This is to hopefully generate some interest in tiling window managers and for a small respite from GNOME vs KDE wars.
"A tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more popular approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects (windows)" -- Wikipedia
What this basically means is that your window manager would attempt to tile all windows to fit the screen rather based on context, position etc. This is hugely customizable, you can specify whether certain windows should be allowed to tile or open maximized or dumped to specific screen/workspace.
Most of us are KDE or GNOME fans; but if you do a lot of terminal related work (e.g. vim/emacs editing, mutt, lynx) you might want to consider using a tiling window manager. This is even more advantageous if you have a gigantic monitor (most of you guys do, I think) allowing you to efficiently utilize your screen real estate to display maximum content at any given time. In fact, you could get rid of your mouse altogether (except for playing Quake) for day to day tasks. Admittedly, there is a small learning curve and some file editing to be done before you can get a lean, mean fully functional setup but it's not something us linux guys are afraid of right?
Some of the popular options available are :
Ion : Ion ? Introduction
Awesome : about - awesome window manager
XMonad : xmonad | the tiling window manager that rocks
I've tried the last two, XMonad doesn't work for me too well so I've stuck with awesome. I currently use a deprecated version of awesome (2.3) since Debian Lenny doesn't provide the latest and greatest (v3). While there have been major changes between 2.3 and 3; they're both quite usable in their current shape.
This is just to get you guys started and is obviously not a tutorial of any kind. There are literally thousands of tutorials to set these up to your liking. . If you're one of those paranoid monkeys who needs to have a lean mean system then this is definitely for you. I would highly recommend awesome, but it is upto you to find one that you like.
I would be more than happy to share my configuration files if any one requires them (along with a couple of tiny scripts for time display etc).
If you already use a tiling window manager (ion, awesome, xmonad etc) please do provide some tips and tricks.
"A tiling window manager is a window manager with an organization of the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames, as opposed to the more popular approach of coordinate-based stacking of overlapping objects (windows)" -- Wikipedia
What this basically means is that your window manager would attempt to tile all windows to fit the screen rather based on context, position etc. This is hugely customizable, you can specify whether certain windows should be allowed to tile or open maximized or dumped to specific screen/workspace.
Most of us are KDE or GNOME fans; but if you do a lot of terminal related work (e.g. vim/emacs editing, mutt, lynx) you might want to consider using a tiling window manager. This is even more advantageous if you have a gigantic monitor (most of you guys do, I think) allowing you to efficiently utilize your screen real estate to display maximum content at any given time. In fact, you could get rid of your mouse altogether (except for playing Quake) for day to day tasks. Admittedly, there is a small learning curve and some file editing to be done before you can get a lean, mean fully functional setup but it's not something us linux guys are afraid of right?
Some of the popular options available are :
Ion : Ion ? Introduction
Awesome : about - awesome window manager
XMonad : xmonad | the tiling window manager that rocks
I've tried the last two, XMonad doesn't work for me too well so I've stuck with awesome. I currently use a deprecated version of awesome (2.3) since Debian Lenny doesn't provide the latest and greatest (v3). While there have been major changes between 2.3 and 3; they're both quite usable in their current shape.
This is just to get you guys started and is obviously not a tutorial of any kind. There are literally thousands of tutorials to set these up to your liking. . If you're one of those paranoid monkeys who needs to have a lean mean system then this is definitely for you. I would highly recommend awesome, but it is upto you to find one that you like.
I would be more than happy to share my configuration files if any one requires them (along with a couple of tiny scripts for time display etc).
If you already use a tiling window manager (ion, awesome, xmonad etc) please do provide some tips and tricks.