Replacing WM with a Tiling Window Manager?

[marie]

Hello, I've heard Ratpoision mentioned on here before, and I'm curious as to how one would go about installing such on Tiny Core Linux.  Is it a simple process?  Would anyone be willing to write a quick tutorial or link me to a good resource that might help out?

(I'm fairly new to Linux, using an old computer with a TCL installation).

Thank you!

[Jason W]

How easy a WM is to make for tinycore depends on it's menu function largely, since it would need to incorporate the tinycore menu features into it if it is to be made into an extension.

For personal use and testing of the basic WM itself, simply build and install it and then set it as the default WM with this command:

echo "ratpoison" > /etc/sysconfig/desktop

Then restart X.  That would let you try it out.

Is there a menu in ratpoison?  If not then it would be an easy extension to make.  I may look more at it tonight.

[alu]

as a suggestion, you might try the evilwm windows manager which is quiet small and do the job in an almost same way than ratpoison. grab the evilwm extension with your appbrowser (as tcz or tce extension, and then:

1. you can backup and delete your jwm* files (in your /home/tc);
2. change the line in .desktop (in your /home/tc) and replace jwm with evilwm;
3. restart and that's it.

[3rail]

I was curious about this so I decided to try compiling ratpoison 1.4.4 under tc2.x.  It seems I'm missing "xtest":

actions.o: In function `cmd_rathold':
actions.c(.text+0x58cc): undefined reference to `XTestFakeButtonEvent'

Suggestions on how to get xtest in tc?

Thanks

[Jason W]

I am on Windows at the moment, but it appears to need libxtst.  I am assuming you have Xorg-dev installed of course, do you also have Xorg-7.4 installed as well?  I am hoping that full Xorg is not required for ratpoison. 

[3rail]

Yes, I have Xorg-dev installed for X headers but not Xorg-7.4.  There doesn't seem to be libxtst in the tc 2.x repository?

Later... ratpoison compiles after installing the Xorg-7.4 extension.

[Jason W]

Xinerama and Xtst are hardcoded dependencies.  It will build with Xorg-7.4-dev installed and the libxtst related files removed, giving it a dependency only on xinerama, which is available in the Xlibs_support extension.  But I did not test it out enough to see if not having xtst built in does any harm.

[3rail]

Good to know.   Is there some way you could share the diff file or list which files you removed the xtest dependency?  I'd like to try it out as you described.

[mikshaw]

There is at least one more way to change your window manager.  In my setup I removed the .desktop file, going for the more traditional method of editing $HOME/.xsession.  Instead of it setting the DESKTOP variable and running whatever that variable is, it runs the specific window manager I installed.

as a suggestion, you might try the evilwm windows manager which is quiet small and do the job in an almost same way than ratpoison.

The only thing they really have in common is that they both have little to no window decorations or menu.  The behavior of each is quite different.  EvilWM, the last time I used it (0.99), allowed only one or two application hotkeys, and was a little slow to drag windows....these were the main reasons I eventually moved to a tiling window manager....stump, then ratpoison, then wmii, then finally settling with dwm.  Another I like is Awesome, which is essentially dwm with the added ability to customize after the program has been compiled (uses Lua for configs).

[Jason W]

I am away from TC now, but from memory the files were

/usr/local/lib/libXtst*
/usr/local/lib/pkgconfig/xtst.pc
  
I can't remember if there are files in /usr/local/include, but if there were libXtst at this point would not be detected and used.  This is kind of a kludge, but I remember reading that ratpoison works fine without being built against libXtst.  Doing this same thing with Xinerama results in a failed build, and as Xinerama is available in the Xlibs_support extension it does not add much overhead to using ratpoison.  Installing Xorg-7.4-dev, Xlibs_support and removing the above files should build ratpoison fine, resulting in a dependency of Xlibs_support during runtime.

[alu]

The only thing they really have in common is that they both have little to no window decorations or menu.  The behavior of each is quite different.

certainly true (i don't know ratpoison so well); at the beginning, i didn't like to switch from a tiling wm to another light one just because i wanted to keep the use of hotkeys and of the rational division of screen while spliting windows (my prefered tiling wm was ion3); but now, it is on the contrary: i like evilwm for its minimalistic philosophy, i can move and resize windows with the keyboard, as well as change space and move windows from one to another space, fix and unfix them, and i can also "split" the screen, i.e. place windows as i want to get a similar effect as with tiling wms. i agree with you saying that this are quiet different wms, but these differences fade while using them, obviously if you don't need/want to invest time in scripting the conf files.

[robin]

I am a huge fan of Awesome WM; it is the only tiling window manager I have really stuck with. It helps to be comfortable with Lua scripting, but overall I've just found it to be easier to work with than others I have tried (Ion 2&3, ratpoison, wmii, etc).

[tinypad]

Hi guys,

Sorry for another newbie non-issue:  Tried to compile dwm.  This requires Xlib header files and to add the include- and lib-directories of X11R6 for the local TCL in their config file according to the page from dwm.

Could anyone show me where the dirs in TCL are and explain to me what header files in general are?

Many thanks in advance.

[Jason W]

Simply install the Xorg-7.4-devs extension and the compiling extenisons (gcc, binutils, etc).  The headers for X are in /usr/local/include and the libs in /usr/local/lib.  Here is an example config.mk file that will help dwm to build and also keep it in line with TC CFLAGS and such:

Code: [Select]

# dwm version
VERSION = 5.5

# Customize below to fit your system

# paths
PREFIX = /usr/local
MANPREFIX = ${PREFIX}/share/man

X11INC = /usr/local/include
X11LIB = /usr/local/lib

# Xinerama, un-comment if you want it
#XINERAMALIBS = -L${X11LIB} -lXinerama
#XINERAMAFLAGS = -DXINERAMA

# includes and libs
INCS = -I. -I/usr/include -I${X11INC}
LIBS = -L/usr/lib -lc -L${X11LIB} -lX11 ${XINERAMALIBS}

# flags
CPPFLAGS = -DVERSION=\"${VERSION}\" ${XINERAMAFLAGS}
CFLAGS = -march=i486 -mtune=i686 -std=c99 -pedantic -Wall -Os ${INCS} ${CPPFLAGS}
LDFLAGS = -s ${LIBS}

# Solaris
#CFLAGS = -fast ${INCS} -DVERSION=\"${VERSION}\"
#LDFLAGS = ${LIBS}

# compiler and linker
CC = gcc



[spence91]

Was there any progress with Ratpoison in the end? i would be very interested in using it as my main WM