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XMonad on OSX

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Re: XMonad on OSX

#11

Post by jrockway »

silentbicycle wrote: post #8
look_lookatme wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just have a really hard time grokking haskell. I've been using stumpwm and it's awesome, but it integrates less well with gnome. In the same boat -- 6 years OSX, installed Lucid RC on 13 inch MBP recently -- so far no intention of going back.

dwm is good, too. Sure, C isn't the greatest thing for exploratory programming, but configuring it isn't hard. (One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) wmii is also good, and once you get used to using libixp, you can script it in anything. I found wmii's named tabs interfered with muscle memory, though. I used XMonad for a b…

Having used OpenBSD as a desktop for a bit, I realized, after waiting 24 hours for Amarok to build, that it is not a desktop OS. It's for your router. Use Linux for your desktop, it's just easier.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#12

Post by rkowalick »

silentbicycle wrote: post #8
look_lookatme wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just have a really hard time grokking haskell. I've been using stumpwm and it's awesome, but it integrates less well with gnome. In the same boat -- 6 years OSX, installed Lucid RC on 13 inch MBP recently -- so far no intention of going back.

dwm is good, too. Sure, C isn't the greatest thing for exploratory programming, but configuring it isn't hard. (One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) wmii is also good, and once you get used to using libixp, you can script it in anything. I found wmii's named tabs interfered with muscle memory, though. I used XMonad for a b…

(One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.)

This has already been done. It's called awesomeWM and it is exactly as good as its name indicates.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#13

Post by silentbicycle »

rkowalick wrote: post #12
silentbicycle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dwm is good, too. Sure, C isn't the greatest thing for exploratory programming, but configuring it isn't hard. (One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) wmii is also good, and once you get used to using libixp, you can script it in anything. I found wmii's named tabs interfered with muscle memory, though. I used XMonad for a b…

(One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) This has already been done. It's called awesomeWM and it is exactly as good as its name indicates.

I don't like Awesome. I've been using Lua for a while, and something about the way the Lua stuff is set up doesn't sit right with me. I can't rattle off any examples off the top of my head (it's been a while since I checked it out), but, I tried it, not my thing. (Also, taking a BSD codebase and making it GPL'd and bloated tends to piss me off.)

Re: XMonad on OSX

#14

Post by silentbicycle »

jrockway wrote: post #11
silentbicycle wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

dwm is good, too. Sure, C isn't the greatest thing for exploratory programming, but configuring it isn't hard. (One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) wmii is also good, and once you get used to using libixp, you can script it in anything. I found wmii's named tabs interfered with muscle memory, though. I used XMonad for a b…

Having used OpenBSD as a desktop for a bit, I realized, after waiting 24 hours for Amarok to build, that it is not a desktop OS. It's for your router. Use Linux for your desktop, it's just easier.

First off: Use binary packages. The ports tree is for porters and people running snapshots or CVS head. (Also: Definitely use binary packages if you're installing something that depends on KDE, or you'll be building KDE from source as a dependency.)

My "desktop" is emacs, dwm, tmux, and firefox, so that hasn't really been an issue for me. The OpenBSD minimalism is very much my style. (I use mpd for music, by the way.) It makes a killer router too, though.

I've tried going back to Linux a couple times, just to see what new developments (and ports, etc.) I've been missing since I spend most of my time on BSD. (I used Debian for a couple years, then mainly OpenBSD for the last six or seven.) I've gotten really used to OpenBSD, though, and every Linux distro I've tried hasn't stuck around for more than a day or two.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#15

Post by pmiller2 »

labria wrote: post #3
tudorachim wrote: post #2

Yes, but it only works for managing X apps, not the standard ones OSX ships with.

... and that makes it completely useless, sadly =( I would love to have a tiling WM for MacOS X, but it seems impossible (unless Apple suddenly makes one themselves =).

What's truly sad is that with the size of the screens on the newer desktop machines, a tiling WM would have a lot of room (literally) to shine. With OSX's standard window management, I end up having to do a lot of manual fiddling to get my windows to the point where they're simultaneously large enough to be useful, while not so large that they overwhelm my visual field. That little green button in the upper left corner really doesn't do what I'd want it to do on a 27" screen when I'm sitting just a couple feet away from it.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#16

Post by jrockway »

silentbicycle wrote: post #14
jrockway wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used OpenBSD as a desktop for a bit, I realized, after waiting 24 hours for Amarok to build, that it is not a desktop OS. It's for your router. Use Linux for your desktop, it's just easier.

First off: Use binary packages. The ports tree is for porters and people running snapshots or CVS head. (Also: Definitely use binary packages if you're installing something that depends on KDE, or you'll be building KDE from source as a dependency .) My "desktop" is emacs, dwm, tmux, and firefox, so that hasn't really been an issue for me. The OpenBSD minimalism is very much my style. (I use mpd for music, by the way…

My Linux setup is like this, but it's nice to have the "long tail" readily available. Stuff like SBCL and GHC are a pain to manually compile (or get from ports), and this leads to a cycle where since there's no GHC, there's no GHC. Compare to Debian where the latest version is almost always available, and so building $latest + 1 is trivial.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#17

Post by silentbicycle »

jrockway wrote: post #16
silentbicycle wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

First off: Use binary packages. The ports tree is for porters and people running snapshots or CVS head. (Also: Definitely use binary packages if you're installing something that depends on KDE, or you'll be building KDE from source as a dependency .) My "desktop" is emacs, dwm, tmux, and firefox, so that hasn't really been an issue for me. The OpenBSD minimalism is very much my style. (I use mpd for music, by the way…

My Linux setup is like this, but it's nice to have the "long tail" readily available. Stuff like SBCL and GHC are a pain to manually compile (or get from ports), and this leads to a cycle where since there's no GHC, there's no GHC. Compare to Debian where the latest version is almost always available, and so building $latest + 1 is trivial.

I know where you're coming from - trying to update a common lisp port years ago got me into porting stuff. I'm happiest with OpenBSD, and I've done a fair bit of porting. (Not everything made it into the tree, though.) These days I'm a bit wary of depending too much on anything I can't bootstrap.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#18

Post by rosenbergdm »

After casually trying AwesomeWM on my mac for a short while, I decided to try to make XMonad as usable as possible under OSX without writing any HOC code. It's been an incremental process, but at point I'd call my setup _more_ than adequate. One of these day's I'm either going to update the OSX/Xmonad wiki page with my method with all of the scripts and configurations I am using under the hood... In my opinion, much of the magic of integrating X11/Xmonad with aqua involves 'capturing' key combinations (on the Xmonad side), determining how to respond, then either responding directly or emitting the correct keystrokes using xdotool (http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/xdotool/).

For example, I let xmonad capture the keysequence . Xmonad keeps track of the MRU-like window list and switches to it. If it is another window in the current workspace, xmonad can switch to it unassisted. If a 'switch' would involve switching to an aqua application, xmonad then uses xdotool to emit the + key sequence (popping out of X11).

Re: XMonad on OSX

#19

Post by mzl »

silentbicycle wrote: post #13
rkowalick wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(One of these days I might really learn X programming and do a tiled WM configured with Lua, but I've got too many projects already.) This has already been done. It's called awesomeWM and it is exactly as good as its name indicates.

I don't like Awesome. I've been using Lua for a while, and something about the way the Lua stuff is set up doesn't sit right with me. I can't rattle off any examples off the top of my head (it's been a while since I checked it out), but, I tried it, not my thing. (Also, taking a BSD codebase and making it GPL'd and bloated tends to piss me off.)

You could also check out Ion. The development has stopped and the webpages pulled, but there seems to be two forks (notion and anion3) that are in progress.

Re: XMonad on OSX

#20

Post by silentbicycle »

mzl wrote: post #19
silentbicycle wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't like Awesome. I've been using Lua for a while, and something about the way the Lua stuff is set up doesn't sit right with me. I can't rattle off any examples off the top of my head (it's been a while since I checked it out), but, I tried it, not my thing. (Also, taking a BSD codebase and making it GPL'd and bloated tends to piss me off.)

You could also check out Ion. The development has stopped and the webpages pulled, but there seems to be two forks (notion and anion3) that are in progress.

Tried: 9wm, aewm, awesome, blackbox, dwm, ion, larswm, ratpoison, scrotwm, w9wm, wm2, wmii, xmonad, probably a half dozen others.

I liked aewm, blackbox, dwm, ratpoison, and XMonad the most, FWIW. While I really like the keyboard-centric UI in ion and ratpoison, I think the layout/tile interface style used by dwm, XMonad, etc. gracefully accommodates programs that have too many windows or just blatantly break ICCCM, while ion and ratpoison don't even try.

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