Window Managers

Getting GNOME’d

While it may be the standard for modern linux systems, the GNOME desktop environment is, itself, a styling disaster.

The one thing that GNOME does great is have an acceptable default configuration. There are many other options for a window manager, but almost all but GNOME have horrific defaults. If you’re tired of GNOME, you’re going to have to learn some configuration to even get started.

As a style-minded individual, you probably want to explore some alternatives. From my experience, looking into a window manager unfortunately goes one of 2 ways:

A (e.g. i3)

B (e.g. Plasma)

Here’s a few annoyances with some of the popular alternatives to GNOME.

Xfce

xfce-disaster

Almost every input in Xfce is slightly misaligned or mispadded.

Also, their application menu (not shown here) has terrible icons and an even worse input field.

Even the screenshot on their own site is badly doctored so it looks like the screen is tearing!

If you are making a desktop environment for the world to use, you need more attention to detail than Xfce puts in.

Plasma

plasma-disaster

Start Menu search box is on top? And has a disgusting box highlight??

No border between dock and bottom menu

Scroll bar for groups???? Why are there so many groups????

If I wanted something that looked reasonable to start, GNOME does a much better job.

Do-Less Alternatives

The popular alternatives described above (and GNOME for the most part) appear to be attempting to include all the functionality of Windows on a Linux system. Unfortunately every feature that they add to their environment adds another chance for a styling disaster. The multi-contributor paradigm followed by open source projects like these increases the chances of this happening even further. It is very difficult to assert a consistent style with large, disconnected teams of developers.

Fortunately, there is a solution to this problem - do less. The window managers described below mitigate some styling disasters by supporting fewer features.

AwesomeWM

AwesomeWM has some great looking screenshots available on youtube.

awesome-copist

However, it suffers from a difficult-to-learn configuration.

It also has a major styling disaster in its start menu. Programmers should not be making icons.

awesome-disaster

i3wm

i3wm also has some appealing screnshots to consider.

i3-copist

Its configuration was a bit easier for me to pick up compared to AwesomeWM.

However, the barebones configuration was difficult to get started with.

dwm

dwm’s default look is comparable to i3’s but it is noticibly harder to get started with. “blah blah” suckless software.

dwm-barebones

The advantage dwm has over i3wm in that you no longer need to care about which “direction” you are splitting since everything is handled as part of a stack.

I actually also found configuring dwm through patches to be less confusing than trying to learn how i3wm/awesomewm’s configuration files worked.

Personal Experience

I started out on GNOME (like most people) but started looking for alternatives when they 2xed the size of the title bar.

My first attempt was with AwesomeWM. However, the default desktop background and disgusting start menu made me quickly look at the similar alternative, i3.

I used i3 for a couple months before the “split direction” got too annoying and I had to switch back to GNOME. I also disliked having to learn a new option name every time I wanted to change my i3 configuration.

During one of my arch reinstalls, I decided to take the full plunge and try out dwm. It took a month or so to get used to the keybinds. Since then, I have been very happy with the incredible versatility of the dwm platform. It is very easy for me to customize each aspect of my display from adding bar blocks to changing hotkeys. And it’s so easy to get perfectly aligned windows!

dwm-beauth

If you are willing to learn how to set it up, I suggest trying out dwm for yourself!