Recently Left i3 For Dwm? If so, keep moving...to Xmonad!

Many Suckless fans would have us all believe that dwm is the most amazing tiling window manager because it does not have a config file written in a user-friendly syntax, which can be limiting. Instead, dwm's config is the source code. People seem to think that dwm is special in this regard, but I would argue that dwm isn't particularly special and that some other window managers might even surpass dwm at being "Suckless."
REFERENCED:
► • Literally stop using i... - Check out Luke Smith's video!
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[@ThePressurizer]

The urge to shave my head and use a tiling WM exclusively is getting harder to resist.

[@GeorgiMinkov]

No hair is the suckless way :D

[@ThePressurizer]

@@GeorgiMinkov Well, it IS kinda minimalist!

[@taidee]

I'm already using tiling wm and have shaved head

[@fabulo19]

hair is bloat

[@kernalpenguin]

@@taidee giga chad and minimal

[@i.8530]

im one of the people who switched to tiling wms because of i3, and i honestly don't see a reason to switch. very comfy in it.

[@username4471]

i3 is comfy, but for some reason keybinds don't work while in context menus, which can sometimes be actually really annoying. Example: I want to take a screenshot while having a context menu open. I can't because the keybind doesn't work for some reason while having a context menu open. I'm using the printscreen key for the keybind.

[@r3ddr4gon80]

@@username4471 I'm pretty sure this is actually a limitation of X11, and happens in all X window managers.

[@username4471]

@@r3ddr4gon80 Really? Why is that? Any way to fix it?

[@r3ddr4gon80]

@@username4471 According to the X developers there is no way to fix it without changing the X protocol which would require alot of rewriting in applications. Thats one of the reasons they decided to build wayland. If you like i3, I recommend trying swaywm, which tries to be a i3 replacement using wayland. If you are interested in the details you can watch the arguably old but still good video The real story behind wayland and X /watch?v=GWQh_DmDLKQ&t=1894s . The explanation for this problem is at roughly 31: 34. :) I just watched it again because it is kind of funny but also sad.

[@ashwin372]

Started using i3 now people like distro hopping are doing wm hopping wtf

[@taidee]

i3 is great, the hardcore guys have to realize that we need to start somewhere. I enjoy i3wm, it enables me to quickly get down to work compared to having to study the tool for too long. I've enjoyed Xmonad through your teachings DT. BY the way thank you for the great work people like you do

[@placeholder4307]

"The great thing about xmonad is there's no patching. [...] You can put everything that you want to do for xmonad in this one document here and it's just a saner way of doing things." Is it time to properly revisit NixOS?

[@Brian-uq6jm]

Hahah, you proposed something novel. You have my thumbs up.

[@umka7536]

How I like reasonable discussion. Thanks a lot for your content! You help to many of us. :)

[@taotechong]

"Xmonad has better documentation than DWM." Documentation is bloat.

[@azmah1999]

A proper API is bloat too

[@douwehuysmans5959]

@D M Yes good luck writing an operating system in pure Haskell

[@khai96x]

@@douwehuysmans5959 C and C++ are unsafe and thus immoral. Learn the way of Rust, pray to Jesus, and save lives (praying to Jesus and saving lives are optional)

[@douwehuysmans5959]

@@khai96x Funny you mention rust, there is someone that wrote an operating system in Rust and he said it was absolute hell

[@khai96x]

@@douwehuysmans5959 I thought you were a troll, but since you are so oblivious to my joke as to take it seriously, let's be serious shall we? A WM is not an OS. Your argument is stupid.

[@wintc]

Thank you! Recently decided to do a tiling wm on my machine and chose dwm without much thought; definitely going to be switching to xmonad instead, that documentation looks so nice to use

[@TheToniz4]

10:32 if you exec dwm in a while loop on xinitrc you can restart it with mod+shift+q, like that: while true; do /usr/local/bin/dwm 2> /dev/null done

[@AnzanHoshinRoshi]

Thank you, Derek. There was well presented.

[@DylanFalconer]

I have been using dwm for several months without any patches and it's perfectly functional. That is my only nitpick with this video. Keep it up Derek!

[@BobB-bu1wk]

DT seems to be going after luke lately

[@tearworld]

because luke has thrown shade towards DT for ages

[@stasiopastas]

Not the best example to follow but ok

[@eddieedd1600]

@@tearworld luke throwing shades is luke's trademark, nothing personal or special here :)

[@BobB-bu1wk]

@@tearworld any examples?

[@BrunodeSouzaLino]

That's not a good idea. Luke is a married man.

[@XaverHellauer]

An estimated 90% of patches for dwm could also be done in config.h, which is a far superior way to do things. I used to run a heavily patched version of dwm without "patching" anything but config.h. You can e.g. easily put additional layouts etc. in there.

[@riseabove3082]

You make a lot of sense, DT. Great opinion piece, enjoyed watching.

[@sethwilliamson]

I've tried a bunch of window managers over the years and always seem to keep coming back to Xmonad.

[@zcalex7660]

ive lived in qtile since you told us to try a WM and i LOVE it.

[@dustinmorse8497]

Me too, it's my daily driver.

[@zcalex7660]

Same here and i probably wont ever go back to a DE

[@DistroTube]

Keep using qtile if you love it. (I love qtile!). It's essentially an xmonad clone written in Python. It's fabulous.

[@engageintellect]

How can I change the border color of floating windows in qtile? I can’t stand the blue color. I want it to be white. If someone knows PLEASE tell me as I have found no documentation of this. @distrotube?

[@HexDSL]

Yes. I agree with pretty much all of that. I use BSPWM currently. DWM is great but the lack of re make is suck way more.

[@Randomizer92mx]

should be called suckmore then

[@ertwro]

Nothing makes you more 'lit than downloading another persons config files and following whatever they say.

[@auroradraco9974]

The reason i3 (and wms like i3) are and will always be popular is the fact that they are easily configurable. I for one would have never made the switch if to configure I had to use a programming language as I know none. Now that I have spent time in i3 though, because I know a lot of the fundamentals of tiling wms its more reasonable for me to try sth else. Furthermore, for a new user, documentation is arguably the most important thing. To understand how sth works, even if its easy you need to read its documentation. Sure if you have enough knowledge already you dont need it. But the keyword here is beginners. When I started playing around with Linux I needed some documentation about the things I was doing (forums and the arch wiki really). Same with i3, its great documentation and easy to edit config file made me want to use it. Obviously its config is more limited because you dont actually edit with a programming language, but its arguably one of the best entry points to the universe of tiling wms. These other window managers have a place for people that are already familiar either with the language that they will configure in or with the concept of tiling WMs

[@krabgod2023]

A girl using Linux is unreal i refuse to believe in this comment

[@armynyus9123]

I so much love dwm, for me as a programmer dwm is a diamond

[@DanielCardin_ATX]

word

[@coronaklledmebot4856]

nope, try windows (wsl2) or macos

[@LoganKaval]

My first tilling window manger was XMonad and I still use it to this day!

[@charliekahn4205]

I like to think of many of these tilers as language interpreters with X bindings. Awesome is a Lua interpreter for X. Stumpwm is a Lisp interpreter for X. Qtile is X bindings for Python. Sawfish is a Rep interpreter for X. Dwm and Xmonad are different because they are written in a compiled language. Xmonad compiles your configuration when you change it. Dwm is recompiled when you change it.

[@Jeff_Seely]

I am loving Xmonad and it is clearly becoming all that I need in a desktop environment and it is also a fun project for me. And to me it does fit a suckless definition. And Haskell configs are easier to read and edit by day. And I really attribute that to you Derek and your comprehensive coverage of the Xmonad WM, particularly the DTOS setup. Otherwise, I'd probably get a bit discouraged with all the reading and I might have given up.

[@BosakMaw]

Great arguments, thank you for the explanation

[@driden1987]

Haskell is beautiful! It’s awesome if you get into it by using a piece of software you love

[@henninb]

I enjoy Xmonad and bspwm this far. I am looking at dwm and Spectre. I like the tiling manager concept. Right now I am sticking with bspwm, but they are possible for me to switch to anytime.

[@SuphiKaner]

I recently moved from dwm to bspwm and I'm very happy with the change I think I'm going to stay here

[@interguy589]

I started with awesome wm after your video and honestly I have made it clearly my own with a great config .. Don't think I am gonna ever switch

[@mcfrizzlefries5537]

Damn, just got qtile working how I liked(found it through this channel!). Gonna have to start learning Haskell. Damn you DT with your fancy confg files!

[@azmah1999]

Don't change if you're happy with qtile. What's important is that you have a WM that fits your needs. Unless you want to see what various WM are like just for fun of course

[@IrizarryBrandon]

The good thing about applications that use non-ad-hoc config languages - they actually take people down a road (like they did me) where you actually start wanting to learn programming languages on a serious level (e.g., seeing how so many applications are scripted in Lua, makes you want to learn Lua.)

[@nonenothingnull]

Holy ... I started using i3 5 years ago?! I remember getting compelled by tekSyndicate's vid on getting Eric S. Raymond's new rig back then

[@x3mboy]

I'm using to i3 right now, not i3-gaps, just i3. I love it, it's super easy to configure. I don't see me changing now.

[@edupazz]

Still using?

[@x3mboy]

@@edupazz yes, still using

[@edupazz]

Maneiro

[@bitcode_]

I suspect a secret Bro-mance between DT & Luke

[@dustinmorse8497]

Shots Fired!

[@amosnimos]

Been on awesomewm for a while, it just work it's awesome. I would like to try other wm but awesome keep doing what i need it to do! So i keep using it...

[@GIJOEG36]

I really like config files, because they make it easy to have multiple config. I'm working mostly on shared systems

[@michalski9141]

i3 was nice to get started, I might switch to one of these soon

[@zakharper2537]

Start dwm in loop. Then when you recompile and quit (mod+q) it refreshes your changes, no need to log in and out. I have another mapping that kills my start up script when I really want to exit dwm.

[@diegonayalazo]

Thanks For sharing

[@minhajsixbyte]

DWM uses C. Thats a huge plus for many. Perl Haskel, Lisp, Lua etc are obsolete nowadays.

[@justinlynn]

"In many ways, XMonad is a better suckless window manager than DWM will ever be" Shots fired! XD

[@zdravkodimov897]

That's exactly my case! Left i3 (have been using it for over 1yr) for dwm because I wanted round borders. Plus it's very dull, you can't really have dynamic variables or any sort of logic in the config. Have been playing with dwm for the past 2 days but conflicting patches take long time to debug. A great fix for this that'd save you all the trouble is "dwm-flexipatch". Anyway, still couldn't achieve those round borders, no matter how many patches or different forks of compton I tried.. Like, I want the BORDERS to be round, not only the window which is easy. Now I see It's totally possible to have round borders with XMonad plus Haskell seems can help me to understand functional programming better so this night I won't be sleepin' 😂🤞

[@Derek-tk4wf]

We cannot stop until there is a specialized custom DE for every single individual on the planet. No 2 people should ever have to feel like they arent completely unique and require insanely niche workspaces.

[@a.j.javier8119]

I used DWM for a couple of years and I really found it pretty simple to configure, now the patching is not so simple. But DWM is pretty KISS and for the public it is targeted is alright. Now I'm using bspwm and pretty much missing dwm after watching this video.

[@urugulu1656]

ok someone make a distro based on tiny core with ratpoison as a wm and remove just about everything someone expects...

[@brickviking667]

I tried ratpoison for all of about 90 seconds. 30 of those were spent trying to figure out how to spawn a terminal so I could actually DO anything. I gave that up as a bad joke.

[@tiberiusmagnificuscaeser4929]

I seriously used ratpoison for some time. It was simple and uncomplicated enough for a smooth brain like me to be able to use it while still being efficient

[@DanielPianoful]

Being using ratpoison for years, can't use anything else at this point. It's just amazing

[@FreeMan-wz3hj]

ratpoison is great! I've been waiting for OpenBSD 6.7 to drop and I'm torn between a ratpoison rice or a Xmonad rice...

[@patrick_gingras]

C-t C-t is the best

[@jorar91]

The beauties of a purely functional programming language

[@marcello4258]

I agree on the bar for the most parts, but I have the clock there :Dwell actually also useful to see my keyboard layout (not a big deal) and volume (but that might be a habit) if I'd be able to ditch the clock somehow I'd be happy without a bar ;) would save my somewhat a lot of space

[@mr_beezlebub3985]

Window managers are cool. Though XFCE works so well for me that I feel no need to switch

[@IAmOxidised7525]

Yes it is actually cool xfce4 is best , stable and yet snappy...

[@jhonrocha6632]

My BSPWM never used more than 10MB of RAM and the configuration being done by commands on shell is perfect for me. I don't reload anything, I just change on the fly. Really powerful... I can pipe, xargs, and a lot more... I have lived on Awesome, bspwm and dwm. Now I am back to bspwm and man... it is perfect.

[@DistroTube]

Thanks for sharing

[@jhonrocha6632]

@@DistroTube Now I feel like a fanboy haha Just to clarify, If I had two monitors I would probably use Xmonad. I have seen you, explaining how it handles them and I have to say it makes much more sense.

[@JusticeHunter]

I think one argument for dwm is the dependencies. I don't use ghc and I kinda don't want additional dependencies. Minimal dependency for the features you need is also part of the philosophy, if you ask me. It's not to say that xmonad does not deserve attention, I am sure it is superior in some ways, as you pointed out.

[@thering0010]

I use Manjaro i3 at work, and the fact of the matter is, I don't have time to do the amount of configuring I'd have to do to make many of the other WMs look and act the way I want them to. For starters, I like the i3 default keybinds a lot better than most of the typical standard keybinds for other WMs because I've also been a Mac user (mod+Shft+q vs mod+Shft+c). I also prefer (and I realize this is gonna REALLY upset some folks) jkl; over hjkl for navigating when I'm not using the arrow keys. Someday when I have lots of time to just rewire my brain to use something like Xmonad, I'll probably do that, but honestly i3-gaps does everything I want it to do with minimal configuration, but it still gives me the option to really customize it if I want to. I don't care about the philosophy behind Suckless or any of that, I just want something that meshes with the way I think, and i3-gaps does that better than most I've tried so far (not to mention the fact that Manjaro already has a pretty nice pre-configured distro).

[@vuquangdung6024]

Ive used xmonad for a long time and while I can't say I regret I learnt haskell to config it, it mostly because im a programmer and functional programming sure is something. If my sole reason is to have a customized, fit-the-needs window manager to use, no way I would go learn a whole language for it, leave alone haskell, or C, for the matter.

[@alphabennyrosy5068]

For me DWM always worked great without patches. I just switch the modkey to windows key and changed default terminal emulator and added a few key combinations to perform specific task like opening application and that is about it ( Use git with branches to properly patch it and make changes ones in a while) . DWM is the first window manager that I used and was impressed by, it really did just come natural to me. Though I really am planning on moving to bspwm because of the amazing sxhkd program and it being very minimal (only a window manager), cause to me the dwm bar is useless, I don't even look at bar, I memorize tag number and I keep track of tags. Bspwm also I heard more memory efficient then dwm, not that it really matters but it is kindda cool. Suckless tools are good, but they are definetly not the most Suckless, the best Suckless tool they make is probably dmenu.

[@Chr0n0s38]

@henry stevens I'll give you 1 guess where the "d" in dmenu comes from.

[@alphabennyrosy5068]

@henry stevens DWM is suckless!!

[@akojic5486]

I'm living in emacs window manager Exwm. Elisp is only thing I need to learn. This is so much strong you can't understain how much power you got. I use fake keys to send Firefox open new tab(ctrl+t) with letter "t" or whatewher letter I want I can do. I'm not turning back on my shoulders and looking alternivities because I found I way to use one program one configuration and rule others programs inside my emacs.. I'm going to use it until I pass away.. I'm happy user x-D

[@pslq]

Congrats on your content, and specially this video is a gem. I'm a bit older than you on Linux... I'm on it for the last 20 years ( personally and professionally ) and I never got the fuzz about window managers or desktops or even distros... I went from Slack to Debian to RHEL ( even AIX ) and lately... Ubuntu.... from WindowMaker to KDE and CDE... and recently I3, people should care less about aesthetics and coolness and use what fit their needs best :)

[@diazepamkit]

This!!!!!! This is the kind of comment i have waaited for so longgg. But, you know... youtuber do this... Is for content after all.

[@LuisgiXD]

It's not just for the content, people have different interest. For example for my work I use a manjaro with xfce installed. It just works and that's fine for me. But for my personal computer i use awesome and I'm currently learning Lua to make my theme. If all you want is functionality that's good, but also there's other ways to experience computers in general, it's natural for people to want something unique. However what I don't understand is those stupid wars people want to do, there's no wrong way of doing Linux, is really lame for people to be calling out others for using the software they like.

[@parhelik5403]

These videos are mostly watched by kids or teens I think. A lot of them use weird American slang words like "boomer" which I have to google. Lot of jokes about bloat. DT is like a father figure to all of them trying to gently coax them on the road to common sense. Luke Smith is like some Pied Piper of Hamelin figure trying to lure them away to the Suckless cave.

[@DGDG0000000]

Sure I. 'm thinking same. But actually, what you and I think about what people should do or should not do is not a reference or a God speaking true. I mean, I know some people enjoy to just click because they are lazy, some other just love to see something they are thinking to be nice (tomorrow nice will bean other one thing) and in fact we can not make them more free than they can be. Facts are just to count users choices as a fact. And next step to find criteria to define why they choose this or that for each one who is inside a kind of category. This is statistic predictive things we can just analyze about almost everything or every one. What I said is that, if you really care about what humans want, you should select which human category, and next realy look at what they are following closer and why. Judge about fact of stupidity will never change anything. Most of the time I can see that there is nothing more trustable and addictive for people than what it is easy access to them and because friends use it (human is like a lamb) . What ever it is ugly expensive or dirty or horribly bad for the body, or spy the life... Never mind... Easy access and, boom... Works and love for many. Now if you add a kind of virtual idea of there own image with the product (like a hero or a world champion what ever stupid it is, something most of them follow like a God) it will become strongly addictive to many. Mc Donald, Windows, Facebook, Google, Skype, Apple, and all these shit companies stole data and private life of there users but still there users paid for that shit(and at expensive price for Apple or Samsung). As you can just see, It just works as it is... It is a fact. You will never convince stupid people or lazy one to be free. But you can fight against crooks, there is not to much but yes, they are rich, and powerful as the money world love corruption.

[@michaelpercival2787]

I've been using i3 for about a year and a half, made the switch to dwm over the weekend (pls no bully) and I have to say I'm impressed. It's not a massive game changer obviously but it's been a breath of fresh air to be able to tinker and not have to deal with i3 config idiosyncrasies, though maybe it's more just the fact that I've been on i3 for so long and it got a bit stale. Conceptually I find a few things more elegant than i3 also e.g. the stack design. I'll be sticking with dwm for the foreseeable future, but I'll try out Xmonad next.

[@danielmacias13]

Haskell is a functional programming language which means its a lot different that the common object oriented languages like C#, Javascript, Java, etc... It has a lot of advanced concepts that go over the heads of developers, let alone non-developers. I would say though that you don't necessarily need to know a lot of Haskell if all you have to do is import a library and call its functions to enable functionality. I think once you get into hacking territory though, Haskell's complexity is going to overwhelm you. If you're the type that left i3 b/c of the limits of a plain text config, then DWM might be a good place to start since its in an ubiquitous language, works out of the box and can learn to hack by seeing how changes affect the program (by applying patches).

[@Artoooooor]

To be honest I use DWM because... it was the first tiling window manager I used. I tried i3 afterwards and did not like the tree structure. Editing source to reconfigure the WM is a cool curiosity. As long as it compiles really fast (which DWM does) it's good. I kinda like the dwm minimalism and extending by patches. But it's the same reason I will not advise it to most of my friends. And the patch allowing to restart dwm usually is the first I apply :) I'll try xmonad.

[@skittlesvampir8400]

The subtitles are for the wrong language

[@Gummb0]

lol I didn't know that I could understand Portuguese

[@calleha01]

they're in a different language from the source code

[@skittlesvampir8400]

@@calleha01 Does DT use GLP? If yes they have to put their code online!

[@calleha01]

@@skittlesvampir8400 saw the MIT license on his gitlab, so probably not lol

[@douwehuysmans5959]

Southern accent = Portugese lmao

[@user-ol3tf1qi6c]

actually with bspwm and herbstluftwm you can use any language you want, not just bash, and even write your own scripts to add extra functionality like a dropdown workspace(herb exclusive though).

[@jbardolf2805]

BOOMER FIGHT, BOOMER FIGHT!

[@dmsalomon]

It's not only that the configuration file is written the same language. It's that the configuration file is compiled into the program, and not read at startup. In true suckless fashion is actually subtracting features, rather than adding features.

[@JK-qk8rh]

Well I gotta say I recently started with i3 because I wanted to get started with just an easy to use tiling WM. I get why i3 is so popular, because it is very easy to use and configure for tiling WM newcomers like me.

[@heliokieras73pequenasmaos]

I used I3WM, DWM and very now I am using XMOBAR. All of these have good similar benefits to handle windows.

[@spicybaguette7706]

Awesome wm is also a great option. It's a fork of dwm and allows a lot of flexibility with an API for the Lua scripting language. You can change widgets, layout, basically everything

[@jeetadityachatterjee6995]

Awesome is a good window manager but for me it does to much in an obscure language that I don't know. I mostly copied and pasted and hated debugging it. I moved to herbstluftwm and I'm much happier using polybar and dunst which are all much easier to configure and I get a nicer system

[@Returnality]

Awesome is super buggy for me. My browser sometimes only appears cut in half (it's full-screened but the right half is blank), the wallpaper will randomly reset to default, and sometimes my browser will only open in workspace 2 even though nothing in the config file specifies that it should. I really wanted to use Awesome, but I can't deal with all the bugs.

[@Person1873]

@@Returnality the browser issue is something you'll find is a very TWM centric issue not specific to awesome. It comes from the window manager ignoring requests from the browser to resize it's own window. Popping it out to floating and back into tiling mode seems to fix it most times though

[@Returnality]

@@Person1873 Perhaps, but I haven't encountered the issue on any of the other TWMs that i have used (i3, BSPWM, and DWM). I also definitely haven't encountered anything like the other two bugs. There is actually a commented out option in the config to make Firefox always open in the second window. I decided to delete the comment to see if that somehow changed anything. It's still an issue.

[@toshirokardevaand2772]

Why would I use a tiling WM, if I have no issue with normal windows?

[@peacemekka]

xmonad is pretty op. Literally just a bunch of libraries you get which throw a bunch of information. You wire this information to the right variables and its up and running. It has the option to restart as well as recompile. But people probably don't use because of the haskell dependencies it pulls(xmonad has about 30 haskell deps and xmobar has like 72! haskell deps) and how much it relies on the ghc compiler. Not really much of a problem for normal people unless they're aiming for extreme minimalism of some sort. i3 is pretty great to have as a backup incase some other wm you're using decides to stop working all of a sudden. Its just a 'it just werks' type of wm.

[@XDjUanZInHO]

Xmonad is actually a rewrite of dwm in Haskell, awesome is another rewrite with lua support and there's the new instantWM. I'm not a suckless fanboy, but the fact that it's so easy to actually put new functionality there is impressive. Indeed it's very hard to use vanilla dwm, but it's made to be patched, that's why it has "only" 2000 lines of code, for you to hack on it. Qtile goes for kinda a similar phylosophy but on python, but by being written with custom libs it's not as powerful as editing the actual source code. I find it very nice to use bspwm, and it was my tem of choice, but dwm is so powerful I can't help but try it. What I also find awesome with dwm is that it "learns" from any other tiling window manager, you can patch the good things about any of them :), tho I gotta admit that awesome is quite the thing to edit an already big and full pack.

[@vexsimp]

I know it's been a year, but could you please explain how Xmonad is a rewrite of DWM? Where does that come from?

[@mmakaba]

11:18. That's more like a status bar than a panel, you need that for managing the tags, like showing multiple tags at the same time. Tags are different from workspaces.

[@matthill11]

Can you do an indepth config video for xmonad like your qtile videos

[@GavinFreeborn]

"dwm hasn't gained the popularity it deserves." Don't worry Luke just told people he is using it. Now it's all we will see on r/unixporn. love dwm but most of the posts that come out of it are kinda boring. Mostly because noone tries to use a non default bar.

[@Flash136]

This is true. I can always immediately tell they're a dwm user if they're using the same old boring bar. With the 10 workspaces, a title indicator (and a layout indicator), and some fifty status to the right of the bar.

[@gokulswami7665]

Unixporn isn't filled with lots of dwm posts. I think they're kinda rare, even if not it still doesn't beat the fact that everyone posts i3-gaps and bspwm. Even if that's popular, those two can be tweaked in such ways that each post is unique. I use dwm, but not because luke said too lol. I don't watch his videos. I'm using it to test my knowledge of C and for my workflow. As for a non default bar, the only example I can think of is polybar but I read that it doesn't really work well with dwm. It's own bar is pretty nice to use and customize, I don't get how it's boring.

[@Andrath]

I used dwm way before Luke started to use it. Actually, Kai Henry and iBSD turned me onto dwm.

[@FreeMan-wz3hj]

> Now it's all we will see on r/unixporn. Uhh, no quit lying. There's been like 3 dwm posts in the past 3 days out of 25 posts.

[@gokulswami7665]

@@FreeMan-wz3hj I agree and one of them was mine hehe

[@maddancing]

I just cannot wrap my head around haskell

[@SaHaRaSquad]

10:50 That's wrong, you don't need to log out to update dwm. You only need to run it in a loop in your .xinitrc file and then stop it, either with the quit shortcut or by running "pkill dwm". It'll restart immediately without closing any program. That way you can update the dwm config just as fast as with i3 for example.

[@mikerotch4946]

Help! I set my window manager to Vim and now I can't get out of it

[@zaimwaqar2788]

Force shutdown

[@kayleighgarrett402]

rm -rf /*

[@MrRenanwill]

My patches I did not have configured manually. Just make : 1) enter the directory 2) make clean 3) delete the config.h if any 4) copy the diffs to your dwm compiling directory 5) cat *.diff | patch -p1 6) make DESTDIR=./ install 7) sudo cp dwm /usr/bin. 8) make clean Thats all. I have applied like 10 or more patches and no errors.

[@RoxxenTheTime]

Where did you get the arch cofee mug?

[@mhmdahmd8477]

dwm patching system isn’t that bad in fact I love it because I can granularly choose only the features I need and drop tho others or make min if I want to, it’s minimal that’s what I love

[@matthill11]

We need a dtwm

[@sishomot2548]

you also often need to manually call "xmonad --recompile" after kernel update

[@amrsoll]

A new DT - Luke feud? *grabs popcorn*

[@MissourHanzai]

popcorn is bloat *grabs corn on the cob*

[@benjaminbrady2385]

The patch system isn't because they're too proud to go over some amount of SLOC. It's to reduce bloat, increase minimalism, and increase efficiency of their programs. You only patch on a given feature if it's a feature that you want. Also, it's designed to be trivially easy to hack on your own features and optionally submit them as a patch too

[@mariusandersons]

then why why ship with a bar, remove that too save some lines code. user can patch it if they really need it

[@chelonianegghead274]

Funnily enough, /r/unixporn is full of dwm posts at the moment lol.

[@savantshuia]

The one thing I hate about dwm is the documentation, because I have only begin to learn C, but I have only used dwm and am slowly getting used to the programming language so I think I will stick with dwm since I am already using dmenu and st, and for st the only patch I really needed (for now) is the scrollback patch, before I used to do something very stupid (it worked but it felt wrong) which was lets say my ls output is too big so no matter I will just: ls -la | vim, and then ZQ when I am done.

[@torspedia]

If someone is learning a language, like me with Python, would you suggest using a WM written in that language?

[@asdfkjhlk34]

Yes

[@DistroTube]

Of course! You will definitely get to practice writing Python!

[@torspedia]

@@DistroTube that's good to know, ta. Along with Qtile, any other Python based WMs you can recommend, that I can also run?

[@wintersilence9884]

Does anyone know how to make a keyboard layout per application with all these tiling window managers? So far I experienced only i3 and I had to combine it with xfce panel, because it has a plugin for that purpose. So it's more of xfce with i3wm as a WM then i3wm with a couple of xfce services. It works good but it's pain in the a.. because xfce sometimes restores its session bringing back its default window manager and I have to reconfigure it. Plus I had to use polybar to have workspace buttons, there is no good plugin for xfce panel :( So it's even more weird as I have 2 panels, just one over another. I so much rather want keyboard layout per application that I went this ugly way. Are there any tools, approaches with any of the tiling window managers?

[@sasakanjuh7660]

I think you are missing the fact that dwm doesn't have to read config file every time it need to look some setting up, it's configured ahead of compiling, so it does not have to rely on any config file after.. I think that also mighy be a selling point for many dwm users..

[@tylerdean980]

This saved my ass today. Glibc got broken somehow and I couldn’t launch Firefox, or even terminator. But I keep st around and was able to launch it with dmenu, otherwise I would have had to work in the tty which is a lot more annoying.

[@nottobay6768]

Having recently moved to NetBSD I am having to adjust to learning from man pages after being lazy and just watching videos before this. I feel like being able to read man pages is turning into a dieing art tbh.

[@B-a_s-H]

Some things die for a reason. Reading is so much slower then information transmission via audio/video. Man pages are good as a reference not as a study tool. (disclaimer: Imho).

[@nottobay6768]

@@B-a_s-H Till you have to go and learn to use something from the man page like qemu, because all the videos use virt-man which I would need to port and that would require knowing how it works. So I'm got it working up to figuring out spice entirely by written documentation.

[@B-a_s-H]

@@nottobay6768 fair enough.

[@folksurvival]

How are you liking NetBSD? Why did you switch?

[@nottobay6768]

@@folksurvival Yah I haven't messed with it in a while, between moving and having to do basically all the cleaning in this house I just haven't felt like installing the NetBSD half of the win10 dual boot I have excepted that I kinda need.

[@alecstewart212]

The frustrating part of suckless stuff is the patching. With st I spent way too damn long trying to get the patches I wanted to work together so I could just to look almost as nice as Alacritty, Kitty, Konsole, QtTerminal, or Xfce Termina and function the same. If that's your thing, by all means go ahead. I'm totally fine with giving more freedom to the user, but I don't feel like monkey patching something to get it to work like something I can change 1 or 2 lines in a config file.

[@FH-ux4rf]

I see how Xmonad seems easier to get into than Dwm, but it being written in Haskell worries me, because I have no knowledge of that language nor do I expect that I will spend a lot of time learning it over other languages. So, from looking at your config file it didn't look too overwhelming, but would you consider it user friendly even for people that have absolutely zero knowledge of Haskell. Also, since I do want to learn Python and already know some basics, would qtile be a good choice and what are some pros and cons of that wm compared to Xmonad?

[@DistroTube]

If you know (or are learning) Python, then qtile is fantastic. It's basically xmonad written in Python instead of Haskell.

[@FH-ux4rf]

@@DistroTube Oh brilliant, I was watching some of your videos on qtile after commenting and it seems pretty great. It kind of does look slightly more complicated on the surface than Xmonad to me, but again, I feel like I can get more out of learning qtile than Xmonad. Thanks for the response and your awesome content!

[@pauleduard4772]

On reddit's UnixPorn it seems to be a slugfest between i3 and bspwm!

[@himanshushukla6451]

For me DWM is the snappiest wm of the three I have tried ( awesomewm, i3, dwm)

[@thecashewtrader3328]

Are bro xmonad par aja Maja ayega

[@himanshushukla6451]

@@thecashewtrader3328 bro full-screen KZbin karneka solution nai milra. I tried.

[@thecashewtrader3328]

​@@himanshushukla6451 1. change layout to monocle 2. bind a key to `sendMessage ToggleStruts` when u do that u should be fullscreen w/no bar

[@himanshushukla6451]

@@thecashewtrader3328 okk will try

[@thecashewtrader3328]

@@himanshushukla6451 ♥️

[@NoXuS9090]

It would take me weeks to program most of the features I use in i3 for dwm, just to win some milliseconds on start. The only thing I kind of envy from dwm is that fibonacci layout patch, because it looks cool, but at the same time it seems to waste a lot of space on the screen, as almost all the other layouts, even the grid layout leaves a big chunk of the screen unused depending on the number of windows.

[@asdfkjhlk34]

NoXuS9090 and you cant even do stacking or tiling layouts

[@MartinOscarPapa]

I have been on i3 for 3 years . Works . Setup the way i like . I don't see any reason why I would move to something different. Is the something in xmonad , dwm..etc , i get worth the move. If there is please let us know. Im really not the kind to say one text file named config is bloat.

[@DistroTube]

I can't tell you which would be best for you. i3, dwm and xmonad are actually quite different from each other, especially when how they handle workspaces and how they handle multi-monitors.

[@asdfkjhlk34]

If you use stacking and tabbed layouts it would be strictly worse as youd lose them. If you dont then they might be better because of the dynamic tiling

[@JessicaFEREM]

I will say this: Just because you have a strict limit on the code line limit, doesn't make your TWM any better, if anything it makes it worse because you're not actually putting in fixes that are somewhat mandatory for a modern linux user. and yeah, I'm pretty sure if they seperated the bar into a seperate program, that'll allow DWM and DWMbar to be much better.

[@RunOfTheTrill]

I do not use suckless software, however I suspect there is value in their philosophy. Software engineering is probably the least rigorous discipline outside of the social studies. However, one of the truly valuable insights that they have found is that lines of code are correlated to the amount of defects in an application. I'd imagine the suckless guys are taking these findings and running with it. In that sense, what they are doing is just "good" engineering. Yes, you can achieve zero defects, but the cost of the program becomes astronomically high (eg, NASA; no pun intended).

[@ohdude6643]

If your code is getting too large, you're probably developing several applications in one. That's usually a bad idea. Thus, the number of lines is a simple and clear proxy for modularization. If you cannot write what you're trying to write in x LOC, then you have more than one application. Simple.

[@ZethGamer]

Not to mention the thing that the line limit is so mindboggingly arbitrary on it's own - You could in theory save the lines by making one exceedingly long line separated by semicolons, and computer will happily crunch through that (minify scripts anyone?) LOOK MY DWM HAS ONE LINE OF CODE! YOU WON'T BE ABLE TO MAKE ANY SENSE OF IT BECAUSE IT'S ONE FUCKING LOOONG LINE WEEEEE!

[@Flackon]

@@RunOfTheTrill "Software engineering is probably the least rigorous discipline outside of the social studies" What makes you say that? Have you *looked* at the practical reality of the other engineerings? (Or, on the flipside, at the methods applied to the well-founded social studies like anthropology? You'd be surprised that done properly they're more robust than you probably think)

[@Flackon]

@M-FeD ouch, rofl

[@gavinridley5727]

Another big contributing factor to suckless tools' desirability is the very small source code base... That itself makes it exceptionally hackable.

[@ashrasmun1]

I'm happy that I stopped using Linux for that exact reason... It's super fun to configure stuff, but it became an addiction of mine, and I was doing configuration only, without any actual work...

[@pdorism]

I mean configuring stuff is the actual job of an IT department.

[@xtnctr]

I'm sold.

[@Arkayaplays]

screw the youtube didn't gave me notification

[@armynyus9123]

I rather dig into 2000 lines of super well written C than into 5000 lines of (I guess) well written haskell plus a ton of documentation. But that's just me.

[@JuanGomez-rh1su]

Xmonad: Hold my beer 🍺 , Spectrwm: Hold my vodka ..

[@Ninjistile]

I feel like the purpose of i3 and dwm (or xmonad) are really different. I3 is a tree based wm which is really static while others like dwm are stack based which make them really dynamic, you switch windows really fast. They are just made for a different utilization. I personally like to set up my windows and keep them static which make me use i3.

[@SaHaRaSquad]

I really like stumpwm because it goes one step further: it never splits a frame automatically, new windows are just created in front of the currently selected one. But you can easily use and define shortcuts to split a frame vertically or horizontally and even have different shortcuts for different size ratios of the split. That makes it really easy to quickly organise the windows on the screen and keep them there. Also it handles multiple screens very naturally. dwm is nice as well but it's a pain to get into because it lacks any form of documentation and the source code is unnecessarily hard to read just to keep lines short.

[@Ninjistile]

@@SaHaRaSquad Yes I agree on the last argument but it wasn't really my point ^^