- This topic has 43 replies, 8 voices, and was last updated Aug 19-10:44 pm by Anonymous.
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anticapitalista
antiX has shipped with a tiling windows manager called herbstluftwm (hlwm) for quite a while now. (It is my daily wm, not that it is important)
As shipped, it is 99.9% ‘vanilla’ ie not a lot is set up. I have left it up to the interested user to do so (just like if you install dwm or any other tiling wm for example).
To the question: Should herbstluftwm on antiX be configured or vanilla (as it is at the moment)?
If you think it should be configured, let us know how.
When I talk about configured, I don’t mean adding extra apps/(bloat) such as polybar, rofi etcThoughts?
Philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways; the point is to change it.
antiX with runit - leaner and meaner.
christophe
I have been using it heavily for the past few months.
Regarding configuring, I have only ever added a keybind or two. I like it as-is. (But I don’t know any other way, to be honest.)confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019
olsztyn
To the question: Should herbstluftwm on antiX be configured or vanilla (as it is at the moment)?
I have very limited experience with herbstluftwm, used just recently to compare with dwm. In terms of your question my opinion is that such WMs are best without fancy or redundant stuff. Just a few basic but important key bindings, such as volume control, which is missing in default dwm config but not sure in herbstluftwm…
Here I am of the same opinion as Christophe.P.S.:
Just flipped to herbstluftwm… The hardware volume control key bindings appear indeed missing in herbstluftwm, just as they were missing in dwm.
In general I am just not too crazy with existing key bindings in herbstluftwm. And also numbering scheme of tags on top is kind of weird to me, such as the numbering starts with the third tag, while the first two are not numbered. So to flip to tag #1 I need to use Win-3, etc… Also mouse click on tags does not to seem to do anything and tags do not have any indication of tag status, such as well implemented in dwm. But this is just the way default config is. It can be customized to user’s liking through config.
No recompile needed.- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by olsztyn.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by olsztyn.
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parameters
andyprough
I tried it a few times but I didn’t understand the idea of a manual tiler until I saw a video walkthrough by DistroTube.[1] It really seems like it’s the ideal window manager. Being able to configure everything through such a simple shell script, and having so many functions you can enable in the autostart file without having to do any patching – these are really killer features.
I’d leave it vanilla. Let people experience the joy of configuring it for their own uses. Might put a link to a video where DT or someone similar does a walkthrough, in that page of notes on the first tag. Watching someone else manipulate the screen makes it make a lot more sense. Maybe Dolphin Oracle could do one of his famous walkthrough videos for it.
Thank you Andyprough for the link. I have watched it to the end and I have seen several other videos of this reviewer. My personal opinion is his reviews are way too superficial to draw any conclusions. All his presentations I saw seem focused just on form of presentation and none on substance, using the same presentation narrative and always ending with advertising of his website.
I do in particular recommend watching his presentation on Badwolf, where he portrays Badwolf as absolutely the best lightweight web browser in existence:Seems a good example of how superficial these reviews are… To show Youtube capability navigates Badwolf to Youtube page showing images of videos. But never once in his review clicks on any of those videos to test if they work at all… He says Badwolf will be his browser for the near future. I doubt he even went back to it after his review…
Here I am not about Badwolf, which might end up good if fixed, but about how superficial his reviews are. Just superficial reviews for the sake of presentation and attracting attention to his website.
Just my impression…Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_ParametersIn relation to my original response on Herbstluftwm, that I would keep it pretty much plain without any fancy stuff, but just ensuring important hardware control keybindings are in place, now that I played more with Herstluftwm and read on design and configuration process:
– To me (IMHO) the fact that configuration is executed each time during startup or reload process via herbstclient is a weakness rather than strength. In my opinion ones decisions are made on configuration and any mapping (whether keybindings or bar) established, such final WM should be set solid in place and not re-done each time during startup. The touted capability of being able to change configuration and design by reloading without shutting down WM perhaps is good thing to have during design and development phase but not as final for regular use. Such final should be set in place as solid and not undergo configuration process each time it starts. It should be a solid piece of infrastructure going forward. DWM is a good example of such approach.
– I see this in contrast with IceWM (an excellent WM at the other end), where user friendliness and aesthetics requirements dictate flexibility of frequent change, such as look and feel (themes, fonts, etc.) but also more importantly on the fly configuration of IceWM toolbar with choice of programs, which has been implemented by antiX team.Understandably anticapitalista and Andyprough may disagree with me but just wanted to explain my opinion…
Live antiX Boot Options (Previously posted by Xecure):
https://antixlinuxfan.miraheze.org/wiki/Table_of_antiX_Boot_Parametersandyprough
Thank you Andyprough for the link. I have watched it to the end and I have seen several other videos of this reviewer. My personal opinion is his reviews are way too superficial to draw any conclusions. All his presentations I saw seem focused just on form of presentation and none on substance, using the same presentation narrative and always ending with advertising of his website.
I do in particular recommend watching his presentation on Badwolf, where he portrays Badwolf as absolutely the best lightweight web browser in existence:Seems a good example of how superficial these reviews are… To show Youtube capability navigates Badwolf to Youtube page showing images of videos. But never once in his review clicks on any of those videos to test if they work at all… He says Badwolf will be his browser for the near future. I doubt he even went back to it after his review…
Here I am not about Badwolf, which might end up good if fixed, but about how superficial his reviews are. Just superficial reviews for the sake of presentation and attracting attention to his website.
Just my impression…Yeah his videos are clickbait sometimes. Just like most of the other popular youtubers.
This video did cover the one area I was having trouble grasping with herbstluft – manual tiling. It was good to watch someone else walk through it. It’s different from dwm in that you have to create your slot on the screen and move into it before launching the program. With dwm’s dynamic tiling I don’t think about window placement ahead of time. This manual tiling with herbstluft seems better as it’s giving the user more control.
Brian Masinick
@olsztyn: Thank you for your comments and insights.
I’d simply like to comment that the overall value of the choices available to us truly is the choice, as opposed to one solution or another. Many years ago now, I recommended that we add IceWM to our collection of window managers and make it the default instead of Fluxbox, NOT because of any superiority of one or the other; both are solid and do their jobs well. I simply felt that using IceWM would make it easier for newcomers to try out our software. I also reasoned that veterans and hobbyists, could (and would) examine other alternatives, like fluxbox, Blackbox, Openbox, jwm, and other creative options, including the tiling managers that we’ve been discussing.
I’m still a fan of IceWM today, and once again, I tout it, NOT because it’s the most efficient (it isn’t #1, but it is reasonably efficient), Nor is it necessarily the absolute EASIEST or MOST flexible solution – (it isn’t, but it’s reasonable to use, figure out, and it is more efficient than most desktop environments).
So once again, I come back to these things. I earnestly encourage people to try out various different combinations of software. As far as antiX is concerned, it is a GREAT starting point for these exercises, but depending on our experience and our intentions, it may or may not be the appropriate platform for every possible scenario. There are SOME scenarios for which it makes the most practical sense to use proprietary solutions, and there are other scenarios that favor a wide variety of free solutions, some of which are provided through various Linux distributions including antiX, the favorite for many of us who participate here. There are still other scenarios that favor BSD solutions, UNIX solutions, OS X solutions, Windows server solutions, Android solutions, or real time solutions (vxWorks and others).
What is great and wonderful is that we have the freedom of choice to pick one (or several) of these solutions. Choose what works best for our own personal needs and for our interests and/or workload.
I hope this reminds of of the beauty and excellence of choice.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian MasinickBobC
I saw your post a few days ago on the dwm thread and gave hlwm another chance. I watched the DT video above. I see this thread as someone scratching their head, wondering why dwm seems popular here, hlwm not so much, even though it’s already built in, well tested, and used as a reliable daily driver for those who know it.
The tiling window managers are different in that they need a much higher degree of memorized keystrokes to run them, and if I get those keystrokes down to automatic, I’d expect it would be super efficient, but otherwise I’m going to be in trouble pretty quick.
I have also tried dwm also a few times and have been successful setting it up and running it. Look at dwmx and what Manyroads did with the tilers. Just looking at the screenshots makes me eager to try them. Of course, not all of us can take a blank canvas and produce a masterpiece with it, like that. The popularity of the recent thread says that people would try something different if they had a leg up in making it something they would enjoy tweaking and running.
Learning from this, I’d say there is nothing necessarily wrong with tilers or vanilla, but if you want it to be more popular, Manyroads has provided good clues.
Maybe add a tweaked and tweakable dwm to the standard desktop list and leave hlwm vanilla if you like it that way. Another option is to do nothing and the children’s minds will spin, and experiments and accidents will happen, and results will evolve.
Just my 2 cent opinion. I guess it says eye candy still works on me…
PS: My attempts at setting up and running dwm from scratch were a failure. It was that blank canvas problem, I think. I had similar problems to olszlyn with the keys and such. I guess I’m spoiled by IceWM
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by BobC.
Brian Masinick
@BobC: I appreciate your point of view and insight. As I recently commented, I think it is CHOICE that is the great thing about these various alternatives. Tiling managers are great for some people, and they are counter intuitive for others. On the opposite extreme, even interacting with a simple window manager or command line tools is beyond the capabilities and interests of some people, and yet it is the heart and soul of others; it simply depends on our personal capabilities, needs, and preferences; each alternative has specific use cases and values.
After all that has been said and repeated, over and over, at the end, what matters is that the choices are available. As far as the standard or the “typical”, I like what we have available. I do try out the alternatives from time to time; for every day use, I also tend to prefer the “status quo”/
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Brian Masinick@brian, I’ve tried antiX’s hlwm a few times now over the years, and each time it has improved a bit, like for example the Keyboard mapping list that comes up initially now gives an experimenting user a much better chance at success. I always like to try new things, even if my odds of sticking with them isn’t high. I have found many great concepts and ideas that I later applied elsewhere by doing so, even if I did fall back onto the status quo after. It’s like a new flavor of ice cream, if you never taste it, you’ll never know what you’re missing.
PS: At work, on Win/10 and MS servers, I typically still use the old black cmd screen for many thing I do, because it’s so much more efficient. I see the terminal the same way under Linux.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by BobC.
Brian Masinick
@BobC: It sounds like we have similar thoughts and a few things in common, even though our every day circumstances vary quite a bit.
During the last few jobs, I had the good fortune a few times to be able to actually work on a few UNIX, Linux, and Windows servers. Sometimes I had a lot of liberty to create my own working environments. In those cases, I did everything possible to modify the defaults and experiment with choices, but also constrained myself a bit because I DID have a job to do too! In other cases, I had to live with whatever was available and I did not have any flexibility at all to change my circumstances. In those instances I had to be thankful that I had a job!
Now that I am retired, I can experiment a lot at times, but believe it or not, I still have plenty of other things to do. I volunteer in various activities, including making sure that a few senior citizens, who are directly related to my much beloved in-laws, receive and properly take their proper medicine. One reason I do this is because another so-called medical assistant actually (carelessly) gave my sister in law’s mother incorrect medicine, landing her for SIX HOURS in a local emergency room! Fortunately my brother in law is an expert emergency medical doctor; he was at her side and helped her to full recovery; I now assist to MAKE CERTAIN such horrors are NOT repeated!
Our southern community is rich in the arts, and there are also numerous opportunities for walks, rides, and other natural ways to stay healthy; I’ve become a fan of “water aerobics”; for me, it’s a good way to get exercise WITHOUT putting too much stress on my bones and muscles; the water provides good, but gentle, natural resistance, so I can stretch, work out and do so safely.
These are some of the other ways I live and contribute in my local community. I wish each person well, and also that we each find the right balance, not only as we use our computers, but also as we live alongside other people in our communities.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by Brian Masinick.
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Brian Masinickandyprough
– To me (IMHO) the fact that configuration is executed each time during startup or reload process via herbstclient is a weakness rather than strength. In my opinion ones decisions are made on configuration and any mapping (whether keybindings or bar) established, such final WM should be set solid in place and not re-done each time during startup. The touted capability of being able to change configuration and design by reloading without shutting down WM perhaps is good thing to have during design and development phase but not as final for regular use. Such final should be set in place as solid and not undergo configuration process each time it starts. It should be a solid piece of infrastructure going forward. DWM is a good example of such approach.
– I see this in contrast with IceWM (an excellent WM at the other end), where user friendliness and aesthetics requirements dictate flexibility of frequent change, such as look and feel (themes, fonts, etc.) but also more importantly on the fly configuration of IceWM toolbar with choice of programs, which has been implemented by antiX team.Understandably anticapitalista and Andyprough may disagree with me but just wanted to explain my opinion…
Yes you are right in thinking I might be of the opposite opinion. I think the ability to reload your changes to herbstluft on the fly without logging out is incredible, I love that feature. From my way of thinking, that ability to reload gives it a major advantage over dwm. Also, shell scripting is always easier to comprehend than C (for me anyway).
Brian Masinick
Yeah, there is a place for BOTH; one features flexibility, the other maximizes consistency and speed; CHOICE: that’s our theme, PLUS lean and mean! 🙂
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Brian Masinickchristophe
If you think it should be configured, let us know how.
You remember what the “old” .conkyrc used to look like, with the large amounts of comments. That might be a nice way of suggesting config additions, without actually doing the advanced configuration for the user. Just showing suggestions of possibilities…
As an example, perhaps an entry for setting a wallpaper background (commented out), right after the black screen setting.
- This reply was modified 1 year, 8 months ago by christophe.
confirmed antiX frugaler, since 2019
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