftWM = Left Wing Manager, been looking for a RightWM but haven't found it yet, so I just installed this communist window manager on Solus OS, not bad for a window manager

[@soulofhogwarts]

Penrose its suckless wm written rust. That even dt fear to talk about it.

[@UnspankableGoose]

Theres another wm written in rust... github.com/Kintaro/wtftw

[@0x1337feed]

ofc. There's dozen of em

[@rationalityfirst]

Rust is a nice language. The only thing left to do is fixing the syntax.

[@brainplot]

Rust's syntax is weird: it looks horrific when you don't know the language; it looks totally fine when you do. Learn it and you won't ever think about the syntax.

[@rationalityfirst]

@@brainplot just because you get used to it doesn't make it less horrific. I'd rather learn Cobol than the mess that Rust syntax has become. I started learning it a while ago and it was acceptable, but looking at more complex code recently it's traumatizing.

[@neociber24]

I wasn't interested in Rust because the i8, i16, u32, u64, f64 thing, I was confortable with my int, long or float. But now Rust syntax just makes sense, I mean that's the space those types need. For me complex Rust code is easier to read than complex C++ code.

[@ishdx9374]

@@rationalityfirst rust syntax is pretty straightforward but I'd agree it was scary when I first looked into it, for me now it's as clean as say JavaScript

[@CrustyAbsconder]

Hey Distrohuggers, In less than two months, Fedora will publish a Beta of their next version, and you KDE fans will be glad to know they have done a whole lot of work on the KDE edition. KDE Frameworks 5.79, Plasma 5.21, KDE Apps 20.12. along with subtle improvements to wayland, QT support, network, flatpak, along with updated software like LibreOffice 7.1, and some updated games, and updates to system stuff like SSSD 2.4.1 By this time next year, Fedora 34 KDE Edition will be rock-solid. Of course, so will Kubuntu and OpenSUSE and Neon, and Mageia 8

[@dorussecondaccount]

Now we need RightWM, UpWM, and let's not forget, DownWM

[@peterarbeitsloser7819]

hjklWM

[@heroe1486]

Don't forget pgUpDWM and pgDownWM

[@lorenzocabrini]

Written in Rust and more focused on bling than functionality, now why am I not surprised? Well said, by the way, "Rust is the latet meme". Until it has more years under its belt and has proven itself to be useful to solving actual problems and not just creating more colorful versions of existing tools, it can't be considered anything else.

[@lorenzocabrini]

@@shekhinah2185 Perhaps, but I would probably argue that you and I have different concepts of what "good language design" means. I don't consider a language that makes Perl (no offence, I like Perl for some things) look readable well designed. To me Rust design decisions seem to be more guided by what will make the language popular among the Javascript crowd and perhaps earn a few points among functional programmers, than anything else. Scheme is what I would consider a well-designed language. Sure, real world and all that, but the issue at hand was good language design, not real world. I do agree that Rust has some technical merit, although followers of the Rust cult always overstate it. No, Rust programs are not guaranteed to be bug free or even to not leak memory. Rust does a lot to reduce these things, but it is not foolproof. In short, no Rust is not the silver bullet. Nonetheless, my disdain for Rust has little to do with its technical merits. I wouldn't be so much against Rust if it wasn't for the rabid attitude of its community: "rewrite it in Rust", "Rust is perfect", "Rust programs are bug-free". Not to mention the political correctness nonsense. Did anybody ever consider the fact that I, as a lowly programmer, perhaps am completely uninterested in how many genders there are? Why do I have to take specific political and/or philosophical positions? Surely these things have nothing to do with producing code? But in the Rust community, yes it does. Your opinions are far more important than the code your produce. (Then again, the code you produce within the rust community is mostly about colors and emojis anyways, so I do somehow understand why the code doesn't really matter much). Only Rust fanatics will refuse to use something that works well simply because it's not written in Rust. How dumb is that?! I'm not a big fan of C++, but if I find something that works well and it happens to be written in C++ (wasn't blackbox written in C++?), I see no reason whatsoever to avoid it. I can even see benefits of using C++ over C for some types of projects, even though I prefer C. But if you are part of the Rust community and you state that "language X (which is not Rust) is actually quite interesting/has some good features", the fanatics will probably plan to murder you or something. So it's just better to stay clear of Rust, because the community is like a sick religious cult. I wish I could look at Rust the langauge and appreciate it on its own, but crazed, over-zealous javascript "programmers", the bling-bling crowd and ethical software idiots ensure that Rust will most likely remain a language that I find revolting.

[@avischetlin]

@@lorenzocabrini lol

[@thierrybo6304]

Frankly i think it is trupid to choose a WM based on the programming language it is written with. For the end user user we are concerned only about - reliability ‐ speed ( for this the only requirement should be a programing language that produces binaries) - features

[@charlessmith5465]

Is Rust still developed by Mozilla? 🤔 I haven't looked at it lately, but I'm not in a hurry to add any mozilla dependencies.

[@qprrwfjysfjjjwrlwwgqxhwjj275]

No Its developed by independent foundation of rust

[@halbgefressen9768]

It is developed by Mozilla a little, but the crates are not mozilla-specific and all fully open-source

[@chrismueller6974]

Not anymore ^^

[@chapl8344]

What the hell is a 'meme programming language'?

[@chapl8344]

@Chris Cassata Alright. Let me be more specific: What does the 'meme' stand for? Is it 'meme' in terms of "A/THE meme" or is it an abbreviation for something?

[@joshwizardguy7662]

@@chapl8344 Meme languages are languages that have no practical use in the real world. Rust sucks. Nim is the best. That's all there is to it.

[@katech6020]

@@joshwizardguy7662 Rust is starting to take developers from C++ so it is not a meme

[@peterarbeitsloser7819]

It means that it is starting to become a meme when someone does something in a language (but only if the language wasn't popular before)

[@joshwizardguy7662]

@@katech6020 I'm still on C++, bro. Rust looks like shit.

[@arturmeinild2461]

Meme languages? But why...

[@brielov]

I wonder why is called "Left".

[@theamazingknight5472]

I love Rust. As a noob it's easier then C++

[@usrname1105]

RuSt

[@Crazy--Clown]

You still working for Walmart

[@tomoghnosen]

I LOVE RUST and Python it is easier to Code.

[@borise4104]

investigate Nim then

[@wp6007]

Cover Bedrock Linux

[@hichemchouadria4134]

A rusty window manager....

[@regenjacob]

there is an windget systm written in rust caled eww

[@johndoe973azazaz]

>rust

[@ashwinrawat9622]

So does it screech, lie, dream about human suffering and destruction, and just doesn't work?

[@studiokadaver]

KONAMI CODE!!!!