What's the default keyboard shortcut for opening terminal or doing anything, really, in spectrwm? I tried several key combinations, but couldn't have it do anything for me, not even logout, reboot or anything. Had to switch TTY and hit CTRL + ALT + DEL to get it to gdm
Check the default config. In your distro, it might not have all the keybindings set or it might have them all commented out. If you need a config to start with, grab mine: gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/blob/master/.spectrwm.conf The baraction script I use: gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/blob/master/baraction.sh
I just wanted to come back to this video to let you know that it inspired me to install spectrwm on my laptop with Debian 10. I have no regrets. That combination is excellent for getting work done without hassle.
Hey man I really just wanna say how much I appreciate you making these videos showing programs. I usually go to your channel first to see if there is a review of it already lol. Thanks again
DT thank you very much for this content. I was using i3 but not for very long because I found it unintuitive for me. I probable spent more time customizing it than actually using it, because I always missed something. Manual tiling was too cumbersome for me and it felt like a lot of unnecesary work. You made me curious about other tiling WM's. After a while of watching your content, I decided that DWM should work for me, but I was afraid of wasting 5+ evenings patching the beast until it is somewhat usable. Spectrwm is pretty close and the config is much much easier, it works flawlessly. Now it is my daily driver - about a month in - and it feels so natural... I don't even think about it when using it. Thanks for giving it a heads-up. I think spectrwm stands in the middle ground of being very user-friendly and easily customizable (even easier to customize than i3 IMO) but at the same time being pretty minimal and very KISS in nature.
I love this. I was thinking in trying dwm but was worried after your said it was not recommended for your first twm. But this with all those configs and nice default options if great! Will try it right away! Thank you!
Thanks for a very informative and inspiring video, I have been meaning to try a tiling wm and after watching this I will go ahead. BTW the reason the Spectrwm code is so well-written and documented is that it is developed by the OpenBSD people. I believe that its former name was Scrotwm. Cheers, Bill
I've been running dwm for quite a while on my main machine and I wanted to get a similar experience on a different so I gave this a shot. After a day I already quite like it, I do miss the dwm feature of combining workspaces effortlessly. Out of the box spevtrwm works great with a dual monitor setup, that saves me the trouble of configuring dwm to do the same.
Learning about spectrwm here -- this very video -- inspired me to change my setup on my laptop from Manjaro i3 to minimal Debian with spectrwm (building on top of the Debian core utilities). This is my first time starting with a bare version of any GNU/Linux distribution. I have stumbled across a number of hiccups, but I have learned a lot in the process, and I think that Debian with spectrwm is here to stay for me. Why Debian? Well, I wanted to try something new, and the setup is for work, so trusty Debian stability is what I desired. For dotfiles, I have been merging some things from the samples from the spectrwm GitHub, some ideas for your GitHub, and some ideas from linuxdabbler's GitHub (he also has a good video on Debian + spectrwm that helped me with a few important things to get started). Thank you for this great video. DistroTube is one of my top few favorite RUclips/LBRY channels. Derek, you are basically responsible for me making the jump into tiling window managers and a host of other things -- each one specifically for a combination of hobby (when I do the setup itself -- evenings) and efficiency with my workflow (when I use what I have pieced together).
Hey man, (just throwing this out there) thanks for explaining some of the basics here. For example, the difference between dynamic TWM and manual TWM. I realize that this is probably basic knowledge for the majority of your audience. But for me, a lapsed *nix user who is coming back and re-learning everything like... 15 years later, it's a big help.
@@jeetadityachatterjee6995 sorry, i just shifted to i3. I guess I am not competent enough to shift from Cinnamon to Spectrwm straight. I must mention, i3 is good. In 1 hour, I learnt how to do whatever I want to do.
I've been using i3wm and tried dwm. Now I've installed Spectrwm and like it better than the others. No patching to death; and no adding a dozen dependencies. Slackware has several window managers included but not a tiling wm. Spectrwm would be nice to have out of the box.
I've used spectrwm a couple of years back and it's a great WM; instead of the default bar I've used dzen+i3status. Despite of being a nice WM I'll never switch back to it from i3wm, I'll miss too much the scratchpads, i3 layouts, i3 modes, etc.
I was using scrotwm nearly 10 years ago on a Toshiba laptop with a meagre 192 MB RAM, and it was actually usable for a time (if one didn't websurf too much)
For those new to Spectrwm its worth pointing out the conky integration via bar_action makes populating the bar with stats alot easier if you prefer working with conky syntax over bash and dont want to do anything overly complex.
There's a way to use colors and fonts for unicode. * First install spectrwm-git from the aur. * In the variables "bar_font" and "bar_font_color" create a comma separated list. * When formatting use "+@fg=n;" and "+@bg=n;" for foreground and background color respectively. * For fonts use "+@fn=n;" n=[0-1]
You can also align blocks with "+|1L;", "+|1C;" and "+|1R". If you add the following block of code you can have something similar to you usual workspace indicator bar_format = +L [Your other stuff] workspace_indicator = listnamed,listcurrent,noindexes,printnames,markcurrent,markactive,markempty,markurgent workspace_mark_current = +@fg=5; workspace_mark_active = +@fg=2; workspace_mark_empty = +@fg=8; workspace_mark_urgent = +@fg=1; You mark the workspaces with the markup code for the colors
That's really cool the default config gives you so much to start with. Some TWM configs are SOOOOO blank, that when you open a Session in that TWM - you get a black screen lol Going to install this WM in ArchCraft and give it a go.
Looks nice. Have been in i3 for a few months (is my first twm, because it is one of the easiest to customise). This wm config reminds me of that, I will have to check it out
I'm still using i3wm customized to my liking but after your review of spectrwm it will be something I will try when I'm bored - it looks very easy to get going so it's on my radar now.
Hello, Derek! Thank you for your review! Could you, please, make a video about the use of sandbox isolating programs (such as 'Firejail') one day? I just wonder, when do users need to use them?
Some Arco people are having fun getting it ready for eventual release, and I can't install it worth a shit yet, but that's how I learn. It just snaps me back to login. I'll figure it out when I figure it out, or when someone beats me to it. :) Edit: half-way to getting it running ... Bit of dry reading always helps. Second edit: Got it running.
@@leviticus8930 Erik's interested in Spectrwm, but it's behind JWM on the list, so it's more planning stage than implementation, I should have specified.
@@leviticus8930 The JWM is coming along really well. It should be out with the next update. I haven't installed the beta, but I've followed the progress.
Even with dwm, u can compile it without modifying the source code and it is totally usable out of the box with good default keybinding and a working bar.
6:05 The bar is actually pretty customizable. Icons in the bar could be added using icon fonts (look up +@fn=n; sequence in the manual) and colors could be changed using a +@fg=n; sequence. Here's the example of mine: i.imgur.com/jbUR8gH.png
also, "bar_action_expand = 1" is a must in the config, if you want to do anything fancy with the bar. I didn't have this and couldn't figure out what was wrong with my bar, not accepting those +@fn +@fg sequences.
You're a great presenter. I love your channel. Is your linux setup native running on a PC machine? The fonts look very nice. Which distribution comes with all fonts and xserver looks nice yours? Thanks.
I like that they have gone for easy customisation out of the box! Thanks for a good intro. Does spectrewm have the ability to spawn new windows as master, while pushing other windows down the stac? That is literally the only thing that keeps me using dwm as I'm sick of patching and the pretentiousness of suckless. But I don't understand how the dwm people seem to be the only TWM developers who agree with me that it makes little sense to pull up a window to do something only to have it spawn as a thin strip somewhere in the corner. Having to then bring that window to the master position just involves extra key presses. Personally I much prefer getting right into whatever I need to do, and then just hit mod+enter to bring back the previous window as master again.
How can you close just one window of the same program, like when I have opened 2 separate windows of my browser? When I close one with the wind_kill keybind, all the browser windows got killed as well. Nevermind, I was in fact using the wrong action. I should've use window_del
DT, can you verify your website for brave rewards? I have been trying to send you some BAT, but brave says you are not verified yet so I keep end up giving all my BAT to Luke...
Just set that up. May take a little time before it shows. But my RUclips channel page has been verified with Brave for some time, so that might be an option for you.
"I only hacked one it for a couple of hours" My gosh, the most I could spend trying to configure my i3-gaps install before getting confused and quitting was about 40 minutes"
Whomever doesn't need at least green, yellow and red color in his status bar - doesnt really need status bar.The whole point of supporting shell scripts in the status bar is to raise alarms from the systems you are monitoring, VPN disconnected, disk space low, temperature high etc. Otherwise just gluing toyota clock under the monitor will do the trick. System-agnostic, survives formats and even works from simple AAA batteries.
I am using kubuntu with a tiling script and one problem I found is some programs open extra windows that expect to be floating so they behave weird as they are forced to become large. Zotero a reference manager for libreofffice is one that opens a one-line window to input the reference you need. When you type it produces a list below or above the window of possible references that match your search. With tiling it becomes a proper window and can't use it properly
I can only speak from an i3wm point of view on this but in i3 you can specify on how to handle certain windows. Like when I get stuff like that I specify the window class or title in the i3 config file so that it opens in a small floating window rather than a large awkward window. But also, i3 is smart enough to generally open all child windows from a parent window to be already in a small floating window.
Window managers typically don't have screen lockers builtin. You install one if you want. So install i3lock if that's the one you've been using with i3.
It's a shame the default config file is not the same on ubuntu (everything commented out, not a single key binding...). I guess i'm going to start from yours.
@DistroTube I am finding BSPWM a little "laggy" in opening a new window and moving between workspaces. SpectrWM looks all round "snappier" when used on your machine, but I suspect your machine has quite a bit more grunt than the 4 year old i5-5200 that I am using as a testbed. I do like the BSPWM key bindings, they seem instinctive and would probably be preferable to the three-key combintions common in SpectrWM. What is the experience of others? Snappier than BSPWM? Have you reconfigured the keybindings to avoid the three-key fingerspread?
Configure your own keybindings to whatever you like, that's a non-issue. I did it so, that every WM-specific command is two-key-press and every custom launcher is a three-key-press (like "run firefox" or "mount USB").
The whole point of a TWM is the fact it should by default run faster than a full GUI DE. i5 5th gen should be no different. If laggy then it prolly something else - for instance, when I started using a new terminal I thought it was laggy opening a new window but found out the problem was in the config file I needed to specify a no-startup-id and that fixed the issue.
(9:19 a comment, DT, next time do a simple edit wit keyframes to zoom in for the few seconds that you need, even if its not native resolution, it will make the vídeos easier to enjoy)
Hey, DT, why super+shift+c? 🤣 why do you want 3 keys to do something that is soooooo much needed everyday? I'm really Super+Q kinda guy, and I always found super+shift+C like too long to be so much used. Explain your thoughts (because if I liked the C for close, I would happily give up on any app to have Super+C on its own. One is constantly closing windows!)
My ubuntu 19.10 doesn't have spectrwm 3.3.0 in the upstream repo so here's what I did after downloading and untarring the release. sudo apt build-dep spectrwm; cd /path/to/spectrwm-3.3.0-source/linux; make; sudo make install
I remember using spectrwm on my old Acer 10' netbook and it was pretty good for maximizing my screen real estate. One thing I had trouble with was setting the keybindings for switching my keyboard layout and getting it displayed in the bar. Any idea of how to do that easily? I remember having to write my own script for getting the current layout from an AUR package something like xkb or something like that. There must be an easier way.
All you should have to do is make a simple script to echo the output of the current layout, and then change the formatting to your liking. Make a key binding that cycles through the layouts you need to have.
Not sure what I used in this video. Alacritty has been my main terminal emulator for a couple months but I've also used st a bit lately (testing out my st build that I put on my GitLab and in the AUR).
I recommend i3wm as well if you haven't tried it yet. AwesomeWM requires a lot of work to get it looking and working the way you want. i3 has great documentation out on the internet for it.
I am just trying it. But is there a way for me to get my taskbar icons I had back? For e.g., my NextCloud client icon, Signal chat Icon which used to be in the taskbar are missing. Is there a way I could get them?
Those icons appear in a system tray. There is no systray builtin to spectrwm. You could try to use a third-party systray though. I did video awhile back on trayer: ruclips.net/video/MyJjiYVggBs/видео.html
@@DistroTube thank you so much. I thought I was in so much trouble. I just have linux mint cinamon and spectrwm. Obviously spectrwm is MUCH better! Thanks for the link! I will enable the "system tray" now. again, thanks so much for introducing this amaizingly simple software. Cant wait to train my hands on it and show off to my friends at work.
I installed manjaro+xfce, and i want to switch from xfce to spectrwm. I downloaded spectrwm but when I choose it on login screen it's just show me black screen for a second and return to login screen. How can I fix it? (I already checked arch wiki: specrtwm and spectrwm github page)
You can actually resize and move windows like that on pretty much most Linux desktops On plasma the default key is alt + left mouse button to drag, alt + right button in one of the corners to resize For gnome desktop only dragging works but you use the super key, if you use gnome tweaks you can add the option to resize with super + right click
@@MyurrDurr ohw it called assist resize, interesting does it also only resize in two directions on knome? -i say knome cause i'm a bit lazy to both out-
@@fuseteam If you place the cursor on any of the four corners and hold down super and right click and move the mouse, it'll resize as if you were dragging that corner around
Thank you for the video, I've never heard of this wm, I might give it a try. I just bought a new laptop and spent the whole week-end customizing my i3, I feel dumb now lol
Installed arcolinuxd with basic set of programs. tried to start spectrwm but no luck. lightdm disabled no luck... xsession-errors shows "unable to load charset" bar font is terminus. I have no idea :)
Well rtfm-ed a bit and of course I was stupid. baraction.sh needed to be executable as well .spectrwm.conf. Plus I copied the content of the spectrwm_us.conf into .spectrwm.conf and no problems. Really good wm ones you get around the initial configuration.
@@sohn7767 But there are guidelines and good software should follow it. I liked DT presentation of this WM. I use i3 on a daily basis.SpectrWM seems great piece of software. No need to learn another programming language.
I am currently using SpectrWM on a 5-Monitor setup, which works great. But I think the format of the config file is just an abomination. It's basically the only think, that I don't like about. On my laptop I still use DWM, because its config file is way more pleasing, but unfortunately I can't work with the way it handles multiple monitors.
what would be a good way to install multiple window managers in parallel, to test them out as you do? and maybe being able to switch between them on login or similar
Just install them. Most of these windows managers typical have few (if any) dependencies. Just install the window manager you want to try, log out of your current DE/WM, and login to the new one.
![NOSFERATU - Official Trailer [HD] - Only In Theaters December 25](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/nulvWqYUM8k/mqdefault.jpg)
What's the default keyboard shortcut for opening terminal or doing anything, really, in spectrwm? I tried several key combinations, but couldn't have it do anything for me, not even logout, reboot or anything. Had to switch TTY and hit CTRL + ALT + DEL to get it to gdm
Check the default config. In your distro, it might not have all the keybindings set or it might have them all commented out. If you need a config to start with, grab mine: gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/blob/master/.spectrwm.conf
The baraction script I use: gitlab.com/dwt1/dotfiles/-/blob/master/baraction.sh
Always a good time when DistroTube reviews tiling window managers
I just wanted to come back to this video to let you know that it inspired me to install spectrwm on my laptop with Debian 10. I have no regrets. That combination is excellent for getting work done without hassle.
Great to hear!
I have been daily driving spectrwm on Debian for a while now and I love it.
Hey man I really just wanna say how much I appreciate you making these videos showing programs. I usually go to your channel first to see if there is a review of it already lol. Thanks again
DT thank you very much for this content.
I was using i3 but not for very long because I found it unintuitive for me. I probable spent more time customizing it than actually using it, because I always missed something. Manual tiling was too cumbersome for me and it felt like a lot of unnecesary work. You made me curious about other tiling WM's. After a while of watching your content, I decided that DWM should work for me, but I was afraid of wasting 5+ evenings patching the beast until it is somewhat usable. Spectrwm is pretty close and the config is much much easier, it works flawlessly. Now it is my daily driver - about a month in - and it feels so natural... I don't even think about it when using it. Thanks for giving it a heads-up.
I think spectrwm stands in the middle ground of being very user-friendly and easily customizable (even easier to customize than i3 IMO) but at the same time being pretty minimal and very KISS in nature.
Spectrwm is a very good blend of dwm and xmonad and i3 :) easy to drive, fast and the config is not a programming language.
I love this. I was thinking in trying dwm but was worried after your said it was not recommended for your first twm. But this with all those configs and nice default options if great! Will try it right away! Thank you!
try i3 if this doesnt work out for u. its pretty easy.
After I tried i3wm, I fall in love with tiling window manger and its elegance and lightweight
Thanks for a very informative and inspiring video, I have been meaning to try a tiling wm and after watching this I will go ahead. BTW the reason the Spectrwm code is so well-written and documented is that it is developed by the OpenBSD people. I believe that its former name was Scrotwm. Cheers, Bill
The bar is customizable. Got colors and icons in it. DT should read the man page.
hahaha, this guy just RTFMed DT
jkjk
@Agnish Roy spectrwm
I've been running dwm for quite a while on my main machine and I wanted to get a similar experience on a different so I gave this a shot. After a day I already quite like it, I do miss the dwm feature of combining workspaces effortlessly. Out of the box spevtrwm works great with a dual monitor setup, that saves me the trouble of configuring dwm to do the same.
Learning about spectrwm here -- this very video -- inspired me to change my setup on my laptop from Manjaro i3 to minimal Debian with spectrwm (building on top of the Debian core utilities). This is my first time starting with a bare version of any GNU/Linux distribution. I have stumbled across a number of hiccups, but I have learned a lot in the process, and I think that Debian with spectrwm is here to stay for me. Why Debian? Well, I wanted to try something new, and the setup is for work, so trusty Debian stability is what I desired. For dotfiles, I have been merging some things from the samples from the spectrwm GitHub, some ideas for your GitHub, and some ideas from linuxdabbler's GitHub (he also has a good video on Debian + spectrwm that helped me with a few important things to get started).
Thank you for this great video. DistroTube is one of my top few favorite RUclips/LBRY channels. Derek, you are basically responsible for me making the jump into tiling window managers and a host of other things -- each one specifically for a combination of hobby (when I do the setup itself -- evenings) and efficiency with my workflow (when I use what I have pieced together).
Hey man, (just throwing this out there) thanks for explaining some of the basics here. For example, the difference between dynamic TWM and manual TWM. I realize that this is probably basic knowledge for the majority of your audience. But for me, a lapsed *nix user who is coming back and re-learning everything like... 15 years later, it's a big help.
This code sctructure reminds me to NSIS code structure. Pretty descriptive functions, much more practical to customize.
Thanks for the recomendation.
This is just the right tiling manager for the beginer! Whow! im amaized!
The only thing that would really be a pickle would be the bar. Most begginers would want something a little easier to configure
@@jeetadityachatterjee6995 sorry, i just shifted to i3. I guess I am not competent enough to shift from Cinnamon to Spectrwm straight. I must mention, i3 is good. In 1 hour, I learnt how to do whatever I want to do.
@@jeetadityachatterjee6995 yeah the bar is not easy to configure.
@@crian117 There's always Polybar. Polybar is really nice.
I've been using i3wm and tried dwm.
Now I've installed Spectrwm and like it better than the others.
No patching to death; and no adding a dozen dependencies.
Slackware has several window managers included but not a tiling wm. Spectrwm would be nice to have out of the box.
7:30 spectrwm used to be called scrotwm
Ah! Was wondering how that line got there, because I don't even know what scrotwm is. lol
Yeah, they change the name because people referenced it as something to do with male anatomy 🤣
any connect with the scrot tool?
@@leviticus8930 as if they were not the perverts to name it that in the first place
@@_yuri lol true
Wonderful episode! Thank you! Btw it seams you can use emojis from a Xft font with unicode PUA
I've used spectrwm a couple of years back and it's a great WM; instead of the default bar I've used dzen+i3status. Despite of being a nice WM I'll never switch back to it from i3wm, I'll miss too much the scratchpads, i3 layouts, i3 modes, etc.
I was using scrotwm nearly 10 years ago on a Toshiba laptop with a meagre 192 MB RAM, and it was actually usable for a time (if one didn't websurf too much)
For those new to Spectrwm its worth pointing out the conky integration via bar_action makes populating the bar with stats alot easier if you prefer working with conky syntax over bash and dont want to do anything overly complex.
I might have to try this as my first wm
My first WM and the best beside DWM both are great in my thoughts 😍
Impressive, another i3 user over here AND i say, damn, all that i want it in one place with a plus one config file.
There's a way to use colors and fonts for unicode.
* First install spectrwm-git from the aur.
* In the variables "bar_font" and "bar_font_color" create a comma separated list.
* When formatting use "+@fg=n;" and "+@bg=n;" for foreground and background color respectively.
* For fonts use "+@fn=n;"
n=[0-1]
You can also align blocks with "+|1L;", "+|1C;" and "+|1R".
If you add the following block of code you can have something similar to you usual workspace indicator
bar_format = +L [Your other stuff]
workspace_indicator = listnamed,listcurrent,noindexes,printnames,markcurrent,markactive,markempty,markurgent
workspace_mark_current = +@fg=5;
workspace_mark_active = +@fg=2;
workspace_mark_empty = +@fg=8;
workspace_mark_urgent = +@fg=1;
You mark the workspaces with the markup code for the colors
It's now my favorite window manager.
Everytime I install a new Window Manager, RUclips shows me a recommendation of a better one.
Pretty cool. I saw somewhere else you can minimize programs. That's a game changer for me. I think I'll give it a try.
Great video as always! Spectrwm looks very nice
That's really cool the default config gives you so much to start with.
Some TWM configs are SOOOOO blank,
that when you open a Session in that TWM - you get a black screen lol
Going to install this WM in ArchCraft and give it a go.
Looks nice. Have been in i3 for a few months (is my first twm, because it is one of the easiest to customise). This wm config reminds me of that, I will have to check it out
Thanks sir. Always happily informed by your contents.
I'm still using i3wm customized to my liking but after your review of spectrwm it will be something I will try when I'm bored - it looks very easy to get going so it's on my radar now.
Thank you, Derek.
i use i3wm currently but comparing to it, spectrwm is far more easier. Great presentation, thanks.
Hello, Derek! Thank you for your review!
Could you, please, make a video about the use of sandbox isolating programs (such as 'Firejail') one day? I just wonder, when do users need to use them?
Firejail is on my video todo list.
@@DistroTube, I'm looking forward to it, then!
@@DistroTube you should make a comparison to other tools such as bubblewrap
I knew you would like it.
Some Arco people are having fun getting it ready for eventual release, and I can't install it worth a shit yet, but that's how I learn. It just snaps me back to login. I'll figure it out when I figure it out, or when someone beats me to it. :)
Edit: half-way to getting it running ... Bit of dry reading always helps.
Second edit: Got it running.
Arco is doing a Spectrum release? Or did I misunderstood you statement.
@@leviticus8930 Erik's interested in Spectrwm, but it's behind JWM on the list, so it's more planning stage than implementation, I should have specified.
@@thenextpoetician6328 I am glad he is considering it. I won't be upset either if he puts a JWM version in front of the line either.
@@leviticus8930 The JWM is coming along really well. It should be out with the next update. I haven't installed the beta, but I've followed the progress.
Should this wm be recommended for new tiling window manager users? Because from what I see it is easier than i3wm
I would recommend it. The config file has a nice format to play around.
just use dwm, its easy, fast and minimal
Even with dwm, u can compile it without modifying the source code and it is totally usable out of the box with good default keybinding and a working bar.
6:05 The bar is actually pretty customizable. Icons in the bar could be added using icon fonts (look up +@fn=n; sequence in the manual) and colors could be changed using a +@fg=n; sequence.
Here's the example of mine: i.imgur.com/jbUR8gH.png
If you use bar_font_pua = 'some icon font' it's actually simpler since you no longer need to put the +@fn=n; sequence before and after each icon.
also, "bar_action_expand = 1" is a must in the config, if you want to do anything fancy with the bar. I didn't have this and couldn't figure out what was wrong with my bar, not accepting those +@fn +@fg sequences.
Wohoo, finally dt found spectrwm. I use it since its called scrotum (oops scrotwm).
10 yeara ago it was called scrotwm. I loved it just for the reason as it was not used by /r/unixporn
You're a great presenter. I love your channel. Is your linux setup native running on a PC machine? The fonts look very nice. Which distribution comes with all fonts and xserver looks nice yours? Thanks.
Hey DT, small trick, but you can save and quit on vim with :x rather than using :wq. Saves a keystroke!
Thinking about switching to spectrwm from dwm after this video!
I like ZZ better.
@@007arek Yeah, It's got that Billy Gibbons feel
Or you can create a key map like I did: ctrl+z = quit or ctrl+x = save and quit. Perfect when used in Ranger.
I like that they have gone for easy customisation out of the box! Thanks for a good intro. Does spectrewm have the ability to spawn new windows as master, while pushing other windows down the stac? That is literally the only thing that keeps me using dwm as I'm sick of patching and the pretentiousness of suckless. But I don't understand how the dwm people seem to be the only TWM developers who agree with me that it makes little sense to pull up a window to do something only to have it spawn as a thin strip somewhere in the corner. Having to then bring that window to the master position just involves extra key presses. Personally I much prefer getting right into whatever I need to do, and then just hit mod+enter to bring back the previous window as master again.
spawn_position = first
Gotta try them all ;)
How can you close just one window of the same program, like when I have opened 2 separate windows of my browser? When I close one with the wind_kill keybind, all the browser windows got killed as well.
Nevermind, I was in fact using the wrong action. I should've use window_del
Please give a try on Golem window manager, who still runs on BSD platforms. Seems nice. Thank you for the good job.
I've used this in the past and I've found that it's even lighter than DWM.
less lines is not lighter 😔
@@_yuri he didn't say that.
Thanks dt for the review. I wish for good dynamic window manager on Wayland.
DT, can you verify your website for brave rewards? I have been trying to send you some BAT, but brave says you are not verified yet so I keep end up giving all my BAT to Luke...
Just set that up. May take a little time before it shows. But my RUclips channel page has been verified with Brave for some time, so that might be an option for you.
"I only hacked one it for a couple of hours"
My gosh, the most I could spend trying to configure my i3-gaps install before getting confused and quitting was about 40 minutes"
Just read the docs man. I gets way easier, once you get it.
@YELLOW Dix Why don't you read the docs or google it. I don't even use spectrwm.
@Noob Programmer bassicaly you can get polybar on amy WM even DE, the problem is you have to hack with module to work well with your WM
That background picture looks sick, can I find it somewhere
Check my GitLab. Link is in the Show Notes.
Interesting WM.
Whomever doesn't need at least green, yellow and red color in his status bar - doesnt really need status bar.The whole point of supporting shell scripts in the status bar is to raise alarms from the systems you are monitoring, VPN disconnected, disk space low, temperature high etc.
Otherwise just gluing toyota clock under the monitor will do the trick. System-agnostic, survives formats and even works from simple AAA batteries.
Wow.. where do you get these awesome wallpapers?
Hi DT. Great video (as usual) is it possible to use polybar instead of the built-in bar?
Thank you in advance.
You can use polybar, but it will not show monitor/wokspace/layout information in any third-party panel.
DistroTube I understand. This isn’t nice
:-(
I am using kubuntu with a tiling script and one problem I found is some programs open extra windows that expect to be floating so they behave weird as they are forced to become large. Zotero a reference manager for libreofffice is one that opens a one-line window to input the reference you need. When you type it produces a list below or above the window of possible references that match your search. With tiling it becomes a proper window and can't use it properly
I can only speak from an i3wm point of view on this but in i3 you can specify on how to handle certain windows. Like when I get stuff like that I specify the window class or title in the i3 config file so that it opens in a small floating window rather than a large awkward window. But also, i3 is smart enough to generally open all child windows from a parent window to be already in a small floating window.
The comment line about Scrotwm is there because it's name changed to the current one.
awesome. Does this have a lockscreen similar to i3lock (circle style) ?
Window managers typically don't have screen lockers builtin. You install one if you want. So install i3lock if that's the one you've been using with i3.
@@DistroTube Great! Thanks a ton! Love your videos. Your video, inspired me to switch from i3-gaps to Spectrwm.
Hey DT, can you make a video about penrose window manager. It's a dynamic wm based on Rust.
Hey, DT have you tried fff? It's a console file manager written in bash, greetings
Only downside I found was trying to have a system tray with it, I tried running Trayer but it would only show on one workspace.
It's a shame the default config file is not the same on ubuntu (everything commented out, not a single key binding...). I guess i'm going to start from yours.
@DistroTube I am finding BSPWM a little "laggy" in opening a new window and moving between workspaces. SpectrWM looks all round "snappier" when used on your machine, but I suspect your machine has quite a bit more grunt than the 4 year old i5-5200 that I am using as a testbed. I do like the BSPWM key bindings, they seem instinctive and would probably be preferable to the three-key combintions common in SpectrWM.
What is the experience of others?
Snappier than BSPWM?
Have you reconfigured the keybindings to avoid the three-key fingerspread?
Configure your own keybindings to whatever you like, that's a non-issue. I did it so, that every WM-specific command is two-key-press and every custom launcher is a three-key-press (like "run firefox" or "mount USB").
The whole point of a TWM is the fact it should by default run faster than a full GUI DE. i5 5th gen should be no different. If laggy then it prolly something else - for instance, when I started using a new terminal I thought it was laggy opening a new window but found out the problem was in the config file I needed to specify a no-startup-id and that fixed the issue.
Me: *tries to start spectrwm*
Spectrwm: hahahahahaa, I'll never open
it’s the bar font setting probably. you should change it
(9:19 a comment, DT, next time do a simple edit wit keyframes to zoom in for the few seconds that you need, even if its not native resolution, it will make the vídeos easier to enjoy)
Compton AFAIK is deprecated. Its successor is picom.
Can anyone explain to me the difference between dynamic tiling and manual tiling window manager? .
Sure: ruclips.net/video/Obzf9ppODJU/видео.html
Hey, DT, why super+shift+c? 🤣 why do you want 3 keys to do something that is soooooo much needed everyday? I'm really Super+Q kinda guy, and I always found super+shift+C like too long to be so much used. Explain your thoughts (because if I liked the C for close, I would happily give up on any app to have Super+C on its own. One is constantly closing windows!)
what is the name of the package that shows the rgb color table in the terminal?
My ubuntu 19.10 doesn't have spectrwm 3.3.0 in the upstream repo so here's what I did after downloading and untarring the release. sudo apt build-dep spectrwm; cd /path/to/spectrwm-3.3.0-source/linux; make; sudo make install
Good video.
How does it handle multiple monitors? And does it have a system tray?
Haskell is a great language!... Unpopular but great hahaha
also very difficult to learn :(
Where did you get your wallpaper from?
My GitLab. Check the show notes.
Arco doesn't have Spectrwm edition. I'm shocked. :P
Why no ads on your video DT? I want you to get paid for your work.
Then disable adblock :D
I remember using spectrwm on my old Acer 10' netbook and it was pretty good for maximizing my screen real estate. One thing I had trouble with was setting the keybindings for switching my keyboard layout and getting it displayed in the bar. Any idea of how to do that easily? I remember having to write my own script for getting the current layout from an AUR package something like xkb or something like that. There must be an easier way.
All you should have to do is make a simple script to echo the output of the current layout, and then change the formatting to your liking. Make a key binding that cycles through the layouts you need to have.
I wanna know what terminal emulator is used here
Not sure what I used in this video. Alacritty has been my main terminal emulator for a couple months but I've also used st a bit lately (testing out my st build that I put on my GitLab and in the AUR).
is Awesome still your recommendation for beginners?
Imo i3 would be better for a begginer.
@@zyan983 can you say why?
@@cocorico128 i3 is extremely easy to setup. You don't need a crazy anount of keybindings. There are plenty of tutorials on it.
@@zyan983 thank you
I recommend i3wm as well if you haven't tried it yet. AwesomeWM requires a lot of work to get it looking and working the way you want. i3 has great documentation out on the internet for it.
Are dwm-like tags available in spectrwm?
Scrot-wm hahaha. Genius.
The bar ends it for me. Back with Ice
You can disable the default bar and use whatever else you like.
@@mattk6343 True... But why ?
@@dougtilaran3496 If it's the only thing stopping you from trying spectrwm, then there is this option to use a 3rd party bar.
I am just trying it. But is there a way for me to get my taskbar icons I had back? For e.g., my NextCloud client icon, Signal chat Icon which used to be in the taskbar are missing. Is there a way I could get them?
Those icons appear in a system tray. There is no systray builtin to spectrwm. You could try to use a third-party systray though. I did video awhile back on trayer: ruclips.net/video/MyJjiYVggBs/видео.html
@@DistroTube thank you so much. I thought I was in so much trouble. I just have linux mint cinamon and spectrwm. Obviously spectrwm is MUCH better! Thanks for the link! I will enable the "system tray" now. again, thanks so much for introducing this amaizingly simple software. Cant wait to train my hands on it and show off to my friends at work.
You should try xwallpaper instead of nitrogen. It's much better
The default conf file after installing on ubuntu was pretty bare bones..
How is this WM compared to DWM?
I installed manjaro+xfce, and i want to switch from xfce to spectrwm. I downloaded spectrwm but when I choose it on login screen it's just show me black screen for a second and return to login screen. How can I fix it? (I already checked arch wiki: specrtwm and spectrwm github page)
hmm that resize mechanism at 13:34 looks interesting
You can actually resize and move windows like that on pretty much most Linux desktops
On plasma the default key is alt + left mouse button to drag, alt + right button in one of the corners to resize
For gnome desktop only dragging works but you use the super key, if you use gnome tweaks you can add the option to resize with super + right click
@@MyurrDurr ohw it called assist resize, interesting does it also only resize in two directions on knome?
-i say knome cause i'm a bit lazy to both out-
@@MyurrDurr hmm can't find much on the term 'assist resize and move'
@@fuseteam If you place the cursor on any of the four corners and hold down super and right click and move the mouse, it'll resize as if you were dragging that corner around
@@MyurrDurr nah i'm more interested in resizing from the middle
Thank you for the video, I've never heard of this wm, I might give it a try. I just bought a new laptop and spent the whole week-end customizing my i3, I feel dumb now lol
Where can i find that colortest program/script?
Installed arcolinuxd with basic set of programs. tried to start spectrwm but no luck. lightdm disabled no luck... xsession-errors shows "unable to load charset" bar font is terminus. I have no idea :)
Well rtfm-ed a bit and of course I was stupid. baraction.sh needed to be executable as well .spectrwm.conf. Plus I copied the content of the spectrwm_us.conf into .spectrwm.conf and no problems. Really good wm ones you get around the initial configuration.
Can you do a video covering Linux support for high resolution monitors like 4k displays.
No. I don't any 4K monitors.
I don't like where it is putting files. Things like config files should not just be in the user's home folder.
you can change it to he desired location like with every config file
@@sohn7767 But there are guidelines and good software should follow it. I liked DT presentation of this WM. I use i3 on a daily basis.SpectrWM seems great piece of software. No need to learn another programming language.
Does it have a binding to make a window "float" as in not tiled?
In i3, the shortcut is $mod+Shift+space.
Yep, it's super+t
I am currently using SpectrWM on a 5-Monitor setup, which works great. But I think the format of the config file is just an abomination. It's basically the only think, that I don't like about. On my laptop I still use DWM, because its config file is way more pleasing, but unfortunately I can't work with the way it handles multiple monitors.
what would be a good way to install multiple window managers in parallel, to test them out as you do? and maybe being able to switch between them on login or similar
Just install them. Most of these windows managers typical have few (if any) dependencies. Just install the window manager you want to try, log out of your current DE/WM, and login to the new one.
@@DistroTube alright, thanks! :D
Oh heck yeah. Should I switch from i3?
Try it and see if you like the master and stack stuff