From: Olof-Joachim Frahm <olof@macrolet.net>
Date: Thu, 18 Dec 2014 15:40:08 +0000 (+0100)
Subject: Add post for tiling window managers, multiplexing.
X-Git-Url: http://repo.macrolet.net/gitweb/?p=blog.git;a=commitdiff_plain;h=a63cf049c4f2978475e727ee18f122ca538c7c3f

Add post for tiling window managers, multiplexing.
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diff --git a/tiling-wm.post b/tiling-wm.post
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+;;;;;
+title: Tiling WMs and multiplexing
+tags: 
+date: 2014-12-18 15:04:53
+format: md
+;;;;;
+
+Since it came up on [Hacker News][hn] I thought I can write a little bit about
+that topic as well.
+
+I started to look for alternatives to the distribution default desktop
+environment relatively soon after arriving on Linux (Fedora if I remember
+correctly).  At that point the options included Fluxbox and a couple of smaller
+ones like I3 and wmii.  I also tried twm, but honestly, without any effort
+spend in themeing that was basically not really viable.
+
+So after Fluxbox, which was great, but still leaves you with too much to do
+with your mouse, my conclusion was that I basically don't need a regular
+desktop.  Having all those messy icons, menus, widgets lying around the screen
+is just way too distracting for me.
+
+If you then remove all that decoration, you are left with a very bare bones
+look.  Still, after starting to get the hang of Vim (with which I started) and
+later Emacs, the disadvantage of constantly having to deal with window
+positions became apparent.
+
+I think the next step was to use wmii or one variant of that.  Tiling leaves
+your mouse free to interact with the main point, your running program.  No more
+juggling windows, aligning borders and so on.  For me this isn't about a pretty
+and flashy screen, it's about the most comfortable environment to work in.
+
+To the present day:  I'm no converted to [dwm][] from the awesome people of
+[suckless.org][].  It's basically a single C file, you
+configure it with a header and additionally with a custom patch set and that's
+it.  You'd be hard pressed to find a smaller, less resource intensive window
+manager.  And on the flip side it has many amazing features which just work
+really well together.
+
+Combined with tmux for terminal multiplexing, Emacs buffers for editing
+multiplexing and dwm for desktop and screen multiplexing this is just the right
+amount of flexibility to arrange and move around a lot of context.
+
+Obviously this depends on each person, but since you can (and frankly, should)
+configure every aspect of this, with just a few keypresses you can switch to
+every part of your running programs and back, be it in the terminal, on a
+remote system, or graphical.
+
+To be honest, until there is a better alternative to keyboards, I think I'll
+keep using this approach, maybe adding more scripting capabilities in the same
+line as in previous blog posts.
+
+[hn]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8762705
+[dwm]: http://dwm.suckless.org/
+[suckless.org]: http://suckless.org/