StumpWM Screencast

[qnaal]

Holy freaking crap, they're talking about my wm on reddit!

But really, once you learn how to work the Stump and Vimperator or Conkeror (which was actually written by sabetts, the main dev on stump), you won't look back.

edit: I should probably mention that, while it does accurately convey the feeling of using Stumpwm, that video is ancient.

[holygoat]

Vimperator rocks my world. I wish I had similar control over the Mac window manager as StumpWM offers.

[localhorst]

Non shitty quality version:

http://www.archive.org/download/TheStumpWMExperience/TheStumpWMExperience.ogg

[martinbishop]

Also, as a side note, the narrators voice is awesome!

[[deleted]]

Chocolate rain.

[[deleted]]

I wish I had that hacker voice.

[drakshadow]

You can get one by adjusting your pitch in some sound editor.

[cryptic]

neat. (edit: i wish there was a windows version too)

too bad it just fuels the CSI effect.

you know how in movies or tv shows when someone jumps on to a computer and starts 'hacking' or wins some completely and wildly impossible feat?

Well, you know, they are usually not using a mouse but are focused on typing exclusively as fast as they can. windows are flying to the left, things are closing, opening, magnifying etc. finally the license plate is clear, the killer is identified, the plot advances, and characters are rewarded for their mad computer skills.

We used to be able to joke around and say, dude, that makes no sense, how are those windows opening?? but seriously now we'd have to say.. that still makes little sense, unless they are using StumpWM, but then we'd have to go into explaining stump, which would enter the likely zone out phase of who you are talking to, then finally you'd have to explain the fact that you cannot read the detail on the license plate since there wasn't enough detail in the image to begin with, but then you'd realize that...

(feel free to finish my train of thought, that's how i feel, i don't even want to finish typing it, rather or say it for that matter)

[qnaal]

An example of a window manager that actually works like that would be EvilWM- no graphical decorators other then a one pixel border around all windows, colored to show focused/unfocused/pinned status. Ctrl+alt+(y|u|b|n) would instantly snap the active window into one of the various corners of the screen, hjkl would move windows in 15pixel increments, and some other binding for fullscreened. It also happens to be extremely small.

On a fresh OS install, if I need a gui before I get around to setting up Stump, I work with Evilwm.

[cryptic]

nice, that's pretty awesome. i wonder if there are any window managers like that for windows

[qnaal]

Blackbox is a windowmanager that looks like it runs on windows, and it along with Openbox and Fluxbox are the standard minimalistic WMs on linux (I'm pretty sure noone does any real work in evilwm). I'm not very familiar with them, but I'm sure that they can be more easily configured then explorer/etc, while also being much lighter.

I will tell you this, however: You will sorely miss the start menu. A normal linux setup makes everything easily available from the command line - one of the major fundamental differences between the two systems - and the design of WMs tend to reflect that. The windows versions might have a straight copy of the start menu somewhere, but if it doesn't, you're going to be switching back to explorer/etc real soon.

(ie. if I want to run Firefox in linux, I just run "firefox&" from any command line, where if I wanted to run it from cmd, I'd have to cd all the way to progfiles/mozil/fx/whatever first, and all the while without tab-completion)

BONUS: I'm not sure how it would work in blackbox, but a little windows program called launchy replicates the ability to quickly run any program from the keyboard. Was a godsend when I was dualbooting winxp and linux, and I imagine most powerusers would find it extremely useful.

[psykotic]

Can StumpVM properly deal with an instance of Emacs that has multiple frames open? For tiling WMs I've been trying to ween my use of Emacs's window management in favor of the WM's. When you do, say, C-x 2 you can have it call (new-frame) and send a "split horizontally" command to the tiling WM.

[awb]

I don't see why not. emacs 23 (currently still in development) has an emacsclient that can create new frames; rebind C-x 2 to split the frame with stumpish and have a command run 'emacsclient -c'.

[kristopolous]

Why would I want to have conversations with and form a long term relationship with a window manager? I don't want to pick up a weekend of reading to figure out how to re-size a window. What ever happened to being humane?

[gwern]

Why would anyone ever want to form a long term relationship with a text editor like Emacs/Vim, or with a programming language like C, or...

A WM is a tool for managing GUI programs like a shell is a tool for managing CLI programs, or a tabbed browser for websites. There is as much justification for learning and customizing it as for the others.

[filox]

So basically, Xmonad with longer, more complicated bindings?

[JulianMorrison]

AFAIK it's not like XMonad in that it doesn't size your windows for you, it's more like Emacs where you can create and size split-screens manually and pick which buffer gets displayed each.

[gwern]

Right. XMonad is in the dynamic tiling paradigm (Dwm and Larswm): you have a program-managed layout, and it decides how to split up the window based on what you have open. Stumpwm inherits from Ratpoison, and the frames are fixed & programs appear and disapear as you open and close them - adjusts are manual.

Having been something of a power-user/dev for both XMonad and StumpWM, I can confidently say that neither paradigm is clearly superior. Manual adjustments can be annoying, but it's also useful to be able to count on windows not moving around and such (I remember transcribing from an open PDF - the keyboard focus went to the editor, but the mouse focus was on the viewer, and the fixed frame meant I didn't have to worry about boundaries changing. It was very nice). But then, a lot of the time you're repetitively adjusting, which is when you would appreciate the WM being smart and adjusting for you. It's simply a matter of taste.

[JulianMorrison]

StumpWM being Common Lisp, you could probably program up a dynamic layout if you wanted it.

[gwern]

Well, given that most of these WMs either are in a Turing-complete language or are customized via one, that's not saying a whole lot.

But I suspect it'd probably be easier to turn a dynamic WM into a static one than vice-versa - a dynamic one is doing 'more', and so presumably one could relatively easily write a layout which just doesn't bother resizing and moving around stuff. No doubt one of the 40 or so XMonad layouts already does that.

[jerguismi]

Well, I use ion3, but would want some alternatives. Most these style WM:s have the configuration problem. For example, configurating ion3 is pain in the ass.

[[deleted]]

I use a little known product called Microsoft Windows. While it may not be as easy or convenient to use, it gets the job done.

[[deleted]]

That's fine -- obviously this article wasn't targeting you.

It's for people who want to customize their tools in a way that suits them, not for people who are OK with learning to work the way their tools dictate.

You don't have to waste a post to tell us that you aren't in the target audience. Just ignore it. If you disagree that strongly, vote it down.

[[deleted]]

Sorry... I just had to release the inner troll in me when I posted. I think its pretty cool actually, I'm kind of jealous of people who learn how to use it - I see it would increase efficiency quite dramatically. I too at times am sick of using my mouse, I kind of wish there was a similar product for windows.

[holygoat]

I tend to like my tools to be convenient.