Window Mangers :: What's Your Favorite & Why

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It almost gives a MacIntosh like behaviour.

I hadn't thought of it in those terms. I just didn't like giving up 48 pixels between title bar and task bar to see the same information twice.

*** EDIT: Since figuring out that it's the nextstacked binding that hogs whatever key mask is used, jwm is performing much better with keyboard control -- alt can be used in other jwm bindings (including next) as well as for applications again.

I've always used and liked the *box style on all my computing systems... (yes, even on Windows)

It's highly customizable yet maintains itself to be lean.
I tend to work on medium-sized screens, and I prefer having a taskbar present (didn't like autohide, etc.)
I prefer certain features and also several dockable/slittable extras.

As witnessed by the plethora of choices, your wm is subject to your own tastes (and environment).
The meaning of being minimal and lean yet functional is not so much different IMO.

I suppose it's also worth mentioning that I'm not running on minimal memory specs, so I prefer to load a *box environment... over lighter choices (in terms of memory consumption).

I feel I might be repeating myself here, but at least it's on topic....

Fluxbox had been my favorite nearly from the time I first started tinkering with Linux (now a little over 6 years). Over the course of those years I played with many different window managers and desktop environments, some of which I liked a lot, but always went back to Fluxbox. It's relatively small, relatively fast, relatively simple, and quite stable and customizable.

However, what I was searching for in those other window managers was not what I thought. I thought I wanted something more flexible, more configurable, while being roughly equivalent in size and speed. What I discovered, though, was that I was spending so much time and effort customizing a window manager to behave exactly the way I wanted that I wasn't actually using it for the purpose of a window manager: simply to manage windows.

So, cut to last summer...
I had been testing wmii, and enjoying its [sadly complex] customizability, when its developer announced a smaller, faster, simpler fork called dwm. I fell in love with it instantly, and have been using it almost exclusively since. It was at that time that I realized that I don't want a window manager that I can tweak and play with. I just want something small, simple, and virtually unseen so that I can use X applications instead of a desktop environment.

The dwm window manager is virtually invisible. It has a status bar only and is controlled almost entirely with the keyboard. There is no menu and configuration apart from modifying one of the headers before compiling, so I don't give a second thought about how I can tweak it. It just shows me my apps and stays out of the way.

mikshaw, more info please.

Does it support floating windows or is it tiling?
If floating, does it have intel to try to place window with no overlaps.
No menu; are you using icons or everything CLI?

From the developer:

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wmii never got finished because I listened to users, who proposed arbitrary ideas I considered useful. This resulted in an extreme CADT development model, which was a mistake. Thus the philosophy of dwm is simply to fit my needs (maybe yours as well). That's it.

· Because dwm is customized through editing its source code, it's pointless to make binary packages of it. This keeps its userbase small and elitist. No novices asking stupid questions.

Sounds like an idea for DSl

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