A nice looking WM to replace a DE

[Manish Jain]

On 2020-08-16 11:59, Weaver wrote:
> On 16-08-2020 15:43, Victor Sudakov wrote:
>> Dear Colleagues,
>>
>> There is a box where I'd like to ditch Xfce for a more simple setup with
>> just a window manager (WM) and a couple of xterms. This would set the
>> resources free from the gnome-shit which Xfce runs in the background.
>> Is it still possible?
>>
>> If you run this kind of configuration, can you answer some questions for
>> me?
>>
>> 1. What good-looking WM would you recommend from the ports? I had a
>> quick look at fvwm and was appalled how dated and ugly it looks to the
>> modern eye. Even twm is better aesthetically but not rich enough
>> for me. A minimal number of dependencies is an advantage.
>>
>> 2. Without a full-featured DE, how do you setup Xserver parameters? I've
>> long forgotten how to configure multiple keyboard layouts, nice fonts,
>> various hotkeys (layout switching etc). Is it still done via the global
>> xorg.conf or is it possible on a per-user basis?
> 
> All the above is possible with enlightenment.
> Resource requirement is minimal and very configurable.
> 

I would definitely suggest the awesome tiling window manager. It looks 
fantastic, is minimalist and works great. I actually use it in my 
FreeBSD vm.

You can configure it by copying the rc.lua file under 
/usr/local/etc/xdg/ to ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua (after mkdir 
~/.config/awesome).

The only changes I usually need in ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua are :

1) switch editor from nano to vim

2) switch terminal from xterm to terminator. Of course, you would like 
to have terminator installed upfront :

portsnap auto
cd /usr/ports/x11/terminator
make config-recurive
make install clean

Restart. Right clicking on the desktop will now get you terminator.


Hope this helps,
Manish Jain