this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
25 points (93.1% liked)

Linux

48356 readers
390 users here now

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991 by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution (or distro for short).

Distributions include the Linux kernel and supporting system software and libraries, many of which are provided by the GNU Project. Many Linux distributions use the word "Linux" in their name, but the Free Software Foundation uses the name GNU/Linux to emphasize the importance of GNU software, causing some controversy.

Rules

Related Communities

Community icon by Alpár-Etele Méder, licensed under CC BY 3.0

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I want the easiest to configure/theme wm and one that comes with sane defaults. Also I currently use cinnamon, and I'm not sure how to escape from that(everything in it is just so nice) but I want the speed of a wm

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] Lucia@eviltoast.org 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fluxbox or IceWM as a more standard, familiar floating WMs (both are pretty customizable too).

WindowMaker is my goto for standalone window managers, it's look based on NeXTSTeP OS from 90s, so it doesn't look like yet another ripoff from windows or macos (both are ugly IMHO), so it's pretty unique.

If you want minimal and keyboard-oriented, cwm is THE wm for you. The main problem is that default keyboard shortcuts are really bad (openbsd fanatics will say otherways, but when shortcuts are spread around ctrl+, alt+, and ctrl+alt+, it's really far from good), so I recommend tweak them or to find someone's config.

If you want a desktop-agnostic file manager for these wms, I'd recommend xfe - it's somewhat obscure for some reason, but it's really, really good. Can't recommend more.

As to install, all of these should be in your distro's repo. Fluxbox may come as two packages (fluxbox2 and fluxbox3), the first one is the last official version and the second is the "community edition" - a fork, basically.

At least on Void Window Maker package is called WindowMaker, with capitalisation. Since Void sticks to official naming, other distros may have the same name.

edit: Also, it's worth to mention most of recommendation on this thread are tiling window managers (awesomewm, i3, hyprland, etc.)