Re: [gentoo-user] Awesome vs Xmonad

[Man Shankar]

On 17:11 Mon 22 Dec     , Andreas Niederl wrote:
> Hi,
>
> Man Shankar wrote:
> > Hello,
> >
> > I want to try out the tiling window managers. I would want to know the
> > experiences of the users about awesome and xmonad. Primarily i would
> > like to know which of those two tiling WMs has worked for you guys. The
> > hurdles you encountered and the gains you got thereof.
> >
> > Currently i am a happy e16 user, but the fact that the tiling WMs
> > "manage" the windows makes me attracted to them. Please comment.
> >
>
> I switched from e16 to xmonad last summer and haven't regret it so far.
> One important thing though is to get used to the tiling paradigm, i.e.
> letting the wm do all the resize and positioning work. I suggest you try
> it some time and see if it fits you.
> Personally I started using it only on my home pc while I kept e16 on the
> laptop for work until I couldn't resist a complete switch to it anymore.

Thanks everybody for replying. I am sorry i am late on this as i was having
trouble with a hard disk (thats for later). In the uptime that i got, i 
have managed to figure out that the 'fairh' tiling algo suits me. I have also
realized that now only seldom i use the mouse and also e16. Although i miss the
native transparency of e16 but apart from that i have absolutely nothing against
awesome. When i have time (someday) i will xcompmgr a try. Hopefully a git ebuild
of it exists somewhere.

>
> I've recently also started using awesome in a few virtual machines,
> mainly due to the large size of the xmonad dependencies (GHC takes up
> quite some space).
> >From my point of view they both look fairly the same with awesome having
> a few more features (tagging, widgets).
>
> It also helps to regard the configuration file (xmonad and >=
> awesome-3.0) as the main program, e.g. my xmonad.hs looks a bit like a
> Haskell program where different modules get imported and the main window
> manager module loaded at the end.
> You can do quite a lot with those two.
>
> Aside from that, the main difference between them are the programming
> languages they're written in because you have to use it for the
> configuration file.
> Awesome uses Lua which is a simple but powerful imperative scripting
> language and xmonad uses Haskell, an advanced functional programming
> language which many consider as rather hard to learn.
>
> Personally, I didn't know anything about Haskell before using xmonad and
> I have to admit that I had a few very hard times with it when I wanted
> to do some advanced (or even simple) configuration changes. But once you
> wind your head around the functional paradigm (and all those operators
> and monads) you can do a lot with it.
> Have a look at the xmonad config archive[1] for some examples.
>

I agree for someone new to the functional paradigm(me!!) it is initially
daunting. But once i am against such a situation i try to pick up someone
else's config and start from there. And besides, to use xmonad you just
perhaps need to remember your key-shortcuts, once a config file is set.
There is not much to interfere with these tiling beauties!!

 
> If you're going to use awesome I'd recommend having a look at
> x11-misc/dmenu as I didn't see any default integration of it in the
> awesome config (though I might have missed it).
>
>
> Regards,
> Andi
>
> [1] http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Xmonad/Config_archive

Oh dmenu is a beauty, used it during my openbox days; who needs fancy
menus?? In awesome-3.1 i have

keybinding({ modkey }, "z", function () awful.util.spawn("exec `dmenu_path | dmenu -b`") end):add()

works well.

So, awesome it is for the moment until I get the itch to switch !!

By the way Greetings and Happy New Year:2009 to everybody.

-- 

Regards,
Man Shankar <man.ee.gen(at)gmail.com>