# First day awesome impressions of fvwm user



## graudeejs (Nov 13, 2010)

Most of you probably know, that I'm x11-wm/fvwm2-devel user for years.

Yesterday I decided to see what is so awesome in x11-wm/awesome.
Frankly I think I'm amazed with potential, that this window manager can offer (thanks to lua) scripting language.

Right now I don't understand why virtual desktops are called tags in awesome, but that's alight.... What I totally love is layouts.

Layouts are so useful, especially when you're working with terminals (coding for example). I work with terminals probably 70% of my time (coding in vim, managing servers, reading mail in mutt, manage files, etc....), the rest is browsing web (probably some 20%), and using other apps.

in Fvwm, I was using FvwmRearrange module. This allowed me to put apps on my screen so that they don't overlap. Since I discovered this module it was essential part of my desktop. If I should compare FvwmRearrange module to awesome layouts... it's like comparing Windows to FreeBSD.

The fact that awesome can be extended with lua language, makes me want to learn it alone. I already imagine what kind of fancy functionality I could program with lua.

On fvwm I was using conky to display time (that's why I was using conky at all. I know, I know I can use fvwm widgets [or whatever they are called], but programming these is quite hard to learn, and I never bothered.... [mastering fvwm alone takes great amount of time]), and trayer to have system tray....
Well on awesome I don't need that, there widgets for that (not the kind of widgets you see on KDE4)

Awesome memory usage is very acceptable (around 100MB ram).

I was quite surprised to see, that many of my key bindings on my fvwm, matched awesome default bindings. However awesome gives some functions, that I just can't imagine how to configure in fvwm (unless maybe write custom fvwm module).
I totally love the way you can switch between apps on desktop using keyboard only (MOD4+J, MOD4+K)
Also MOD+Tab is essential for any programmer using unix tools, it lets you switch between current and previous app on current tag (desktop).


All in all, I think I will spend time to adopt this awesome window manager, and possibly say goodbye to fvwm (Ye, I wasn't expecting that myself)
On the scale of 0 to fvwm I would rate awesome as fvwm++ (on scale 0 to 10, I would give 8 to fvwm, and 10 to awesome), at least after first day of using awesome.

P.S.
All this of course is my own opinion, and you should try awesome your self. Not ever tool is good for everyone


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## alie (Nov 13, 2010)

hmmm, they're two awesome in ports, which one is the greatest and the latest?


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## graudeejs (Nov 13, 2010)

x11-wm/awesome << 3.4.8 (I mentioned at the beginning of the post)


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## Beastie (Nov 13, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> I totally love the way you can switch between apps on desktop using keyboard only (MOD4+J, MOD4+K)
> Also MOD+Tab is essential for any programmer using unix tools, it lets you switch between current and previous app on current tag (desktop).


You mean you didn't use those (Next & Prev with Raise & Focus, WindowList, etc.) under fvwm all these years?


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## graudeejs (Nov 13, 2010)

I did (at least some of them), actually I didn't tought about using next & prev on all windows, I did it a little different, I used prev and next on same class....

But what really makes me love awesome are layouts.... (and maybe lua)


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## richardpl (Nov 13, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> Awesome memory usage is very acceptable (around 100MB ram).



Are you serious?

I'm using dwm when I need to run multiple non-xterm application(s) (opera, xpdf, djview, feh ...).
Most of time it is single fullscreen xterm with tmux session(s) - no window manager here.


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## graudeejs (Nov 13, 2010)

Obviously we have different workflows.
Yes I'm serious....

100MB of my 4GB is ~2.4%
100MB of my 2.5GB is ~3.9% (other pc)


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## ckester (Nov 13, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> Obviously we have different workflows.
> Yes I'm serious....
> 
> 100MB of my 4GB is ~2.4%
> 100MB of my 2.5GB is ~3.9% (other pc)



And as the saying goes, unused memory is wasted memory.  

FWIW, I'm staying with x11-wm/musca.  I looked at awesome and dwm, but neither of them meet my needs the way musca does.


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## alie (Nov 14, 2010)

Btw how to add awesome on KDM session ?


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## graudeejs (Nov 14, 2010)

Didn't it appear?
Awesome installs desktop file in /usr/local/share/xsession/ (maybe it needs to be copied/linked to some KDE specific place)


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## alie (Nov 14, 2010)

Yest it didnt appear, strange right. Seems I need to add it to KDM session manually.


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## captobvious (Nov 14, 2010)

+1 for DWM


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## sk8harddiefast (Nov 15, 2010)

+1=2 for DWM


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## graudeejs (Nov 16, 2010)

Is DWM the one, that you had to configure and then recompile?


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## richardpl (Nov 16, 2010)

No DWM stands for Desktop Window Manager (DWM, previously Desktop Compositing Engine or DCE) is the desktop graphical user interface system in Windows Vista and Windows 7 ...).


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## captobvious (Nov 18, 2010)

killasmurf86 said:
			
		

> Is DWM the one, that you had to configure and then recompile?



Yupe, though M$ stole the acronym in Win7.

DWM

It is in the ports collection, /usr/ports/x11-wm/dwm

I just made a separate script, [CMD=""]startdwm[/CMD] that uses ~/.xinitrc_dwm to start it.

As of right now:


```
PID USERNAME    THR PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE   C   TIME   WCPU COMMAND
14488 cmmaggio      1  44    0 18664K  2460K select  1  13:13  0.88% dwm
```

:e


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## UNIXgod (Nov 18, 2010)

awesome is cool. used it last year for awhile. 

also check out dvtm. it's dwm/awesome like but in the terminal. I think even compiz has a tiling wm plugin now. Nothing beats scripting your own environment =)

http://www.brain-dump.org/projects/dvtm/


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