- This topic has 99 replies, 13 voices, and was last updated Aug 19-2:48 pm by andyprough.
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Brian Masinick
I don’t have antiX on this hardware (yet). That, and the dwm learning are now on my TO-DO list!
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Brian Masinick
andyprough
@andyprough: I have not used dwm recently, but I like the description of what it is and what it takes to make it.
Based on the description, it would not be very difficult to obtain and build at all. I accept the challenge; I’m going to snag a copy and build it. Thanks!Hi Brian, If you have any questions, DistroTube has a lot of good videos to help. For example, for patching, his “Applying Patches to Suckless Software” is invaluable: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=3dwoC0EYStw
DT also spent 23 straight days in DWM in January-February 2019 as his first deep dive into it, and documented his experience with a long set of videos. Luke Smith and Mental Outlaw are two others of note who have put up really good how-to videos on setting up DWM, and especially on customizing it. Search either of their names and “DWM” and you’ll find quite a few good videos.
Good luck! Let us know if you get stuck. @manyroads will probably be very happy to hear you are taking the plunge. His website is an amazing resource for super-charging your DWM setup. I run a really basic DWM which mainly has a basic taskbar as my big addition, but @manyroads goes to great lengths to turn his DWM into something that rivals the best and most professional desktops.
Brian Masinick
I have chatted with @manyroads several times so that’s good to know.
I’ve seen 1-2 videos from the gentleman in the video you shared.
I’m going to mark that one so I can take my time and learn this well; I have a feeling that I’m going to enjoy it!
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Brian Masinickolsztyn
You generally want to follow these instructions as follows (there’s more tips and tricks on my antiX-DWM thread on the MX Linux forum,
Thank you andyprough!
Dwm was something completely new to me until I just saw this thread and ventured to install, following your detailed and precise installation process. In about 15 min I ended up with a perfectly working dwm desktop, from which I am writing this post…
My initial comment:
– Your installation process, perfectly precise as it is now, I understand locations of sources of code may change in the course of time, so understanding the process is important, so as to adapt to changing locations at suckless site.
– I noticed your comment about possible Conky memory toll in dwm so I did remove Conky before dwm installation. I noticed that on IceWM it saved me about 60M, so I might consider drop Conky also on IceWM, pending further getting accustomed with dwm.
– Starting Htop on dwm for memory use my initial observation is that I do not see much memory footprint saved over IceWM without Conky.
– DWM (The one I installed is 6.2), being radically different will require much getting used and discovering good points about it… But so far feels very interesting in operation…Thanks again for precise installation process, which I will snap and add to my knowledge database so as to have it handy for installation on my other machines…
Thanks and Regards…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersandyprough
You generally want to follow these instructions as follows (there’s more tips and tricks on my antiX-DWM thread on the MX Linux forum,
Thank you andyprough!
Dwm was something completely new to me until I just saw this thread and ventured to install, following your detailed and precise installation process. In about 15 min I ended up with a perfectly working dwm desktop, from which I am writing this post…
My initial comment:
– Your installation process, perfectly precise as it is now, I understand locations of sources of code may change in the course of time, so understanding the process is important, so as to adapt to changing locations at suckless site.
– I noticed your comment about possible Conky memory toll in dwm so I did remove Conky before dwm installation. I noticed that on IceWM it saved me about 60M, so I might consider drop Conky also on IceWM, pending further getting accustomed with dwm.
– Starting Htop on dwm for memory use my initial observation is that I do not see much memory footprint saved over IceWM without Conky.
– DWM (The one I installed is 6.2), being radically different will require much getting used and discovering good points about it… But so far feels very interesting in operation…Thanks again for precise installation process, which I will snap and add to my knowledge database so as to have it handy for installation on my other machines…
Thanks and Regards…Hi olsztyn, you brought up a few good points:
1. DWM isn’t going to automatically give you a lower memory usage than icewm. Where you may find a lower memory usage is if you use DWM on top of an antiX core install or antiX net install, where there are no other window managers or desktops installed. If you build it up as a minimal setup, I think you can probably regularly get to where you are using less than 100mb of ram at startup. I’ve read about gentoo users who build a minimal system with DWM that uses less than 45mb of ram. DWM can allow you to explore the extremes of minimalism, but it doesn’t automatically make your system more minimal just by adding it to a full antiX installation.
2. Installation location – I’ve been finding that doing the building from ~/git/ is working better for me. No need to wonder if I need sudo on a certain command.
3. Obviously, as you’ve probably already figured out, DWM’s greatest value is as a tiling window manager, where it really excels as one of the very best tilers. Additionally, DWM uses “tags” instead of “workspaces”, which is very cool because in a multi-monitor setup you can have each monitor on a different tag, whereas on a system that uses workspaces, all of your monitors have to be on the same workspace at the same time.3. Obviously, as you’ve probably already figured out, DWM’s greatest value is as a tiling window manager, where it really excels as one of the very best tilers. Additionally, DWM uses “tags” instead of “workspaces”, which is very cool because in a multi-monitor setup you can have each monitor on a different tag, whereas on a system that uses workspaces, all of your monitors have to be on the same workspace at the same time.
This is the first tiling wm I am testing, not familiar with others…Now playing a bit with dwm I have found myself intrigued with tags and wondered if these are actually workspaces but did not realize this feature, which seems a significant strength of dwm in multi-monitor setup. Great to know.
Now my next challenges with dwm seem:
– While I figured how to start various gui apps and terminal apps, how do I start something like antiX Control Center, so I can this management tool as way to start key management apps. Since I have not figured this out yet, I will be curious if having accomplished this, these individual apps from Control center will show up as tiles within one dwm screen as tiles or in different tags.
– How can I make some key tray applets, such as Network Manager’ or Connman show up on top panel of dwm, even if in a tag or something…
– I am sure more challenges will come up in the course of testing.
I am listing these few things as examples of my challenges with this new frontier and not necessarily expecting answers or solutions. I understand it will take me some time to read about dwm and various solutions to common expectations for users accustomed to convenience of window managers such as IceWM or full desktops…
One way or the other, if not your precise installation process I would not likely venture into dwm to satisfy my curiosity more than specific needs…
Thanks and Regards…- This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by olsztyn.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 9 months ago by olsztyn.
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersandyprough
– While I figured how to start various gui apps and terminal apps, how do I start something like antiX Control Center, so I can this management tool as way to start key management apps. Since I have not figured this out yet, I will be curious if having accomplished this, these individual apps from Control center will show up as tiles within one dwm screen as tiles or in different tags.
– How can I make some key tray applets, such as Network Manager’ or Connman show up on top panel of dwm, even if in a tag or something…
– I am sure more challenges will come up in the course of testing.
I am listing these few things as examples of my challenges with this new frontier and not necessarily expecting answers or solutions. I understand it will take me some time to read about dwm and various solutions to common expectations for users accustomed to convenience of window managers such as IceWM or full desktops…
One way or the other, if not your precise installation process I would not likely venture into dwm to satisfy my curiosity more than specific needs…
Thanks and Regards…1. To find the control center or other hard to find programs, use antiX’s super-cool program “app-select”. Use left-Alt-p key combination to search on dmenu, type “app-select”, and hit enter. Once in app-select, type “control” for the antiX Control Center, or “antix” to see all the special antiX programs, or you can search for anything else you like. I think app-select will also allow you to start programs like Synaptic which require superuser privileges, whereas those programs often won’t start correctly from dmenu.
2. To set up a taskbar, I need to write a how-to with detailed instructions for you. This will require patching your version of DWM, so it’s a more advanced procedure. I’ll try to write that up for you soon. I’ll look in my notes, it’s possible I wrote all the steps down already. It may be complicated enough that I would be better off posting a video, let me look through the steps again and see. A lot of it depends on whether the patch can be applied without errors. Did you build the git version of DWM, or the 6.2 version? I’ll do it again on your version so I can see if it applies with errors or not.Thanks much andyprough…
#1 – Thank you for the tip on starting antiX Control Center. Before this tip I was able to get to antiX Control Center only on reboot, when antiX complained dwm is not one of supported wm’s and offered Control Center as one of action items to pick.
#2 – I greatly appreciate whatever info you have at hand but I would feel bad if you spent much time on this for just my venture. However from this thread it seems there is much interest in this dwm, so might be worth your trouble.As a completely new dwm user (just past two hours or so of experimenting) I just want to mention though in addition to previous observations:
– Regarding memory footprint, which I did not find significantly smaller than IceWM and you explained I would have to start from antiX Base to see any gains: This will probably my next adventure, but not that important to me as these WMs are already so small it is hard to squeeze more memory savings out of them…
– The fact you stressed originally that dwm is a self contained executable, which includes all configuration compiled with it: Personally I consider it a strength rather than inconvenience, to me it is a good thing. The reason is that configuration changes once finalized are done very seldom, so once finally compiled you almost never need to re-complile. The more important reason however is that being a self contained executable it is not dependent on any other files affecting wm behavior. In a word, this is a rock solid solution to any vulnerability question of such important piece of OS infrastructure as WM or DE is.
Just MHO…
Thanks and Regards…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersandyprough
– The fact you stressed originally that dwm is a self contained executable, which includes all configuration compiled with it: Personally I consider it a strength rather than inconvenience, to me it is a good thing. The reason is that configuration changes once finalized are done very seldom, so once finally compiled you almost never need to re-complile.
I recompile often, as I like to try different changes, and it’s so easy to write them into config.h and run “make install” again. And it only takes literally 10 seconds.
You didn’t tell me which version of DWM you are using. Did you clone the git version, or did you download the 6.2 version from the DWM website? I want to set up a new taskbar on the same version as you, so I give you the right instructions.
Brian Masinick
For what it’s worth, a long time ago I did my own memory study of window manager footprint. It was a difficult thing to establish anything that would be statistically accurate and significant but I vaguely remember that the window managers were consuming between 58-62 MB in a pretty spartan setup, using the fewest resources possible.
Fluxbox and IceWM were both in that comparison, so was fvwm. I didn’t have dwm in that comparison. Based on some non instrumented experience today, not even building on antiX (I used Debian), I still found dem to be an extremely responsive window manager. Now I just have to REALLY learn how to use it because my tests were too limited to make a complete impression. I don’t even know 99% of the dwm commands. I did experience enough to notice that it’s a snappy, responsive interface. Next step: actually learn how to use it in every day situations so that’s my next step.
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Brian Masinickex_Koo
I like the way linux dabbler sets up DWM, also like the way he applies patches.
You didn’t tell me which version of DWM you are using. Did you clone the git version, or did you download the 6.2 version from the DWM website?
It is dwm version is 6.2, which is cloned (from git?) in result of installation process you detailed. I did not download separately from your process.
Thanks and Regards.Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersI did experience enough to notice that it’s a snappy, responsive interface.
I noticed this too, that dwm subjectively appears to me snappier than IceWM although using approximately the same memory footprint (this is under condition Conky is completely purged from IceWM, which saved me about 60M). Comparison if degree of ‘snappier’ is difficult however because of different way of operation, so it is not exactly scientific.
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersBrian Masinick
Right. I still have to figure out how to effectively use dwm in every day activities to see how useful it can be.
It’s not something for the casual user and novice. It’s not difficult to build, though the complete novice may not want to go through the steps. Then there’s the customization and learning the way to use it, something that the hobbyist will love but the casual user probably can’t be bothered. Only a preconfigured setup with ‘familiar’ key bindings would potentially entice a novice who wouldn’t know the difference as long as they have a familiar look and feel.
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Brian Masinickandyprough
I like the way linux dabbler sets up DWM, also like the way he applies patches.
This guy is a genius, incredible video, thanks very much. I’m learning and taking notes like crazy.
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