Window manager - pros and cons

Question

Hi!
I do like the discussion about the file managers in the forum and just want to start one about window managers.
Which window managers did you try or work with? What do you like or dislike with those window managers?
Which feature is important for you, which "feature" don't you like? And finally: Which one are you using now?
Please, don't write things like "xyz is the best!", we know that everyone has the best wm - for him or her...
It is more interesting to see the reasons behind your decision ;-)
I'll write some of my experiences, too, but I have not enough time at the moment.
Greetings from good ol' germany,
Thomas

Answer 1

Murray_B wrote:XFCE:Cons: Well, yes, there are some things I am missing. A menu-editor, display the properties of multiple folders and files in thunar, that only the background of a panel is getting transparent and maybe a nice login manager (slim is no real replacement for kdm/gdm, these ones are just the best.)
1.) A menu editor is supposedly in the next release, and possibly proper transparent panels and xfwm4 window decorations.
2.) For a transparent xfce4-panel right now you can try the cairo-patch: http://www.cooptel.qc.ca/~pggervais/xfc … tch.tar.gz
You can use the old PKGBUILD from the AUR to build it using the new patch and the new 4.6.1 source: http://aur.archlinux.org/packages.php?ID=22081
Then to change panel colors and transparency levels, edit the patch before you build the xfce4-panel (takes one minute to edit the patch, one minute to build the panel).
change these 4 ALPHAs part of the patch to anything from 0.1 to 0.9 for different transparency levels:
+#define ALPHA 0.2
and, for different RGBA color change this part:
cairo_set_source_rgba (cr, r, g, b, ALPHA);
to something like this (makes it a clear black color that is best with ALPHA = 0.7):
cairo_set_source_rgba (cr, 0, 0, 0, ALPHA);
3.) Slim can be made to look nice, but I prefer starting xfce4 from my inittab with this:
x:5:once:/bin/su "YOUR_USERNAME" -l -c "/bin/bash --login -c startx >/dev/null 2>&1"
One of the reasons I stick with xfce4 is because I'm on a notebook and it would seem like a waist to install a nice tiling window manager like xmonad. I would really want to use xmonad if I had a nice desktop with a few monitors, and if I used a few more console apps other than nano, vim (learning), mc, mpd + ncmpcpp, rtorrent.
Right now I'm using "terminator" for a tiling console (along with devilspie to embed it into my wallpaper), so all of my console apps can run on my wallpaper, and my gui apps like firefox take up the whole screen.
Last edited by methuselah (2009-08-17 22:49:43)