StumpWM - Overview Demo

[@joaopedrodeamorimpaula8965]

stumpwm is my next step in my journey to replicate a lisp machine as much as possible in a Unix environment!

[@josefinafinosa7502]

Como foi tua experiência com stumpwm?

[@maxreuv]

Good stuff, thank you! Not sure if I am going to use the StumpWM, but certain features were indeed interesting. I use Emacs for work but feel I am not ready yet to jump to the full emacsy experience

[@capability-snob]

Nice work, very well covered! You're not quite using the latest version though - I seem to have three types of groups, including a new "dynamic" type for when you actually want automatic tiling. The keybindings for dynamic need some polish, though. BTW, how did you center your message window? Not sure I'll do that as it seems to jump around while narrowing search results, but still kind of cool.

[@jamesmccabe3168]

No, not the latest version... well spotted. I originally started with a git version from March, I made the first half around of screencast around then and finished it in July or so. Life got in the way. I didn't include "Dynamic group" as there is still a pull request with a lot of commits waiting to be merged, so might cover that later. You can center message window with (setf *message-window-gravity* :center) Config is here: github.com/jamesmccabe/stumpwm-demo-config

[@luisosilva6025]

Thank you. Informative and useful.

[@diegoguraieb8282]

amazing! I will give stumpwm a try.. Thanks!

[@gumball135]

Good to see tech content from a fellow Irish person! Do you see a need to still use a terminal multiplexer like tmux or GNU Screen? StumpWM seems to cover the same workspace management use cases. Obviously can't replace tmux for managing processes on remote servers.

[@jamesmccabe3168]

Thanks fellow Irish person. Yes you can still use tmux but I don't really do much work on servers.

[@marksmod]

I actually quite like this. Will have to try it.

[@marksmod]

Today is the day. Bought a new computer and am going to install vanilla arch & stumpwm on this machine.

[@afonsorafael2728]

Marvelous

[@Achy1les]

For some reason, I do not have the "float-this" "unfloat-this" commands. They only seem to work with stumpwm installed from github. But, then I loose the capability to execute the "select-theme" command on the fly provided by the stumpwm-base-16 themes that I commented in your stumpwm installation video. So, that not to miss the select-theme command on the fly, I did not install stumpwm from github, but from apt itself on my Debian box. I would really like to have "float-this" and "unfloat-this" commands working with "select-theme". But, so far, "select-theme" command throws an error when stumpwm is installed from github. I haven't found any solution for them to work in together through the apt or github stumpwm installation...

[@jamesmccabe3168]

As you are using Debian I expect its an old version of Stump you are using possibly version 1.0.0. "float-this" and "unfloat-this" were added in early 2017 I think from browsing commits. Emmmm... you could try to patch StumpWM 1.0.0 code with the new code in tile-group.lisp and recompile to add the functionality. It seems a messy option to me. Is it really worth using stumpwm-base-16 for colors? I'm guessing its this repo github.com/tpine/base16-stumpwm? You could just add your own themes in an easier way maybe or try to solve the "select-theme" error in that repo. It would be more practical than patching in new functionality into old versions of StumpWM I'd imagine. I might take a look at that repo if I can get a chance. I only have very basic Lisp skills though.

[@BraxtonMeyer]

This is cool xan you show more from your setup in stump?

[@jamesmccabe3168]

I haven't much of a setup at the moment, its basic enough but I will make a video on it in the future. I'm currently making a demo installation video. I'm busy with work, moving house next month... as well as working on my fathers farm at weekends so its all a bit crazy to find time for Stumpwm :)

[@robinmattheussen2395]

I've been trying to get into Stump for a while now (because I like its ideas), but it's difficult to get into because of the general lack of resources out there.

[@jamesmccabe3168]

Yes it can be hard to get into at the beginning. The Stump manual and Common Lisp resources are where I started. Also reading the Stump code in the github repository can be helpful. Its not as easy to find resources compared to other window managers. It probably only appeals to people with an interest in Emacs and Common Lisp. I hope to make a few videos on setting up a minimal config if I can find some time in the future.

[@robinmattheussen2395]

@@jamesmccabe3168 I would definitely be interested in a video like that! I'm an Emacs user, and I see lots of people drifting to EXWM, but as cool as it is, I find it to be quite unpleasant to work with due to its technical limitations, so I've been looking at Stump as sort of an alternative to EXWM.

[@arkonan9307]

Great Job man !

[@krux02]

That was an interesting video. Can you provide a comparison to EXWM as well? After all EXWM is the closest to StumpWM afaik.

[@jamesmccabe3168]

To be honest I have never used EXWM. The main difference would be, its an Emacs package written in Emacs Lisp which turns Emacs into a window manager. StumpWM is written in Common Lisp which is more a multi-purpose programming language than Emacs Lisp. StumpWM is a stand alone window manager and uses its own config. It doesn't rely on using Emacs. You could use any text editor. So you would have your window manager config and editor config all in the one config, if you used EXWM I assume... whereas with Stump you would have a separate config. I may look into it in the future but I would like to make some more StumpWM videos first as there are so few compared to Emacs and even EXWM. Ratpoison I have used... is probably more similar to Stump in general usage except its written in C and uses a text based config file. This video only scratches the surface of StumpWM, its a deep rabbit hole when I started writing stuff for my own config, checking internal source etc.

[@MichaelGaribaldi]

Stumpwm is actually better. I'm an emacs fanatic, however, with EXWM, it's single threaded, which means if one process hangs, the entire WM hangs, stumpwm is multi-threaded and it will run even IF one process hangs. I normally run with Stumpwm as the WM and emacs up showing a command line, from there I run everything (pretty much) in Emacs.

[@katrush]

At first look it seems to be very inconvinient to manage windows with these prefix key and commands...

[@jamesmccabe3168]

Yes StumpWM is not for everyone, it has a small audience. Where it becomes interesting is when you begin to customize it to your own needs. It should be noted you can define any key combinations yourself. Also any command can be executed with any key combination you want.

[@yCherkashin]

2:00 double take at the "turd partie" :)

[@jamesmccabe3168]

☺️ Close one there...