Bspwm Alternatives

bspwm reviews and mentions

• Show HN: A tiling window manager like i3wm written in C#
  11 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 15 Apr 2022

  komorebi dev here. I can't tell you the number of times I've wanted to just write my own take on sxhkd[1] for Windows and use that to manage my own keybindings for komorebi instead of ahk.

  You can just as easily write your own/use another hotkey daemon or PowerShell scripts to handle komorebi's configuration and keybindings, in that sense there is no dependency on ahk at all. However, the inertia around ahk in the Windows ecosystem is undeniable and it's in the interests of making adoption and onboarding easier that the project provides example ahk files and has invested in an ahk code generation library.

  My thoughts on the dominant hotkey daemon in the Windows ecosystem aside, I remain convinced that the famous bspwm socket communication architecture[2] is the best way to handle both configuration and keybindings for a tiling window manager that has been proposed to this today.

  Unfortunately I have to concede that there is a certain configuration burden that comes with komorebi, which is amplified in some cases by having to write/maintain ahk. This configuration burden is largely due to the highly fragmented nature of Windows application development that is discussed often on HN and it is inescapable.

  With this in mind, the next release of komorebi (currently available on master) will invest even more heavily in automatic configuration generation.

  A separate repository of common application-specific configuration tweaks[3] (in YAML!) has been created which I and others from the komorebi Discord server are contributing to, with the goal of having the edge cases for as many applications as possible fully documented so that a comprehensive configuration file can be generated[4] for the user which ensures that every (major) Windows application behaves as expected under a tiling window manager.

  I hope that other Windows tiling window manager developers can use these YAML definitions in the future to handle the same edge cases in their projects so that eventually there will be a tiling window manager of every flavour (bspwm, i3wm etc.) available for Windows users where having to manually accommodate and compensate for the non-standard behaviour of individual applications is a thing of the past.

  [1]: https://github.com/baskerville/sxhkd

  [2]: https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm#description

  [3]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi-application-specific-conf...

  [4]: https://github.com/LGUG2Z/komorebi/#generating-common-applic...

• Can't get Tor Browser to float automatically
  1 project | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 12 Apr 2022

  I shouldnt help you, but here: use the external rules method: https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm/tree/master/examples/external_rules

• Can‘t decide on which DE to use.
  3 projects | reddit.com/r/archlinux | 8 Feb 2022

  WM: bspwm

• How to output layout of currently focused node or desktop
  1 project | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 4 Feb 2022

  refs 1, 2

• How do you guys work with terminals?
  11 projects | reddit.com/r/neovim | 26 Jan 2022

  Interesting question. I mix a lot. I use bspwm to create a window with a terminal for each individual project or general task. In kitty I group related functionality by tab and use layouts to position different applications that I want grouped (often development servers or server consoles). When working inside nvim I often use the built-in terminal for tasks related to the "code" (poke around, move stuff, create files, more advanced git commands etc).

• Is it possible to change orientation of already opened windows?
  1 project | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 6 Jan 2022

  Using this patch, you can use node -y next to achieve the same:

• Which WM should I use ?
  6 projects | reddit.com/r/linuxmasterrace | 27 Dec 2021

  my personal favourite is bspwm and sxhkd, together it's super satisfying for some reason.

• BSPWM not responding to anything and leaving my computer on a black screen.
  1 project | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 20 Dec 2021

  when that's done it's time to copy the example configuration files to the above made folders. Now, I don't know where they are installed on your system, but you can find them in bspwm's github

• Can Herbstluftwm handle reparenting windows natively?
  1 project | reddit.com/r/herbstluftwm | 18 Dec 2021

  It seems all tiling window managers doesn't support reparent window. I have tried i3wm and bspwm, they all don't support eaf. https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm/issues/1347

• Is bspwm still in active development? There is no activity from developer's side for almost 6 months on GitHub....
  2 projects | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 8 Dec 2021

  River is a dynamic wayland compositor that takes inspiration from dwm and bspwm.

• Bspwm noob
  3 projects | reddit.com/r/bspwm | 6 Dec 2021

  Bspwm provide examples for both, bspwmrc and for sxhkdrc.

• Looking for more CLI and less GUI based Distro
  3 projects | reddit.com/r/commandline | 30 Nov 2021

  Try i3 or sway or bspwm, you can install them and switch to them from your session manager, you don't have to uninstall anything, and you can come back to regular Ubuntu anytime ;)

• looking for a new DE
  4 projects | reddit.com/r/archlinux | 13 Nov 2021

  There are many programs that have separate toolkits or popups. Steam, Dia and Android Studio comes to mind. Steam worked correctly in almost all instances though, if I remember right. Not that Firefox About-page isn't that big of a deal, but many login pages (which get really out of place when force-tiled) and addons have popups. Quick deal breaker for me was Android Emulator, which apparently can be fixed now. I might give bspwm another shot seeing that solution.

• How X Window Managers Work, and How to Write One
  14 projects | news.ycombinator.com | 3 Nov 2021

  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

• Touchscreen mode in Firefox doesn't work after opening a new window
  1 project | reddit.com/r/archlinux | 31 Oct 2021

  Upstream bspwm support: https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm/issues