If you are looking for an Awesome window manager for your desktop, you found it! This window manager remains simple but offers flexible configuration as well.
This is a window manager for X that is designed to promote maximum efficiency and minimum distraction. This window manager can run on many Linux distributions even with minimal system resources.
This is not a window manager for the feint of heart, some manual customization will certainly be required. The Awesome window manager is commonly loved by developers and programmers. Users will also experience almost instantaneous startup times with Awesome. After finishing with your display manager Awesome will load instantly.
This window manager also supports the use of multiple monitors with very little setup and configuration.
The Awesome window manager contains a status bar at the top of the screen. This status bar can be used to manage windows, tags, and window layouts. You can also get access to the Awesome desktop menu using the icon in the left corner.
This window manager can be installed on most Linux distributions with very little trouble. Here are some tips for users that are interested.
To install the Awesome window manager on any Ubuntu based distribution simply use the commands below in your terminal.
$ sudo apt-get install awesome
Install this window manager on any Fedora based system by simply following the steps below.
First you should add the repository with the following command.
$ su -c 'wget -nd -P /etc/yum.repos.d http://repos.fedorapeople.org/ repos/thm/awesome/fedora-awesome.repo'
Now its time to install the window manager, simply use the next command.
$ su -c 'yum install awesome'
The Awesome window manager is highly functional, and even offers many different uses. Users have the ability to use alternate window modes at the same time for any windows. This allows for some really unique configurations. Try alternative window layouts like floating windows, tiled windows, or stacking windows.
When in tiled mode you will have a master window area, and a window area. The master area will hold your primary windows, and the stacking area will hold the others.
Floating mode allows windows to be resized freely. Some windows will always appear in floating mode, this is most common for dialog boxes.
This window manager delivers three default themes for users to try. Each theme offers a new wallpaper and a unique set of colors for the panel and menus. Theme files are easily customized using .lua files.
We have tested all of the default themes and you can see them for yourself. There is a default theme, a Sky theme, and a theme called Zenburn. Screenshots for each theme have been provided.
Awesome Winow Manager Default Themes
By default the Awesome window manager provides a single unique wallpaper that works well with the default theme. However even changing your desktop background is not exactly the most simple task in the world, but it is not so difficult really.
To change your desktop background you will actually need to edit the theme.lua file of your current theme. Inside this file you can change the file in the following line to the image you would like to display.
theme.wallpaper_cmd = { "awsetbg /usr/share/awesome/themes/
default/background.png" }
After starting the Awesome window manager you may be surprised to see that there are 9 workspaces for each of your monitors. When using this window manager the workspaces are actually called tags but I will stick with workspaces to avoid confusion. If nine workspaces is too many you can simply add or remove as many as you need.
To add and remove workspaces simply open your rc.lua file, mine was located in the following directory.
/etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua
Now you can simply edit your rc.lua file, find the following line and adjust the number of workspaces to the amount you desire. When finished restart the window manager.
-- Each screen has its own tag table.
tags[s] = awful.tag({ 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 }, s, layouts[1])
Now lets take a closer look at some of the important configuration files that can be used to customize the Awesome window manager. This window manager depends mostly on .lua files for manual configuration.
The main configuration file can be seen below. Use this to customize the Awesome window manager.
~/.config/awesome/rc.lua
If the directory above does not exist you can check the following directory.
/etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua
Each theme file will have its own directory and configuration file as seen below.
/usr/share/awesome/themes/default/theme.lua
The menu file can be found below.
~/.awesome/menu
If you experience any problems you can check the following log file for information.
~/.xsession-errors
The Awesome window manager also provides several helpful commands that you can use to launch the window manager or simply to get more information. Below you can find some of the commands that will help you use the Awesome window manager.
Try using the command below to set a new default configuration file for the Awesome window manager.
$ awesome --config /file.lua
The following command will let you enable X11 synchronization mode. In this mode all X11 calls will be synced to log errors.
$ awesome --sync
To display the version that you are using just use this command.
$ awesome --version
To display the Awesome window manager help details from the command line simply use the following command.
$ awesome --help
Tags: awesome, desktop, install, linux, manager, screenshot, window | Posted in Desktop
Latest Chatter