Minimalistic window managers?
 

I've been using BadWM for the past 4-5 months now, and like it except for a few odd bugs here and there. Sometimes X will even crash, which just plain isn't any fun.

So, what recommendations are out there for minimalistic windowmanagers? I like BadWM's style of no window decorations except for the border, and the usage of keyboard shortcuts. Of course, having multiple virtual desktops is a necessity. Stability and speed are the key factors - I use bsetbg to set my background, torsmo to monitor resources, and root-tail to watch logs. I'll need a quick way to launch a terminal window, too - a launcher built into the WM isn't necessary, but if it's implemented well and doesn't take up much realestate I'm up for it.

I'd like personal experience recommendations, for the most part.

I don't like Fluxbox, so don't recommend it :)

i personally use windowmaker... it has multiple virtual deskotp cabability (although they need configuring) a dock that allows you to add most of your X programs (the icon appears and allows you to drag it to the dock)

Blackbox (similar to fluxbox so you might not like it).
fvwm/fvwm2
windowmaker

Those are a few good ones...

Just my opinion, but I don't think any of those will suit. Try ratpoison. If that's too minimal, try evil or aewm or any of its many clones, but I've never tried those. The most minimal I've been for a while is pek but apparently something bad happened there - got a note from freshmeat saying the account had been cancelled - no idea what's up with that. Pek had keychains, though, and I never had it crash. I have
grep Key keys | wc -l
125
keybindings. :D

Pek can go wild with the window borders, though. But I assume you can disable them if you want.

I'm pretty pleased with IceWM.
x : keyboard shortcuts
x : virtual desktops
o : stability (has given me no problems)
o : speed (not ultra minimal, but I am pleased with speed)
x : system monitoring (does it's own CPU, mail, netstat ... nothing stopping using yours however)
x : quicklaunch term (I refer to keyboard shortcuts, also has a toolbar/quicklaunch area)

Is twm minimal enough for you? ;) (The bonus being you probably already have it.)

For the brave/bored a fairly expansive window manager listing can be found at http://xwinman.org/.

Ice rules. While I use pek, ice is my primary. But it's got a freaking *toolbar* and buttons and everything. ;) It's very light, but I don't think it would satisfy the true minimalist.

And twm doesn't do virtual desktops, which SocialEngineer said was required - vtwm and ctwm do, though, and ctwm can be quite nice... in a weird way.

(c)twm is my tip for a really slow/small box. if you like it more fancy i'd say openbox.

sl mritch.

I agree with digiot, Pekwm is awesome. Very minimalistic, uses less resources than Blackbox. You can toggle window decorations if you want, and you can edit the autoproperties file to where certain applications default to no extra decor. Supports virtual desktops. It has a simple, easy-to-read keybindings file so you can make pretty much any shortcuts you want. I've been using Pekwm for a while now (and have been looking for something better, to no avail) and I'm very happy with it. It is no longer being developed, though.

I've also tried evilwm, and didn't have any problems with it. Very minimal, too minimal for me.

You may like openbox.

I dig afterstep for its minimalism:
http://www.imgholder.com/uploads/200...1108663975.png

Ratpoison is a no go, because I run multiple programs on each desktop (For instance, on one desktop I run 2 RXVT windows - one launches regular apps for the window, another has CenterICQ running. I also run Firefox. I run Torsmo and Root-tail forked into the background, both being visible while running all those programs.

I don't like Windowmaker or Blackbox.

Have you tried Pekwm yet, SocialEngineer? It's everything you say you're looking for... Evilwm might be out of the question, I don't recall it having support for virtual desktops.

I haven't found it, yet. If you could provide me a link I'd appreciate it - I don't have time right now to search.

TVWM or Ice. I'm a KDE/GNOME lover but I like both of those quite a lot.

if you're using debian, evilwm has vdesktop support. I use evilwm a lot and I really like it. It's quite fast... also, if you're ever looking at getting into any window manager programming, the code is quite well documented and easy to follow, making it a good starting point.

there are no config options, and keybindings are hard-coded. It is missing some features that i would like to see implemented at some point ( vi - style command mode would be nice, since you have to open a terminal to start programs). some WM functions can be done by keystrokes, but not enough, in my opinion.