That's extremely bloated. ;) For several years early on in its life, the entire XMonad core codebase was just under 500 lines of code. Of course, I believe the Zipper rewrite (many moons ago) was what increased the size somewhat, and it was for the best... It's even small enough someone did a formalized Coq proof of the core data structures (i.e. they proved that XMonad cannot 'crash' in several ways.) :)
I have used it very fondly almost for a decade now (since 0.0!) and it is a good piece of software. I don't think I've changed my config more than 10 lines in like 7 years...
xmonad source itself can be small but, running xmonad consumes a lot of memory due to huge ram/space requirements of the ghc (haskell) (edit I don't remember exactly what consumed so much memory). that's why i moved to i3 wm after years of xmonad use.
XMonad hits a sweet spot no other window manager does for me:
import XMonad.Config.Mate
main = xmonad mateConfig
and just like that I have XMonad running inside my mate desktop, without the need to manually configure a status bar for volume, wifi, keyboard input language, clock, etc.
I don't even use tiling that much as I prefer to have one app per workspace, but just having focus-follows-mouse and the option to tile if I need it is really sweet.
I do the same thing with Gnome. There's an Ubuntu PPA at ppa:gekkio/xmonad that takes care of creating a desktop session for me and then it's just a matter of adding the same thing with s/mate/gnome/ and then away I go.
My favorite part of XMonad is XMonad.Actions.Navigation2D[0], which allows you you use direction navigation via keybinding to switch between windows. A proof that the technique for this allows you to visit any window, no matter how they are arranged is given in this paper[1].
fvwm2 has this and I miss it dearly since I switched to i3 a while back. It was fantastic. I would arrange my screens in a 3x3 grid and put my most commonly used one in the center. That gave me four other screens that were only one keystroke combo away.
It's just not the same in i3. I can do meta+screen# but it's nowhere near as easy.
I switched to i3 a couple of years ago, after using XMonad for about two years. Hopefully things have improved since then, but I kept falling into Cabal hell every time I tried to make a configuration change and I got fed up. At the time I concluded that XMonad was for people who use Haskell regularly and know how to navigate its package system.
An additional joke, likely unintentional (but who knows), is that the original Monads of Leibniz, were viewed as completely independent, 'windowless', objects that only seemed to interact with one another via God's elaborate choreography, which he termed the 'pre-established harmony' of the universe.
I'm glad to see a new release of XMonad! Two questions:
1. Is there any way to use XMonad but keep the standard Ubuntu menu bar for access to desktop menus? This used to be possible with older Gnome desktops, but it had gotten increasingly harder in recent years.
2. Does XMonad work well on Retina/HiDPI displays? A year or two ago, it still had lots of rough edges.
1) I don't think it's possible to keep the standard Ubuntu menu but you can use XMonad in other desktop environments like Mate or Gnome. You'll have to do a bit of configuration but it's not bad, see my other comment.
2) I run XMonad in gnome and it mostly works without problem. The only thing I had to change was set my browser launching keybinding to run
And are disappointed when using my Ubuntu desktop of the lack of simple tiling inside Unity. In my ancient fvwm and kde days there were more options.
I don't want to change my whole windows manager to Xmonad or i3, as I try to keep my setups fairly vanilla (as I use a lot of different machines/VMs and need a quick setup), but adding an unintrusive simple tiling option would be nice.
I have tried X Tile which is ok, but crashes too often and also moves full screened windows from my 2nd monitor onto my main monitor which is annoying.
I used XMonad for many, many years. During these years it served me well and I really loved it. However I switched to AwesomeWM about 2 years ago and couldn't be happier. I was able to easily make Awesome behave just like xmonad for parts I cared about, so the transition was pretty painless.
Top 3 reasons I switched:
1. Multi monitor support is far better with awesome and it worked perfectly out of the box with my 3 displays.
2. Programs that were a bit glitchy under xmonad had no such glitches under awesome.
3. LUA configuration files make it far easier for me to customize behavior and extended it. With Xmonad's Haskell I always felt like a noob.
In what way is multi monitor support better? In my opinion nothing comes close, I've not used anything else which considers each display an independent workspace and let's you move those workspaces between displays.
I used to run AwesomeWM and liked it a lot. But I decided I wanted to go back to running a desktop environment and run a tiling WM within one. There are things I miss but I actually like XMonad's approach to multiple displays better.
I don't think there's a tiling wm that puts mouse first. I think years ago there was some work on KDE to add some tiling behaviour, but I don't know if it was merged and buried in settings somewhere, or it was a plugin, or a patch. I only remember some demonstration video from years ago.
I'm pretty sure there's also Openbox setup with tiling behavior.
I use dwm with some patches, and some customizations that allow for more mouse use.
For instance mouse wheel on the tagbar cycles through tags, mouse wheel on window title cycles through windows, middle click on window title makes currently selected window master, control + mouse wheel on the window title pushes selected window around, mouse wheel on status text increases or decreases sound volume, middle click on status text kills selected window, ctrl + mouse-wheel-up sends selected window to that particular tag, etc etc etc...
So yeah, it's doable in dwm. It's not "mouse first" but most used actions are also doable with mouse, in addition to the keyboard.
It's not too hard, spend an afternoon, or two and you can get it working that way.
It's a hybrid WM with first class support for normal floating windows (the default) and first class support for tiling. However, it's also designed for multiple monitors and therefore breaks a couple chosen EWMH standards, so your favorite pagers may not work in a multiple monitor setup.
Wow this rabbit hole is impressive. I'll summarize to the best of my understanding (I'm no expert in X).
Basically, chrome uses an X property called _NET_WORKAREA (which is basically supposed to be a rectangle that includes all the parts of the screen that aren't the toolbars) to clip popup menus for dropdowns, so they don't draw over your taskbar or whatever.[1]
Earlier this year, they fixed a race condition so that now they listen for updates to _NET_WORKAREA changes[2], which fixed an issue where the clip area would be wrong for users who hot (un/)plugged extra monitors on relatively "standard" distros like Linux Mint. Basically, you could only see the drop downs on your primary monitor, because _NET_WORKAREA was out of date.
Once this change finally landed in stable, XMonad users noticed that now they couldn't see dropdowns on ANY monitor if they were changing workspaces and had multiple monitors. It turns out that this is because Chrome reads _NET_WORKAREA from the root window, and XMonad (unlike mainstream WMs) uses separate root windows per monitor. Now that Chrome was watching for changes, Xmonad and chrome were miscommunicating with each other about the current clip area. Chrome works around-ish this by only doing the clipping on the primary display[3] "Since that is where the 'desktop chrome' usually lives, this works ok in practice."
The workaround on the XMonad side is to just stop setting _NET_WORKAREA altogether[4], which is the same thing that i3, awesome and qtile do. Note that they had originally set this property in the first place because not having it caused Gtk and Qt malfunctions. To further complicate things, some Display Managers like LightDM set _NET_WORKAREA itself, so XMonad has to actively delete this property when it starts instead of ignoring it altogether.
XMonad is moving really fast. It was on 0.11 for quiet sometime and now it it 0.13.
Love/Miss XMonad, since I use mac work. One of the reason s I want to get a Linux machine for personal use.
I've been thinking of trying XMonad for a while, and looks like this is the opportune time. Anyone know if there's an easy "switch to last used window" functionality?
Windows 7 has really basic tiling -- super-left and super-right will put windows in a vertical split arrangement. Windows 10 adds another split so you can have four quadrants. Nowhere near i3, but the Windows user experience is forever lagging Linux.
If you want purely manual tiling, with windows being arranged normally until you tile them, there is WinSplit Revolution (can't find the canonical link right now). It basically does the same thing the tiling keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7+ do, but with more options and granularity.
If you want automatic, dwm-style tiling, there is a project called [bug.n][1]. I am currently using it, mainly because besides offering tiling windows, it is also the least-bad way to get multiple workspaces on Windows that I could find.
[+] [-] kornish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] aseipp|9 years ago|reply
I have used it very fondly almost for a decade now (since 0.0!) and it is a good piece of software. I don't think I've changed my config more than 10 lines in like 7 years...
[+] [-] wz1000|9 years ago|reply
Contrib and extras, where a lot of the useful stuff is defined are here:
https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad-contrib
https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad-extras
[+] [-] dmytrish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mikegerwitz|9 years ago|reply
https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/guix-devel/2017-02/msg009...
[+] [-] diminish|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] megawatthours|9 years ago|reply
I don't even use tiling that much as I prefer to have one app per workspace, but just having focus-follows-mouse and the option to tile if I need it is really sweet.
[+] [-] Symmetry|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zem|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kasbah|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahstro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wz1000|9 years ago|reply
[0]- http://xmonad.org/xmonad-docs/xmonad-contrib/XMonad-Actions-...
[1]- https://web.cs.dal.ca/~nzeh/xmonad/Navigation2D.pdf
[+] [-] chrissnell|9 years ago|reply
It's just not the same in i3. I can do meta+screen# but it's nowhere near as easy.
[+] [-] jiehong|9 years ago|reply
[1]: https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/38
[+] [-] djfm|9 years ago|reply
I for one am willing to contribute the day wayland becomes too mainstream.
[+] [-] LeoPanthera|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] binaryapparatus|9 years ago|reply
Documentation is extraordinary and really easy to follow once I understood how to read it, years ago.
The only sore spot is monstrous GHC size, that compiler needs to get much smaller to be really good from all angles.
[+] [-] sevensor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] archgoon|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-established_harmony
XMonad of course, has windows.
And now for an actually funny joke about Leibniz:
http://existentialcomics.com/comic/108
[+] [-] ekidd|9 years ago|reply
1. Is there any way to use XMonad but keep the standard Ubuntu menu bar for access to desktop menus? This used to be possible with older Gnome desktops, but it had gotten increasingly harder in recent years.
2. Does XMonad work well on Retina/HiDPI displays? A year or two ago, it still had lots of rough edges.
[+] [-] Symmetry|9 years ago|reply
2) I run XMonad in gnome and it mostly works without problem. The only thing I had to change was set my browser launching keybinding to run
[+] [-] megawatthours|9 years ago|reply
Unity 3D is a Compiz plugin so you can't use XMonad with it.
Gnome 3.8 and later only support gnome-shell as a window manager; it is not possible to integrate xmonad or any other window manager with it
[+] [-] davidbanham|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] flurdy|9 years ago|reply
And are disappointed when using my Ubuntu desktop of the lack of simple tiling inside Unity. In my ancient fvwm and kde days there were more options.
I don't want to change my whole windows manager to Xmonad or i3, as I try to keep my setups fairly vanilla (as I use a lot of different machines/VMs and need a quick setup), but adding an unintrusive simple tiling option would be nice.
I have tried X Tile which is ok, but crashes too often and also moves full screened windows from my 2nd monitor onto my main monitor which is annoying.
[+] [-] Sembiance|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jon-wood|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Symmetry|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dualogy|9 years ago|reply
What sorts of programs, what kinds of glitches?
[+] [-] k__|9 years ago|reply
I tried i3 and found the basic concept nice, but it required keyboard shortcuts en masse.
[+] [-] baldfat|9 years ago|reply
https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#keybindings
I find it funny that so many little paper cuts that can be fixed in less then 30 minutes makes people move in tiled window managers.
i3 greatest strength is its ease of configuration compared to most other twm.
[+] [-] lsh|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morb|9 years ago|reply
I'm pretty sure there's also Openbox setup with tiling behavior.
I use dwm with some patches, and some customizations that allow for more mouse use.
For instance mouse wheel on the tagbar cycles through tags, mouse wheel on window title cycles through windows, middle click on window title makes currently selected window master, control + mouse wheel on the window title pushes selected window around, mouse wheel on status text increases or decreases sound volume, middle click on status text kills selected window, ctrl + mouse-wheel-up sends selected window to that particular tag, etc etc etc...
So yeah, it's doable in dwm. It's not "mouse first" but most used actions are also doable with mouse, in addition to the keyboard.
It's not too hard, spend an afternoon, or two and you can get it working that way.
[+] [-] jpgvm|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Veedrac|9 years ago|reply
I have a friend who used Awesome on a tablet, so it's clearly feasible.
[+] [-] burntsushi|9 years ago|reply
It's a hybrid WM with first class support for normal floating windows (the default) and first class support for tiling. However, it's also designed for multiple monitors and therefore breaks a couple chosen EWMH standards, so your favorite pagers may not work in a multiple monitor setup.
[+] [-] mateuszf|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kruhft|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pjmlp|9 years ago|reply
The initial version of Oberon OS and the System 3 successor, but they are dead now.
[+] [-] taejo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] TurboHaskal|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] djfm|9 years ago|reply
Long live the best WM ever!
[1] https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad/issues/42
[+] [-] awirth|9 years ago|reply
Basically, chrome uses an X property called _NET_WORKAREA (which is basically supposed to be a rectangle that includes all the parts of the screen that aren't the toolbars) to clip popup menus for dropdowns, so they don't draw over your taskbar or whatever.[1]
Earlier this year, they fixed a race condition so that now they listen for updates to _NET_WORKAREA changes[2], which fixed an issue where the clip area would be wrong for users who hot (un/)plugged extra monitors on relatively "standard" distros like Linux Mint. Basically, you could only see the drop downs on your primary monitor, because _NET_WORKAREA was out of date.
Once this change finally landed in stable, XMonad users noticed that now they couldn't see dropdowns on ANY monitor if they were changing workspaces and had multiple monitors. It turns out that this is because Chrome reads _NET_WORKAREA from the root window, and XMonad (unlike mainstream WMs) uses separate root windows per monitor. Now that Chrome was watching for changes, Xmonad and chrome were miscommunicating with each other about the current clip area. Chrome works around-ish this by only doing the clipping on the primary display[3] "Since that is where the 'desktop chrome' usually lives, this works ok in practice."
The workaround on the XMonad side is to just stop setting _NET_WORKAREA altogether[4], which is the same thing that i3, awesome and qtile do. Note that they had originally set this property in the first place because not having it caused Gtk and Qt malfunctions. To further complicate things, some Display Managers like LightDM set _NET_WORKAREA itself, so XMonad has to actively delete this property when it starts instead of ignoring it altogether.
Anyway, it was a pretty interesting read.
[1] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=510079 [2] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=510079... [3] https://bugs.chromium.org/p/chromium/issues/detail?id=510079... [4] https://github.com/xmonad/xmonad-contrib/pull/79#issuecommen...
[+] [-] samdoshi|9 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70IxjLEmomg
[+] [-] abhixec|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ahstro|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brennen|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wz1000|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wiiittttt|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sevensor|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] NoGravitas|9 years ago|reply
If you want purely manual tiling, with windows being arranged normally until you tile them, there is WinSplit Revolution (can't find the canonical link right now). It basically does the same thing the tiling keyboard shortcuts in Windows 7+ do, but with more options and granularity.
If you want automatic, dwm-style tiling, there is a project called [bug.n][1]. I am currently using it, mainly because besides offering tiling windows, it is also the least-bad way to get multiple workspaces on Windows that I could find.
[1]: https://github.com/fuhsjr00/bug.n