spectrwm VS 2bwm

I use the tiling WM spectrwm. It lets me pull windows out of tiling mode and into window mode. I think a common operation on most tiling window managers. Most of the time I don't want overlapping windows(thus the tiling WM) but every once in a while I do, so the best of both worlds.

It is a bit obscure but I quite like spectrwm, it fills this sweet spot where it is much simpler than I3 but much more feature complete than DWM.

https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm

are you using spectrwm? it seems like this file comes from there, and they use it to make programs open in particular workspaces: https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm/issues/500

Here is one website with screenshots. https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm

Spectrwm is by far the easiest WM I've tested. Also Fluxbox is pretty much straightforward.

Spectrwm is by far the most beginner-friendly WM I've ever tested. Im now running EXWM the buffers management is something else.

I'm a recent convert to i3/sway, after a solid decade using spectrwm (which has not been ported to Wayland, I'm afraid).

This is supposedly fixed in the master branch, but there has been no release in over a year - I'll just set corner and shadow excludes and sit down. I'll notice when a new release is here :)

Distro is Arch Linux and WM is 2bwm

This is a great article and I remember reading it numerous times while I was implementing my own window manager.

For someone interested in working on a really fun and rewarding hobby project a WM is a great one to look into since there are so many resources starting from really small implementations:

- https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm

- https://github.com/venam/2bwm

- https://github.com/dylanaraps/sowm

- https://github.com/dcat/swm

- https://github.com/JLErvin/berry

Which are great at introducing the concepts and allowing you to grok the required libraries.

There are also a bunch of more full featured window managers which will introduce you to more advanced topics:

- https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm

- https://github.com/herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm

- https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/

- https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm

Gradually as you get more familiar with the ecosystem a few questions will come up:

Should I use X11 or XCB? - I personally used XCB and didn't find it too difficult to interface with, and there are a large number of implementations which use it (2bwm, bspwm, ratpoison, etc) so you shouldn't have an issue with learning more about it. But the documentation is pretty limited. If you are just wanting to write a toy WM than X11 is perfectly fine.

X or Wayland? - If you're wanting to write your first WM as a hobby project than I would recommend X over wayland just due to the much larger amount of reference material and documentation. You will have a much easier time getting your feet wet. Ignore the comments about X dying as it doesn't really matter for a hobby project, since the whole point is to have fun.

Feel free to check out my window manager which is an example of what just reading this blog post and getting inspired can result in: https://github.com/cfrank/natwm

wm: 2bwm

It's a pity 2bwm does not get the love :) https://github.com/venam/2bwm