Tiling Window Managers

• The Siemens RTL WM (1988) was an early one - and you just have to watch this video!
• Since 2000 we've got larswm, ion und ratpoison, all free software.

• Few interferences with common applications (err, cough, Emacs)
• The bindings should be easy to reach for touch typists, i.e.
  • no function keys, numeric keypad or "Windows" key

• No fine tuning with the mouse,
• might not be what you want
• Window placement is easy when you're working in fullscreen anyway.
• It's also easy to do for terminal windows - they are usable at almost any size.
  • This doesn't work all the time, e.g. man pages are not reformatted when the window gets narrower.
  • Curses based applications with several panes need a minimum window size to function.
• It's hard to do for programs that open several windows, e.g. the GIMP.
  • So it would be good to have a floating mode, just in case.

Modern desktop environments are quite heavyweight, but it's not just useless baggage that we're now throwing away:

• The NetworkManager is quite a useful tool, especially for laptops.
  • To use it you need a system tray which is provided by the gnome panel.
• You also leave behind Power-, Bluetooth-, Volumemanager, desktop search and menus. Of course you still can use all these applications, but you have to how to call them and maybe do additional setup.

Ratpoison is a window manager in the spirit of GNU screen - and it's executable is even smaller than screen is!

Stumpwm is the successor to ratpoison by the same author.

The feel of stumpwm is very similar to ratpoison, but it's more "hackable" since it is written in Common Lisp. But this also means that you need much more memory for the lisp runtime/compiler.

The ion window manager is under development since 2000, the current version is ion3. Ion uses workspaces, frames (which are created explicitly by splitting) and tabs. Windows that are set to fullscreen are handled much like a workspace. This also makes the numbering of the workspaces unstable. Ion is configured and scriptable in Lua.

• first released on Jun 3, 2000
• based on code from 9wm, a UNIX port of Plan9's 8 1/2 window manager
• inspired by Plan9/Acme

Larswm support multiple screens and virtual desktops. On every desktop there are two "subdesktops", the floating and the tiling subdesktop. The tiling subdesktop has to columns or "tracks".

Only a few applications are put into tiling, you have to configure these explicitly (whitelisting). But it's also possible to put an existing window into tiling with Alt-Shift-SPACE.

• the configuration file follows the format of an X resource file

  !!!!!!!!!!!!!
  ! .larswmrc !
  !!!!!!!!!!!!!
  
  ! These are the windows I want tiled
  !
  larswm.dotileclass.0: XTerm~xterm
  larswm.dotileclass.1: navigator:browser~Mozilla
  larswm.dotileclass.2: Mozilla-bin
  larswm.dotileclass.3: URxvt~urxvt
  larswm.dotileclass.4: Emacs~emacs
  
  ! Some tool windows
  !
  larswm.toolclass.0: XLoad~xload
  larswm.toolclass.1: XBiff~xbiff
  larswm.toolclass.2: XClock~xclock
  
  ! Windows that should always stay above other windows
  !
  larswm.floatclass.0: XCalc~xcalc
  larswm.floatclass.1: Gaim
  larswm.floatclass.2: larsmenu~larsmenu
  
  ! Windows that should be visible on all virtual desktops
  !
  larswm.stickyclass.0: larsmenu~larsmenu
  
  ! Assign all new web browser windows to the WWW desktop
  !
  larswm.dtclass.0: navigator:browser~Mozilla
  larswm.dtnum.0: 1
  larswm.dtclass.1: Mozilla-bin
  larswm.dtnum.1: 1
  
  ! Use a wider left track on the WWW desktop
  !
  larswm.?.1.left_track_width: 80
  
  ! Do not resize windows on the WWW desktop
  !
  larswm.?.1.tile_resize: False
  
  ! Automatically shift focused window to the left track on WWW desktop
  !
  larswm.?.1.skip_focus: False
  
  ! larswm Menu - Middle Mousebutton
  !
  larswm.button2.application: larsmenu -popup '*  LARSWM  *:exit' 'R E S T A R T:larsremote restart' 'E X I T:larsremote exit' '*  Exit Menu  *:exit'
  
  ! [...]
  

  • This is not very flexible and a bit awkward.
  • Not everything is configurable.
  • There is advanced stuff like differing configurations per desktop.
  • You can make an application open on a specific virtual desktop.
• Larswm has a built in status bar.
  • You can set the text with `larsremote message "text"'.
  • "larsremote" can also trigger `exit' and `restart', that's it.

Configuration of and interaction with wmii is done via the 9p file system (ported from Plan9) or the `wmiir' tool, if 9p is not available. Every programming language can be used for configuration, you get full control over the event loop. This script is called a "wmiirc", in the standard distribution it is a shell script, but there are also scripts in ruby and emacs lisp.

• Layout is done in columns + a floating layer
• Columns have one of three layouts: default/max/stacked
• Vertical splitting is explicit, horizontal splitting is automatic
• Uses the "stacked" layout instead of tabs
• "Tags" are used instead of workspaces, they are more flexible

Dwm is wmii's little brother. Its window model is similar to larswm's and it's also got a builtin status bar. Dwm is configured by editing a C header file and recompiling. While this is secure and efficient, it doesn't make sense to use prebuilt binary packages of dwm - these cannot be configured anymore. The text to display in the status bar is read from the root window's name. Dwm is very small, the executable is only 28k and the source code is less than 2000 LOC. Here's a listing of a directory with a freshly compiled dwm:

   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  5468 2009-03-21 14:59 config.def.h
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  5468 2009-03-21 14:59 config.h
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm   650 2009-03-21 14:59 config.mk
   -rwxr-xr-x  1 anselm anselm 27748 2009-03-21 14:59 dwm
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  4663 2009-03-21 14:59 dwm.1
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm 41576 2009-03-21 14:59 dwm.c
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm   373 2008-07-17 17:07 dwm.png
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  1593 2009-03-21 14:59 LICENSE
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  1462 2008-07-17 17:07 Makefile
   -rw-r--r--  1 anselm anselm  1259 2009-03-21 14:59 README

XMonad is a clone of dwm, written in Haskell. In the spirit of dwm the configuration file is also written in Haskell. Recompiling and restarting XMonad is happening in the background and can be done without disturbing the current window arrangement. The existing Ubuntu package is user-configurable, the resulting executable is placed in the user's home directory. For this to work XMonad needs a Haskell development environment which includes the compiler and the necessary libraries. XMonad supports Xinerama and EWMH.

It has no built-in status bar, you can use one of these stand-alone programs:

• dzen2
• xmobar
• Gnome Panel
• KDE Kicker

Here's an example from my .xsession with configuration for dzen2:

xsetroot -solid black
[ -r ~/.$(hostname -s).png ] && qiv -x ~/.$(hostname -s).png
setxkbmap 'en_US,de' -variant ',nodeadkeys' -option ctrl:nocaps -option grp:ctrls_toggle 
export PATH=/var/lib/gems/1.8/bin:${PATH}:${HOME}/.local/bin

mocp_info() {
    if ps -C mocp > /dev/null && mocp -i | grep -q 'State: PLAY'; then
        title=$(mocp -i | grep '^Title: ')
        echo ${title#*: } \|
    fi
}
 
load() {
    while read f s t r; do
        echo $f $s $t
    done < /proc/loadavg
}

disk() {
    df -h / | { \
        read rest
        read mount size used avail rest
        echo $avail/$size
    }
}

cpu_temp() {
  local t=$(cat /sys/class/hwmon/hwmon0/device/temp2_input)
  echo $(expr $t / 1000)"°C"
}

xscreensaver -no-splash &

while true; do
    echo '^fg(#222222)^bg(#eeeeee)' $(mocp_info) $(cpu_temp) \| $(disk) \| $(load) \| $(date '+%Y-%m-%d %a | %R') '^fg()^bg()'
    sleep 5
done | dzen2 -fn fixed -x 600 -w 1080 -ta r -fg '#ffffff' -bg '#006699' -e '' & 

xmonad | dzen2 -fn fixed -w 600 -ta l -fg '#ffffff' -bg '#006699' -e '' 

XMonad has many extension modules in XmonadContrib, they are divided in

• Actions
• Prompts
• Layouts (everything that changes the window layout)
• Hooks (give information about XMonad's status to the outside world)

PRO

• high modularity, many modules available
• good support for Xinerama and EWMH => you can use Gnome components together with XMonad
• Haskell - it's a pro if you like Haskell, or like to learn it

CON

• Haskell - it is just too strange and hard to understand "for the rest of us"
• relatively big executable (ca. 1.8 MB, GHC does not do dynamic linking yet)

Awesome started out as a fork of dwm. The keyboard bindings and general usage are similar, but it's not minimalistic anymore:

• implements Xinerama, EWMH, System Tray and more
• uses the more modern libxcb instead of Xlib (should be faster)
• is configured and scriptable with Lua
• can be controlled from the shell with `awesome-control'
• the built-in status bar is built around a concept of `widgets' like text, images, the system tray, etc.

Because it depends on so many libraries the memory footprint is comparatively huge. This does not make so much of a difference if you need the libraries anyway for the applications you run.