How many of you use dwm?

Zircon34 · December 19, 2021, 1:59am

Alright, another one in the series of try new dynamic tiling wm to extend your horizon… Christmas time challenge!

Who uses dwm?

I use dwm
I use another wm

0 voters

I tried it, not easy. Any nifty tricks to help get started? I am not a C genius, definitely. I got hang up on just trying to start nm applet and displaying wifi on a system tray. Like the simplicity though.

Here a couple of resource I started following:

BTW: I intend on trying the bspwm sway and qtile community editions over Xmas, thanks so much for all this projects. This specific thread is aimed at motivating people to support additional community editions.

Edit: and worm of course

eosbtw · December 19, 2021, 2:07am

Voted “other”. Sway. Feeling a bit lonely there so can’t wait for you to try it too!

codic12 · December 19, 2021, 4:19am

Voted other, I wouldn’t use anything other than worm add it to your list too!

Zircon34 · December 19, 2021, 4:36am

I saw worm on the arch wiki!

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/window_manager

codic12 · December 19, 2021, 5:41am

yep, some kind soul added it. i wrote and maintain worm.

andrewb · December 19, 2021, 6:20am

If one doesn’t have the time or ability to apply any of the multi-dozen dwm patches to make it more usable, and doesn’t feel comfortable with Haskell for XMonad, take a look at Spectrwm.

Currently my favorite after brief tours of XMonad, i3, leftwm, and Awesome. Very minimal look/feel, one config file and a shell script for the bar. And you can hide the bar for an extra centimeter of screen real esate.

Krimkerre · December 19, 2021, 7:43am

Ooh, didn’t know about the flexipatch thingy…
I run DWM on one of the Thinkpads… this will come in handy!

keybreak · December 19, 2021, 7:47am

BLOAT!!!111111

davidw · December 19, 2021, 1:44pm

I have tried several tiling window managers with varying degrees of true success. I always return to DWM. Obviously you need to patch it to suit your purposes. I have nine patches which I install and DWM just works beautifully. I always install DWM by downloading it with wget and untar it because the first six patches work perfectly. Using a git clone there are always problems with a couple. I don’t know why that should be. Anyway, after my first six patches I have to do some manual patching with the final three. The manual patching is quite easy. DWM is a dynamic tiling window manager and that is what I want. I also use dwmblocks for the status bar with scripts I’ve borrowed. Adding the ST terminal and Dmenu completes the basic setup for me. Despite what is sometimes suggested, you don’t actually need to be able to program in C to be able to modify DWM to your liking. I recommend DWM.
BTW, I really dislike flexipatch. I tried it a couple of times and it doesn’t apply the patches I want. It will ignore anything which doesn’t fit it’s methodology. I have come to realise that DIY is the best way to get the system you want.

Zircon34 · December 20, 2021, 1:09am

Alright, I am such a newbie, but managed to make my network work. I just needed to add nm-applet & in my .xinitrc file. Forgot the & symbol.

Next is trying to get that applet in the bar.

Zircon34 · December 20, 2021, 4:15am

just wondering ,how do make dwmblocks run on startup? I managed to make clean install, I can also run it via terminal. However, when I restart dwm it does not show in the bar. I just added dwmblocks & to my .xinitrc file, that should work but it doesnt.

davidw · December 20, 2021, 7:52am

Have you run chmod +x on the individual scripts of dwmblocks?

Luminem · December 20, 2021, 6:48pm

I run dwm. Very happy with it. Lightweight yet very flexible.

manyroads · December 20, 2021, 8:34pm

FWIW, perhaps these will be of some interest to those who haven’t already read this: https://eirenicon.org/?s=dwm

Zircon34 · December 21, 2021, 1:55am

I don’t see .sh scripts in the dwmblocks folder (I use the one without patches etc.). This is what I have

[zircon@AtlantisNeo dwmblocks]$ ls
blocks.def.h  blocks.h  dwmblocks  dwmblocks.c  LICENSE  Makefile  README.md

and here what I have in .xinitrc

nm-applet &
nitrogen --restore &
dwmblocks &
picom -b &
exec dwm

anon79429890 · December 21, 2021, 2:53am

make a autostart script and put this in

#!/bin/sh
nm-applet &
nitrogen --restore &
dwmblocks &
picom -b &
dwm

and in dwm.desktop

[Desktop Entry]
Name=dwm
Comment=Dynamic Window Manager
Exec= <path to autostart file> 
Type=XSession

it is very simple

andrewb · December 21, 2021, 3:01am

None of those files are executable. Do you have a dwmblocks on your path?

which dwmblocks

If not, you’ll have to make it with that makefile. The Readme might be a good clue.

Zircon34 · December 21, 2021, 3:19am

That worked, finally.

I just did a separate autostart script. Looks like it did somehow not want to start my .xinitrc in my home folder. Very strange, I really tried to follow the recommended way to start dwm and other programs. No clue why it didn’t work, but I guess the best is to move on, already spent a couple of hours trying that. It didn’t suckless, but more just to add a clock on the panel.

Zircon34 · December 21, 2021, 3:25am

I used dwmblocks from this github link https://github.com/torrinfail/dwmblocks

I also tried this other one earlier https://github.com/ashish-yadav11/dwmblocks

but when I tried to apply a patch it failed to make install dwm. I therefore started from scratch and reinstalled dwm.

I have two other questions, bear with me.

when I do a sudo make clean install in any of the suckless software folder, does it just run and compile the C program in that folder or does it install it system wide? I.e. I a wondering, if I delete one of these folders, is my system clean or do I need to deinstall properly via command line?
When I try patching and mess things up and see error messages during sudo make clean install, is there a way to revert that patch?

edit: btw I also tried surf, pretty simple web browser, could that be the most privacy oriented browser available, zero bloat. I assume it’s not saving any cookies and such.

andrewb · December 21, 2021, 4:35am

If you drop the ‘sudo’ off of your make command, there’s no way it can replace system binaries. What happens will be on the Makefile script though. Usually the script will want to place the final binary in /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin, but that varies on the script.

Same for “make clean install” - usually any compiler object files from the past are removed first to force a new compile. All is defined in the Makefile script.

As for saving cookies, I don’t even want cookies to begin with. Thus, no/limited tracking. Unless they are chocolate chip based cookies - I’ll eat those.