Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

xmonad.wordpress.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

1–10 of 50 posts

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#3

Post by jsrn »

I've used Xmonad for a few weeks now and it is simply great: "screen real estate" is never wasted, you get free brain cycles by never doing the nitty-gritty details of window arrangement manually again - you switch high level "layout algorithms" instead that arrange your windows differently.

Are you (like me) an Emacs user? You want to remap the Xmonad modifier-key (default is on left Alt a.k.a. Meta). Here is my solution:

    xmodmap -e "clear Mod3"
    xmodmap -e "clear Lock"
    xmodmap -e "add Mod3 = Caps_Lock"
    xmonad
taken from my ~/.xsession file - this remaps the "Caps Lock" key as a "Mod3 key".

My ~/.xmonad/xmonad.hs looks like this:

    import XMonad

    main = xmonad defaultConfig {
             modMask = mod3Mask
           , terminal = "xterm"
    }
Now I can use Caps Lock as Xmonad modifier key and Ctrl/Meta as I'm used to for Emacs (note that I have a PC 102 keyboard - if you have a keyboard with "Windows"-key you might use this key as modifier key instead and perhaps remap Caps Lock as your Control key...).

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#6

Post by clicks »

dylanz wrote: post #2

If you use tiled window managers, and haven't used Xmonad before, I highly recommend it. It's very lightweight, fast, non-buggy, and has a perfect (for me at least) little feature set.

Many kudos to dons for creating an awesome twm, but I don't think it's a good investment of time for the HN userbase (i.e., the young start-ups who just want to get their thing working and up, whatever be that 'thing'). Xmonad is hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with gnome and have everything Just Work.

But, that's just my opinion.

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#7

Post by mark_h »

carterschonwald wrote: post #4

xmonad is pretty cool, it uses quickcheck for (almost) exhaustive testing of every basic element of the manager, and as I understand it the process of programming new tiling layouts etc is pretty easy.

There's a couple of great articles by dons on the innards as well (good explanation of how the zipper data structure simplifies things): http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/01 http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/05/17

(also http://cgi.cse.unsw.edu.au/~dons/blog/2007/06/02 )

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#8

Post by laddy »

clicks wrote: post #6
dylanz wrote: post #2

If you use tiled window managers, and haven't used Xmonad before, I highly recommend it. It's very lightweight, fast, non-buggy, and has a perfect (for me at least) little feature set.

Many kudos to dons for creating an awesome twm, but I don't think it's a good investment of time for the HN userbase (i.e., the young start-ups who just want to get their thing working and up, whatever be that 'thing'). Xmonad is hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with gnome and have everything Just Work. But, that's just my opinion.

They have lots of example configurations you can just copy. I agree that at first it seems like it's going to be a huge hassle to setup but it's really not that bad after you've done it once.

Personally I find I get increased productivity out of not constantly fiddling with window placement.

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#9

Post by kwantam »

clicks wrote: post #6
dylanz wrote: post #2

If you use tiled window managers, and haven't used Xmonad before, I highly recommend it. It's very lightweight, fast, non-buggy, and has a perfect (for me at least) little feature set.

Many kudos to dons for creating an awesome twm, but I don't think it's a good investment of time for the HN userbase (i.e., the young start-ups who just want to get their thing working and up, whatever be that 'thing'). Xmonad is hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with gnome and have everything Just Work. But, that's just my opinion.

Many kudos to Linux for creating an awesome DOS 6.2, but I don't think it's a good investment of time for the HN userbase. Linux is hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with Windows and have everything Just Work.

Yeah, this comment is kind of like that. Most "modern" windowmanagers are much more about making the desktop pretty than making it usable. Me, I'm happily still running fvwm2 (though I use XMonad every once in a while), and not only does it not waste cycles on things I'm not looking at, it is configurable quickly and easily to an extent that the mainstream Gnome WMs have a hard time touching. XMonad takes that a step further by allowing configuration directly in Haskell (in my perfect world fvwm2 would use guile, but I'm not really complaining).

When you want to improve your efficiency at repetitive tasks or basic interactions with your computer, dropping relatively simple "Just Work" solutions in favor of more flexible options makes complete sense. Arguing against a meager time investment to make your UI yours strikes me as rather wrongheaded.

Re: Xmonad 0.9 released The light, reliable, extensible tiling window manager

#10

Post by clicks »

laddy wrote: post #8
clicks wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Many kudos to dons for creating an awesome twm, but I don't think it's a good investment of time for the HN userbase (i.e., the young start-ups who just want to get their thing working and up, whatever be that 'thing'). Xmonad is hard to configure and set up, and hard to work with. I'd rather stick with gnome and have everything Just Work. But, that's just my opinion.

They have lots of example configurations you can just copy. I agree that at first it seems like it's going to be a huge hassle to setup but it's really not that bad after you've done it once. Personally I find I get increased productivity out of not constantly fiddling with window placement.

> They have lots of example configurations you can just copy.

Sure, you can do that. But then you also have to take the time to understand THAT config (which, isn't even optimized for _YOU_, to begin with) and get USED to that . . .

>I agree that at first it seems like it's going to be a huge hassle to setup but it's really not that bad after you've done it once. You also have to invest time in understanding how the config goes, and have a bit of experience with Haskell, and Xmonad itself, to even create a config that really is good for you.

Maybe twm is something for me, maybe it isn't. I really don't know - because I only gave it one try, and quickly gave up (because I was having some problems with it, and wasn't willing at that time to set aside time to resolve those problems).

Post reply on HN