dwm

From Encoresoup - The Ultimate Guide to Free/Open Source Software

dwm is a minimalist dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It is externally similar to wmii, but internally much simpler. dwm is written purely in C and, for simplicity, lacks any configuration interface besides editing the source code. One of the project's guidelines is that the source code will never exceed 2000 lines, and options meant to be user-configurable are all contained in a single header file.

An interesting feature of dwm is that it optionally displays its STDIN in a status bar at the top of the screen. This is often used to show information that would appear in the notification area of other desktop environments - a clock, system load info, laptop battery and network status, music player information and the like, by piping text in from dwm's parent process (usually an .xsession script.) This status line is often complemented with dmenu, a textual application launcher from the same developer as dwm.

[edit] Drawbacks

dwm has some properties that may be considered drawbacks by users of more conventional window-management systems:

• No configuration files; display properties can only be changed by editing the source code and recompiling the executable
• Click-to-focus model not supported; rather, it uses a combination of focus-follows-mouse and keyboard focus switch
• Does not display a window titlebar, or support the conventional click/drag method of moving or resizing windows. The MOD key must be held down, requiring two hands.

[edit] Forks and Patches

dwm has been an influential project, many other window managers are based on dwm's source code or inspired by it. An extensive list of forks and patches can be found at the official site, a few notable examples:

• xmonad a dwm rewrite in Haskell with additional features.
• awesome extends dwm with FreeType support, reconfigurability, and more layout types.
• echinus extends dwm with FreeType support, EWMH, click-to-focus, reconfigurability, and more layout types.
• dwm-gottox is a branch of dwm, adding a 'deck' layout and better Xinerama support.

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Dwm howto/tutorial

Template:Window Managers