The horrifying and uplifting tale of trying out window managers, hunting for packages, losing functionality, and building dwm.
Hard can be easier
I use Gnome with a POP Shell plugin for tiling functionality. That is a setup that I really like; I would even be alright with base Gnome if I had to. All that said, I wanted to try a tiling window manager because it’s not enough to use a computer; we have to experience it.
i3 was my first choice. It scared me, and I ran away. To be honest, it would be a really good first choice, but it’s late.
AwesomeWM was my second choice, but it has a very long configuration, and I have very short patience.
So I spent months setting up dwm. Of course, (The net time can be counted in days, but that is not enough drama!). Still, there is a benefit to forced slow progression; it makes it easier to understand the steps.
dwm is not just another software; it’s a suckless software. This means it is “simple, minimal, and usable,” which are values that I value. And I have to confess, I really like the aesthetics of it.
There are some key differences between dwm and other tiling window managers.
- There is no configuration file; you have to edit the source code and recompile it. Well, you could say the header file is the configuration file, but you still have to recompile it.
- Since you have to compile it, there is no reason to install it with a package manager.
- You maintain your own version, catered to your own needs.
Finding Missing Header Files
To compile this glamorous (not really) software, you will need some header files; otherwise, you will get errors like fatal error: X11/Xlib.h: No such file or directory.
You can find on the interwebz which packages will contain the header files you need, but you can also find them by yourself.
I use Debian-based distros (not sorry), so I can use the utility apt-file to find which package contains the header file I need.
$ apt-file search X11/Xlib.h
libx11-dev: /usr/include/X11/Xlib.h
Then it can be installed with the following command: sudo apt install libx11-dev.
dwm has a Makefile so the build process is as simple as running sudo make clean install.
Patching
I needed some more functionality like window centering, per tag settings, autostarting programs, and of course, gaps.
These patches can be downloaded and applied with git. Or not. It’s a good idea to have your own repository of dwm, but I made a monorepo for all my suckless software. In this case, monorepo means I have a lot of directories in one repository, and I don’t use git submodules. You’re welcome.
So the root directory of the repository is not the same as the root directory of the dwm repo.
It is very fortunate that there is another utility called patch that can apply patches to source code. With all patches collected in a dedicated directory, it can be called as:
patch < patches/dwm-cool-autostart-6.2.diff
Things Are Not Granted
When you have a build and start it, the first realization is that there is some functionality that is missing because you’re not in a desktop environment anymore.
Sooo, there is no wallpaper, but there is screen tearing, there is no screen lock, there is no system tray (thank God), there are no functioning function key combinations, and the mousepad is working differently.
In other words, by GPT the third,
In yonder realm, no wallpaper is found,
Yet screens doth tear, and truths abound.
No lock to guard, no tray to hold,
Function keys mute, mysteries untold.
The mousepad, once familiar, now doth stray,
In this curious world, it finds its own way.
These tribulations had to be overcome by me, but since I own the source code, I can do whatever I want. And it’s important to acknowledge that these problems would ail all tiling window managers.
And I sinned as well; I built the autostarting and all the key combination functionality into my dwm. This is a very bad idea if you want to separate concerns and reuse functionality in other window managers. But honestly, I really like that it’s bundled in one program. (Since then this caused me problems so I moved most of the key mappings to sxhkd, and the autostart to a shell script)
Conclusion
As you see, these are the lessons, not the solutions. I hope they are helpful to you, but I can’t guarantee that.
All I can show you…
P.S.: This whole thing was deprecated before birth. Thanks Wayland!