Linux Mint Installation

 Linux Mint Installation is painfully slow but with Debian LMDE it is pretty smooth bit similar to Calamara Installer but different.

I do not know why?

Reasons may be;

1. It does not have world wide mirrors.

2. It takes ages to look for codecs.

3. It is basically the Ubuntu Installer padded up with graphic.

4. Unlike Debian Calamara Installer the panel cannot be expanded to see my hard disks partition which is 28 in number.

5. I think mouse pointer takes a lot of memory.

6. Deleting and making a new partition is pretty slow.

7. I have 7 partitions to review (for installation, no /var) before hitting the OK button but can see only 4 partitions.

8. I do not rush things, so it is not a worry.

9. Fortunately it does not direct me to its home page.

10. How it updates I do not know.

11. I only want to see how it configures the GRUB file.

It failed to configure GRUB and missed  both Manjaro and Debian and detected only Ubuntu.

I did reinstall Debian and got the GRUB file in order.

I think if one is having multiple distributions, Debian should be installed last to get the GRUB Efi in order.

12. I do not fiddle with Gnome basic or default configuration. 

It suits me fine and why fiddle?

This so called customization is a gimmick for Newbies.

There is a father son file hierarchy and everything is organized.

I can understand it for a Server where resources have to be allocated equitably for better management. 

In a desktop environment in a family set up if each individual is given a user name an a password of their choice, what matters is the applications available for their consumption.

I install several web browsers from light to heavy for my work. If one browser is slow I open a another browser and do my work on that.

What matters is the RAM. I have 8GB RAM (it was 4GB for a long time) and without playing games, it can handle numerous task one and the same time.

Daemon behind allocate resources as needed and with a healthy SWAP partition nothing get choked.

That is the strength and the basis of efficiency of Linux.

Microsoft Windows won't be able to handle this with padded up 64GB RAM.

That is the difference and that is why I use Linux.

There is no junk in my computer.

So I do not won!t a Snapshot of my Computer.

Each year by December, I take 6 weeks off the computer and look (Debian has two year cycle of update) new distributions and test them.

13. I tested the snapshot utility.

After one hour of copying it said there is no space for the snapshot.

I promptly deleted the half baked snapshot (save space for Linux mint).

The home partition has less than 1000 files or items and it is only 115MB. It has 17.3GB space from 20GB allocated to the home partition.

I always check this and if the (mainly due to iso images) if the balance space is nearing 2GB, I delete few of the tested images.

I use AbiWord for my books they are always less than 300KB and never in MBs. 

That is the beauty of AbiWord. 

So this customization is a big joke.

I just installed Window Maker in my Gnome Desktop and (it is a window manager) and fiddled with it with minimal strain on the computer RAM.

This game of windows within windows is not a creative concept.

One should use different Workplaces for different tasks not within windows.

Mint has only one workplace, I wonder whether I can make two work places.

I need maximum of 3 workplaces.

Any distribution without workplaces do not entice me.

14. I think my reporting of Linux would end with this.

Installing Manjaro

I have never tried Arch except ArcoLinux briefly.

Today I decided to Install Manjaro on my NUC.

1. It is pretty good.

2. Its broweser is Vivald which beging to like.

3. Wifi Configurations quick.

4. It has USB formatter.

5. It has Gparted.

6. GIMP is preinstalled.

7. It can be installed with Office package.

8. It has AbiWord but one has to download.

7. It has OpenOffice 

8. Lest you use Microsoft office online.

9. It is a mature distribution.

10. Its software is Pakman

11. Installation is complete and need to see it pick up the Debian already installed (Ubuntu now shuns Debian).

 

Stacer Utility

Stacer Utility

This Utility is something one should have on your desktop especially if you are playing games.

I am installing Ubuntu 24.04 for the Umpteenth time.

I see only the arrows and if I click the button on the right I get terminal activity.

But no idea about the CPU, Memory usage and Diska usage

This is where the Stacer comes.

It is sitting on the RAM and gives a running commentary.

1. CPU 65 to 70%.

2. Memory usage 1.5GB out of *GB RAM.

3. Disk Usage is 350MB so far 

4. Download speed is 0 bytes to 900 bytes

5. Upload Speed.  

I  tried jitsi and it went up to about 500Kb/sec

6. My NUC has 2 CPU Cores

7. CPU usage 0 bytes 

8. I started using Firefox, CPU went up to 90% usage and settled down to 65%.

9. I tried LibreOffice both Memory and CPU usage went up.

10. Finally I tried AbiWord it almost did not show any changes, may be a few MB of memory.

This is why I use AbiWord, it is a powerful Word Processor but uses minimum of resources. The Latest Debain update 12.10... deleted this utility.

I want use the update and perhaps its version 13- plus.

11. Still only 500MB filled of 3.7GB total usage of the disk.

I think I should go for a cup of tea.

 

 

Open Source Applications

Open Source Applications

1. Firefox and Brave

2. VLC

3. LibreOffice and AbiWord

4. Jitsi  for video conferencing

5.  GIMP (raster based) or Inkscape

7.  Bleachbit or Stacer

8. htop

9. Text editor notepadqq

10. Audacity or Deadbef

11. Box is a Virtual box

12. Vim

13. Gamabs

14. Lyx

15. Bluefish

16. Thunderbird

17. Transmission torrent client

18. Deluge a torrent client

19. Gneumeric

20. Emac

21. Pidgin

 

Evolution of Gnome

Evolution of Gnome

Debian Live 9.12.0-amd64-gnome.iso

This gave a Graphical Installer to install Debian, which I found was easy.

Partition table looked like this which I had no ides.

/root

/var

swap

/tmp

/home

I became aware of /var for variable data and I did not know how to use it.

Icon setup was primitive. 

Only Ethernet and not compatible with wireless but whereas Ubuntu could (Emmabantus,too) configure wireless.

So installing new software was impossible and had to be stuck with what came with it.

It had LibreOffice.

Debian installer was clumsy and installing AbiWord was not possible and stuck with Emmabantus which had AbiWord

 These days I had fun with Apache Open Office.

 

Debian Live 10.12.0-amd64-gnome.iso

Similar to above comment but icon display was much better.

 

Debian Live 11.6.0-amd64-gnome.iso

 Similar to above comment but icon display was much better but no ESP Grub

 

Debian Live 12 5 0 amd64 Gnome ISO

 This is the most elegant and has the new Calamara Installer.

Its ESP compatible and GRUB Loader is pretty good.

No problem with wireless connectivity.

This is my favourite and I use it on daily basis, it comes with Synaptic Package Manager (in fact Debian Package manger which is extensive) which I prefer to SNAP.

Ubuntu has gone SNAP but Synaptic Package Manager is still available for Ubuntu.

 

I am going to download all three of these isos from torrent files and see how I got addicted to Gnome.

I actually had the stable version installed in my very old PC and Live CD/DVD were collected for testing.

Yes, Debian 10 is the one who had a panel on the left side and dots on the right side when one sees whole lot of application items.

Ubuntu of cores successfully implemented live session with only a minimal of applications.

Al these images were less than 3GB and now they are nearing 5GB.

That is my conclusions, even Gnome getting bloated with each new version.

All these images had only one peer each.

Thank you to them.

BOX utility has made my life easier.

By the way, I have limited number of USBs and I have Ubuntu from 2020 version to 2024, for USB used up.

I did not do this with Debian since I had been using Debian fr over 10 years.

Nevertheless, I am catching up with Ubuntu.

Those days I had no interest in Ubuntu.

Ubuntu Install was minimal and I got addicted it later since it had the best GRUB file.

Of course I had Ubuntu CD/DVDS from its version 6 in my CD/DVD collection.

Gnome BOX utility is fantastic and I am going to run these isos in BOX Utility and see how Gnome evolved.

Linux is steady and incremental, stable and not flashy like Apple and Windows.

The is for those YouTube Linux pundits, some of whom are hell bent on saying bad things about Linux having not tested Gnome.

All of them only test Linux Mint and do not talk about LMDE (Linux Mind Debian Edition).

I think Ubuntu which is a derivative of Debian became popular by adopting Gnome 10 desktop.

Less I talk about Arch and Manjaro is better for my sanity.

I have been trying Debian from version 6.0 but full adoption was probably from version 9 in 2015 when,  I retired fro the University.

5.0           Lenny         14 February 2009

6.0           Squeeze       6 February 2011

7              Wheezy        4 May 2013

8              Jessie           25 26 April 2015 

 
9              Stretch        17 June 2017

10            Buster          6 July 2019 

 
11           Bullseye      14 August 2021

12           Bookworm  10 June 2023  

Debian Gnome Live Image can be Installed in a USB

 Debian Gnome Live Image can be Installed in a USB.

Just like Ubuntu 24.04 one can install Debian Gnome Live Image into a USB.

It uses Calamara Installer and one should be confident with Calamara.

I used FatPUP-64 in a live session to partition the 15GB USB using Gparted.

Mind you Debian has nearly 300,000 files and it takes at least 30 minutes to finish installing.

Go and Grab a cup of tea or coffee is my advice.

 

Cinnamon Desktop is Probably Bigger than Gnome

Cinnamon Desktop is Probably Bigger than Gnome.

 I was under the impression that Cinnamon Desktop is lighter than Gnome, since it derives on Gnome.

I think that impression is wrong.

Gnome does not pad up with unnecessary tools where as Cinnamon is bloated up with  applications one may not need.

It takes a long time to download and install cinnamon desktop.

I get a message /usr has only 500MB.

I suppose I am going to uninstall after one go.

Google uses Debian

Google uses Debian

This piece is for guys and girls who are grumbling about Linux in YouTube.

Google has switched to Debian from Ubuntu, since it is (2 year) stable and trusted. 

Ubuntu is much flexible and it's 24.04 is fabulous and I have three copies in my NUC.

1. Minimal version without LibreOffice which is bulky.

2. Full version for testing applications using Synaptic Package Manager and Flatpack

3. Stable version for my day to day work.

I am a long time user of Debian and my Love for Ubuntu is recent and growing. 

Both are based on Gnome Desktop.

Rolling Releases of Debian

Reproduction
When we designed gLinux Rodete (Rolling Debian Testing), we aimed at removing the two year upgrade cycle and instead spread out the load on the team throughout time. The general move to CI/CD in the industry has shown that smaller incremental changes are easier to control and rollback. Rolling releases with Linux distributions today are getting more common (Arch Linux, NixOS).
We considered going with other Linux distributions, but ended up choosing Debian because we again wanted to offer a smooth in-place migration. This included considerations towards the availability of packages in Debian, the large Debian community and also the existing internal packages and tooling that were using the Debian format. 

While the Debian Stable track follows a roughly two-year jump between releases, the Debian testing track works as a rolling release, as it's the pool of all packages ingested and built from upstream, waiting for the next stable release to happen.

The time from upstream release to availability in testing is often just a few days (although during freeze periods before a Debian stable release, it can sometimes lag a few months behind). 

This means we can get much more granular changes in general and provide the newest software to our engineers at Google without having to wait longer periods.

Puppy Linux is my Favourite

Puppy Linux is my Favorite!

1. Puppy has the best Light Weight functional desktop.

2. Besides it fits in USB and portable.

3. When I travel I carry it in my trouser pocket to boot and test hardware before buying. I did not bring any to Australia but downloaded two versions moment I settled down.  They are in USBs.

4. It has many versions.

I have at least 10 stored in my hard disk. 64 GB USB can carry all the truculently available images.

5. It went to hibernation and is currently active.

Easy OS is beautiful.

6. It originated from Australia.

7. Barry Kauler is a dog lover.

8. It can be installed in many ways and PUPfile is one variety.

Knoppix 9.1

Knoppix 9.1

1. A few lines on Knoppix is relevant.

2. I started Linux with Knoppix 3.1  and I never looked back and waited for the next version.

I have collection Knoppix USBs in Ceylon.

3. Later, I probably went to PCLinux and Linux Live CDs.

4. Unlike Puppy Linux is "one man show" and he is in retirement, after the last edition.

5. I have a copy in my hard disk but it does not boot on my Intel NUC. 

If ever if come out of hibernation he should use a new kernel with hardware compatibility testing at boot time.

6. It has the best Window Manager and nobody has reproduced it .

7. They are Floating desktops.

8. Detects partition easily and has Gparted.

9. Internet connection is smooth.

10. It can be installed if one wishes.

11. It can be booted from a USB with session saving capability.

What do you need?

By the way, I do not like Debian base Gnoppix.

Debian Calamara Installer

Debian Calamara Installer

One has to master the new Debian Calamara Installer, if one has several distributions in the same hard disk.

I made several mistakes over time since I assumed that, like the Ubuntu Installer (the best in town) that lets me corrects my mistakes before OK button is pressed, but the Calamara does not warm me (it assumes, I have made correct decision) but hangs up if partitioning is awkward.

/Efi partition

/boot partition (I believe, it is redundant) 

/root

/usr

/srv services

/opt

I have dropped /var since it gets loaded with variable files and fills this partition, which I find unable to clean and I invariably gets a message saying, there is no space in the hard disk.

It actually FROZE today when I was downloading various desktop type to test.

My test period of desktop types is over. 

Various distributions are all based on Gnome.

They have the same packages underneath.

So why bother changing a distribution for another.

It is far better to have three different types of distributions.

So I decided to erase the LMDE and install Parrot OS 6 version which s better than Kali.

It just finished installing.

I hope, this time I got it right.

By the way, Parrot OS in it's live session has Gparted to partitioning the disk.

Parrot OS got it wrong it did not detect the Debian already nstalled in the GRUB boot loader.

Parrot OS is MATE derivative and MATE being light weight has many missing files.

I am reinstalling Debian.

 

 

Browsing WEB Without a Graphical Interface

Browsing WEB Without a Graphical Interface

 Lynx

A good alternative for users without a graphical environment is Lynx.

 Lynx is a full screen browser for WWW using arrows and tab keys, cursor addressing highlighted or numbered links to navigate within the web. Lynx has no image or sound capabilities: any images or sounds are replaced by a tag at display time and the corresponding files can be retrieved separately. Unlike the line mode browser, documents containing embedded images or enhanced document formats (e.g. formulaires) are handled properly by Lynx. 

A demonstration version of Lynx is available using Telnet to www.cc.ukans.edu (login as www). 

Implementations for various Unix flavors and for VMS are available for anonymous FTP from ftp2.cc.ukans.edu in the directory /pub/WWW/lynx.

Examples:

WWW gives you access to an information universe. 

Let's say you want to know how many film versions of The Three Musketeers have been made. 

You browse The WWW Virtual Library and select Movies:

Debian Gnome Live

Debian Gnome Live

I stand to correction. 

Debian Live once installer in the hard disk, lets one add different desktops using Synaptic Package Manager.

Initial install, it has three type of Gnome Desktops but by using Synaptic Package Manager one can add other desktops.

Distributions with Gnome Desktop

Distributions with Gnome Desktop

There are only a few distributions with Gnome Desktop.

I was looking for minimal install (only tested on Live Session).

Spiral Linux seems to be a good option.

It has both Synaptic Package Manager and the new SNAP utility.

It has GPT.

Installer is Calamara Installer. 

It has Libre Office as usual.

It has VLC and nothin more.

 Solus

Solus appears as strip down Gnome

No Wifi connectivity on a live session.

Debian Live DVD

Of course to get full features one should use Debian Gnome Live DVD which is excellent.

Partition Order for a Desktop Linux

 Partition Order for a Desktop Linux

I have had second thoughts about partition order.

I presume the following order may be better.

EFI about 500MB

/root

/boot (optional and may be redundant)

/home

/tmp

/usr    (for user file location assuming more than one is using the computer

/srv  services 

/var 

I have some reservation about var partition (unless you dedicate a large space) since it get used up when more and more applications are added. One get the warning not enough space in the disk.

 SWAP is mandatory and I have several. 

XFC4 Desktop

XFC4 Desktop

This is the desktop I have Love and Hate Relationship.

Yes I love its Mouse Mascot.

My first Linux CD had Mouse Mascot and it could have been early PC Linux (now dysfunctional) distribution which I loved.

When Resources and RAM were minimal Emmabantus on XFCE desktop was useful where I used AbiWord (only Emmabantus supported AbiWord. then) to write my books.

 

If somebody is having old hardware and want a functioning Linux distribution, one should go for a distribution with XFCE (even though, I DO NOT recommend Emmabantus 5, perhaps version 4 is for you) desktop.

It is much better than Unity Desktop and Budgie Desktop.

Thank YOU and Good Bye to XFX4.

 

Budgie Desktop

Budgie Desktop

I have not used Budgie Linux Distribution in the past and my experience and impression may be outdated.

It has a pleasing appearance and and all the panels (selection of a particular application is difficult, in my case over 100 applications) are on the top which is alien to me (good old days everything was on the right hand corner, menus, applications, task bars etc).

I am Ubuntu (traditional Ubuntu, vertical right hand corner selection panel) and Gnome with bottom of the desktop (it used to be left side of the desktop) where one can rearrange the application to one's content.

Well, nothing to beat Gnome Desktop experience with number of workplaces to work interactively.

Workplaces were my craze for multitasking, some in the background. 

Unity Desktop

 Unity Desktop

It freezes on logout and one needs Ctr+Alt + F1 of backspace to log out within Ubuntu 24.04 environment.

It is probably trying to cater for low resource computers with low RAM.

Nowadays one need at least 4GB of DDR4 RAM for a good desktop.

DDR5 is already in the market and Linux games are coming of age discarding old Laptops and PCs is the way about.

If somebody gives you an old machine FREE please refuse.

Enlightenment Desktop

Enlightenment Desktop

This desktop is finicky.

It fiddles with your monitor  from which you cannot recover or log out.

I had to manually configure the monitor to my liking , several times.

It is Light Weight and do not use it. 

No Termil or Console  to give a kill all command.

Blackbox Desktop

Blackbox Desktop

 Bundled within Blackbox are number of other Light Weight Desktops.

They are;

1. Awesome

2. Fluxbox

3. IceWarm three editions

Plasma Desktop

 Plasma Desktop

I have stopped using Plasma for some time. 

It has pleasing front end but the back end uses over 2000MB.

KDE is much simpler and has Falkon browser which is pretty good if you do not like Chrome or Firefox.

I have some good things to talk about KDE Plasma.

I would not have discovered them If I did not test each desktop.

It has both Joplin and Paperwork included as application which is pretty good effort.

Thank You Guys and Girls of Plasma Development Team.

I have to talk about blackbox next since I am into small or light weight desktops.

 

Linux Partitioning not Comprehensive

 Note;  

One should not forget SWAP Partition and I have one Swap Partition after every distribution, three in number.

I delete (I have two more in reserve) the Swap partition stationed as the last partition in the Partition Table, and install, the latest distribution there, that I am testing to see how much hardware (GB) it needs as it is often claimed by the developers.

I hate Virtual Installations, even though, I have the BOX utility to test the small distributions.

Blend OS is one one should NOT TRY, it is resource hungry and I cannot write it on a 64GB USB.

There is a small caveat here.

If one is using a spinning hard disk the order matters and the scanning needle has to spin a lot, if the order /boot (EFI), /Root,/Usr/Home etc are not sequential.

In an SSD it does not matter unless one uses (I have three distributions in a SSD of 320GB with 40GB reserved for NTFS for storing Iso Images which I  test and delete) many Linux distributions, in one disk.

In that scenario for effective booting EFI has to be the first.

As an old habit I use /boot partition first before /root but I do not think at booting, it recurses to boot partition at all.

One can see this order by running system utility, I believe.

In the good old days, it had to be only 4 Primary partitions or 3 Primary and one Logical. 

Those day I was dual booting with Windows and for over 20 years NO WINDOWS in my systems.

I am referring to EXT4 partitions and EXT3 were used in the past. 

EXT4 has a good Journelling Methodology and there is no limit to the number of partitions.

One should use Gparted for partitioning

I used Debian method now because I am confident with my partitioning.

1. Leave half of the disk empty.

2. Let the next distribution takes over the empty part of the hard disk.

3. See how it partitions, the disk.

4. Note the amount of GB needed for /root.

5. Most of the left over is dedicated to the home partition.

6. Resize the home partition to free the disk space.

7. Follow the same routine for the 3rd distribution.

I have been doing this for two decades for testing new editions of distributions, to write a piece in my blog site.

All of the blog pieces are still here.

Half of the disk is left for Ubuntu, since it has the best EFI configuring ability.

Even, Debian especially Debian based Emmabantus 5 version cannot configure the EFI properly.

I have stopped using Emmabantus.

I use minimal Ubuntu installation and pad up the necessary (just because of the limitation of my small SSD) utilities later.

I have discussed this in detail elsewhere.

I am Gnome addict and that can become bulky due to Cinnamon and Mate desktops.

Btrs (butter partitioning) type of partitions of Redhat and Fedora are in a mess and tend to become pretty slow.

Debian and Ubuntu does a good check of the hard disk at booting, using recursive partition as in Fedora is redundant. 

AbiWord, Open Office and Libre Office

 AbiWord, Open Office and LibreOffice

 

AbiWord

I have done all my books on AbiWord and it has all the formats including latex format to save a files.

Coming from a  command line utility, it is no wonder.

 

Bluefish was my command line utility, from which I started my Linux World.

I never did command line work on AbiWord.

 

Latex I think is proprietary and predates Linux by decades!

Open Office

Open office was the predecessor for LibreOffice.

It had more formats including .sxw format which I used instead of .dot files of Microsoft.

 

LibreOffice 

LibreOffice is bulky and it has more of Microsoft formats and .odt is its format base.

That is why I never use it.

I published ONLY one book using LibreOffice.

That is of course, original text was on .abw format and just before publishing I converted ti to .dot or .odt (I cannot remember).

It took more than a week (to correct book format errors made in converting to doc file) for me to get the page format in order (which was in pristine form in .abw file).

I will never use LibreOffice in spite of its glossy appearance. 

Rather, better use Microsoft Office with bulky Macros.

 

 

KDE and Plasma Desktops

 I did not install KDE and Plasma Desktops!

Linux Fundamentals

 Linux Fundamentals

1. Boat Loader 

Systemd

System 5 Init

2. Kernel to deal with hardware

3. Dbus that integrate and share resources with application and probably daemons.

4. Desktop

5. Application on top of the Desktop (Graphic interface)

What’s is Xmonard?

 Xmonard, I think is not a desktop but a terminal emulator padded up.

 

What’s new in XMonard?

• xmonad and xmonad-contrib 0.18.0 are available. New versions of xmonad and xmonad-contrib have been released. Check out our download page for instructions on where to get them. (2024-02-03)
• Wayland. We on the XMonad devteam (Tomáš, Tony, Yecine, and myself) have been collecting contributions for the past two years with an eye toward paying someone to work on a port of XMonad to Wayland, since none of us is up to the task. We think we now have enough contributions coming in monthly to pay for someone to work with us on it. (2023-10-06)
• xmonad 0.17.2 is available. A new version of xmonad has been released. Check out our download page for instructions on where to get it. (2023-04-02)
• Report a bug and we’ll squash it for you in the next release.
• Follow us on twitter, or join the xmonad subreddit, or come say hi in the IRC channel (#xmonad@irc.libera.chat)!
• Checkout some amazing videos about xmonad, and see what other people did in the screenshot gallery.

Why use XMonad?

XMonad is..

• tiling: xmonad automates the common task of arranging windows, so you can concentrate on getting stuff done.
• minimal: Out of the box, no window decorations, no status bar, no icon dock. just clean lines and efficiency.
• stable: Haskell and smart programming practices guarantee a crash-free experience.
• extensible: It sports a vibrant extension library, including support for window decorations, status bars, and icon docks.
• full of features: core features like per-screen workspaces, true xinerama support and managehooks can’t be found in any other wm.
• easy: we work hard to make common configuration tasks one-liners.
• friendly: an active, friendly mailing list and IRC channel (#xmonad@irc.libera.chat) are waiting to help you get up and running.

XMonad features

• Very stable, fast, small and simple.
• Tiny code base (~2000 lines of Haskell)
• Automatic window tiling and management
• First class keyboard support: a mouse is unnecessary
• Full support for tiling windows on multi-head displays
• Full support for floating, tabbing and decorated windows
• Full support for GNOME and KDE utilities
• XRandR support to rotate, add or remove monitors
• Per-workspace layout algorithms
• Per-screens custom status bars
• Compositing support
• Powerful, stable customisation and on-the-fly reconfiguration
• Large extension library
• Excellent, extensive documentation
• Large, active development team, support and community
• Read more reviews of xmonad

NextStep

 NextStep was a desktop that is discontinued.

Window Maker

 Window Maker is another Lihght Weight Desktop.

Please DO NOT use the Generic term Window Manager.

Awesome Desktop

 What is this awesome window manager?

Awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license.

It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with every day computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their graphical environment.

Concepts

A window manager is probably one of the most used software applications in your day-to-day tasks, along with your web browser, mail reader and text editor. Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable.

awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible, highly configurable window manager.

To achieve this goal, awesome has been designed as a framework window manager. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language.

We provide a documented API to configure and define the behavior of your window manager.

Features and non-features

• Very stable, fast and small codebase and footprint.
• First window manager using the asynchronous XCB library instead of the old, synchronous Xlib, which makes awesome less subject to latency compared to other window managers.
• Documented source code and API.
• No mouse needed: everything can be performed with the keyboard.
• Real multihead support (XRandR) with per screen desktops (tags).
• Implements many Freedesktop standards: EWMH, XDG Base Directory, XEmbed, Desktop Notification, System Tray.
• Does not distinguish between layers: there is no floating or tiled layer.
• Uses tags instead of workspaces: allow to place clients on several tags, and display several tags at the same time.
• A lot of Lua extensions to add features: dynamic tagging, widget feeding, tabs, layouts, …
• D-Bus support.
• And more.

IceWM

IceWarm is beat out of the lot with everything in one place. 

I am going to use on Regular Basis.

IceWM

IceWM is a window manager for the X Window System. 

The goal of IceWM is speed, simplicity, and not getting in the user’s way.          It comes with a taskbar with pager, global and per-window keybindings and a dynamic menu system. Application windows can be managed by keyboard and mouse. Windows can be iconified to the taskbar, to the tray, to the desktop or be made hidden. They are controllable by a quick switch window (Alt+Tab) and in a window list. A handful of configurable focus models are menu-selectable. Setups with multiple monitors are supported by RandR and Xinerama. IceWM is very configurable, themeable and well documented. It includes an optional external background wallpaper manager with transparency support, a simple session manager and a system tray.

IceWM is available on popular Linux distributions like Debian, Ubuntu, Arch, OpenSUSE, Gentoo, Slackware, CentOS, antiX, NixOS and on most *BSDs.

Software

IceWM was coded from scratch in C++ by Marko Maček since 1997. It is now maintained at Github.

Releases

The latest released version is 3.5.0 (2024-05-20).

Features

Easy to use, simple and fast

Standards compliant

Fully usable with keyboard

Alt+Tab window switching

Efficient resource usage

Task bar (optional)

Multiple work spaces

Fully documented

A large number of themes

Usable with GNOME and KDE environments

Regenerates menus when configuration changes

Support for sound effects

Multiple focus modes

Manual placement of windows option

Auto raising of windows option

Tool tips

Configurable keybinding

Supports Dock Apps in a container

Tabbed windows