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

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

#11

Post by buugs »

jsrn wrote: post #3

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 sol…

I have a laptop with no windows key and am forced to use stumpwm because of the awkward positioning I have to use if it were bound to caps lock as alt is needed for emacs

stumpwm isn't bad though just xmonad is really nice when you have a decent modifier key available.

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

#12

Post by buugs »

tsally wrote: post #5

For the Lispers out there, I encourage you to try out StumpWM. It's tiling like Xmonad and written in Common Lisp. Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stumpwm Video: http://www.vimeo.com/1088321

It is actually more tiling like ratpoison/screen/emacs than xmonad.

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

#13

Post by thingie »

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.

Even the default config is reasonable and instantly usable, so this complaint really isn't very valid. You really can just install either distribution or cabal package, run it, and get the work done.

On the other hand, there are things, that really aren't going to work just out of the box and are hard to configure. Xmonad has quite a different behaviour than Gnome, and sometimes different from what usual desktop app expect. It might be necessary to create a specific settings for a single application, sometimes. But that's what makes it beneficial. If it were just another bad copy of metacity or kwin-like window manager, without adequate support of EWMH and stuff like it, which is the case of many and many X11 WMs, then it would be really worthless.

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

#14

Post by [deleted] »

buugs wrote: post #11
jsrn wrote: post #3

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 sol…

I have a laptop with no windows key and am forced to use stumpwm because of the awkward positioning I have to use if it were bound to caps lock as alt is needed for emacs stumpwm isn't bad though just xmonad is really nice when you have a decent modifier key available.

[deleted]

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

#15

Post by jrockway »

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.

It's true. Eating is a waste of time, sleeping is a waste of time, interacting with other people is a waste of time, posting to HN is a waste of time, talking about things that are a waste of time is a waste of time, wasting time is a waste of time. Your startup is, statistically, probably a waste of time. But we do it anyway.

I have spent a bit of time configuring Xmonad, but the configuration has lasted me for 2+ years and has saved me an infinite amount of frustration. I used Windows for a while at work, and the constant interaction with the mouse makes my hand hurt. With Xmonad, I never have to use the mouse. (I use it for casual web browsing, and whatnot, but I never need it to do real work.)

I have also wasted a lot of time configuring Emacs -- my .emacs and support files are more than 2000 lines long. But everything I've spent time on has eliminated small bits of frustration during my work (and play), so even if I can't justify the time savings, I can enjoy life more. Since you eventually die, I think it's worth enjoying life.

Xmonad makes my life similarly enjoyable.

The only thing that bothers me about Xmonad is that there is no "instance Monad X" in the source code -- Monad is automatically derived on the X type.

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

#16

Post by jrockway »

thingie wrote: post #13
laddy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Even the default config is reasonable and instantly usable, so this complaint really isn't very valid. You really can just install either distribution or cabal package, run it, and get the work done. On the other hand, there are things, that really aren't going to work just out of the box and are hard to configure. Xmonad has quite a different behaviour than Gnome, and sometimes different from what usual desktop app…

I agree here. I set up a new machine the other day and had the default xmonad config for a while. It works fine; it is not significantly different from my super-custom configuration. It was certainly better than a window manager where you have to drag things around to see all your windows.

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

#17

Post by jrockway »

clicks wrote: post #10
laddy wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Just pretend it's not configurable. Now it's like all the other window managers.

Also, stop calling tiling window managers "twm". "twm" is a specific window manager that comes with X. (Now there's a hard-to-use window manager.)

Finally, what problems were you having? If you just didn't like it, say so.

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

#19

Post by warp »

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.

Have you used ion or awesome? How is xmonad compared to those?

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

#20

Post by jrockway »

lupin_sansei wrote: post #18

Did you know that Windows 1.0 was a tiling window "manager"? Windows couldn't overlap for fear that Apple might sue Microsoft over the look and feel: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/winhistorydesktop.mspx

It was my understanding that overlapping windows was a "cool hack" that the developers implemented for fun. Then the marketing people decided to include that "feature" in the final version... and here we are today.
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