I am once again considering to write my own window manager
…unless the setup I am thinking of is already possible, let me construct this in your head:
On the top of the screen, there is narrow status bar, which is split into two parts. On the right side of the bar, you have your clock, your battery, your signal strength and so on.
On the left side, there is a clickable tab for every window you have opened. It’s like browser tabs: Every window always uses the entire space below the status bar.
On the far left, there could be an icon which opens a searchable list of applications, kind of like #dmenu but vertical. Everything supports mouse input as you would expect.
Does that exist? Should I make it? It would be awesome for smaller screens, like phones.
Edit: I should add that I’m planning to run it on a Nokia N900 with a single 600 MHz CPU core, 256 MB RAM and a resolution of 800×480 pixels. Existing full desktop environments like Xfce4, LXDE, and so on are way to heavy to run.
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Almost any window manager should be able to do that. One way would be: timing WM + a script that opens each window in new workspace + bar configuration (if the built-in bar can’t do what you want, there are plenty configurable thind-party bars that most WMs support).
Check out awesome wm and i3 if you haven’t already
I haven’t looked too deep into what’s possible with the config files of i3 or awesome. Maybe I should do that first. I just assumed they would be too keyboard focused. I want everything to be visible on screen, so you don’t have to remember hotkeys.
What you want should be quite easy to achieve with i3/sway or awesomewm. i3 has a slew of possibilities for “bars”, even the xfce/kde panels: https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/i3#i3bar_alternatives
Awesomewm is totally usable via the mouse and infinetly extendaple via lua.
I just wish it would be easier to set it up and run it a s a floating WM, with proper window decorations and movement.
Why would you want it floating if every window is maximized? These requirements contradict each other.
The linux community is IMHO a bit focused on tiling WMs. I like tiling as well, but in this case: the vanilla gnome workflow is kinda 70% of what you want already. The rest can be done via extensions.
I want floating because I DON’T want every window maximized.
To be honest, I actually only want Openbox but it run’s with Wayland (no, labwc is missing too many fetures).
Hey I thought you we’re going to use it on an N900! :P
in Wayland: sway+waybar
You can use i3 as mentioned in other comments for x11.
I did something similar: I wrote this kwin script to arrange each window maximized in a new virtual desktop, and then this plasmoid to navigate through applications by sliding the finger on the top edge.
It’s still in the first development stage, so don’t expect it to be perfect, but it work for me. You may use the kwin script and create just the “tab manager”, perhaps forked from pager, and arrange your panel as you likeEnlightenment says:
“Welcome”
@PuppyOSAndCoffee Probably nothing for a N900 but I’ve heard so much of it. I really should give it a try. How does Enlightenment run with older hardware? I’m talking 8-10 years old.
Excellent. It is very very very tweakable.
What’s wrong with PostmarketOS + sxmo? Supports xorg and Wayland.
Aren’t you mixing WM and DE together? XFCE can do that, LXDE probably too.
@MonkderZweite Well, a window manager is for managing windows, right? So, having it also provide a list of windows to click on is resonable, in my opinion.
I should’ve added that I’m planning to run it on a Nokia N900 with 600 MHz and 256 MB RAM, both #XFCE and #LXDE are way too heavy for it. Also, most of their menus don’t fit on the 800×480 pixel screen.
Ah, ok. Custom requirements (probably) need custom solutions.
This should be possible to build with sway (and presumably any other tiling wm). Now that I’m thinking about it, you can probably also do this with gnome and a couple of extensions.
The status bar can be achieved with waybar in sway, which can be easily configured the way you described. In gnome there is an extension to rearrange the top panel.
I’m thinking of opening each window in a new workspace, can be configured for sway and gnome has an extension for that.
For the tabs we can use waybar with sworkstyle for each wroskpace, requires some configuration. For gnome I’d just use one of the many task bar extensions.
I can’t immediately think of a solution for the searchable list, but I’d be surprised if it didn’t exist for both systems.
Since tiling is not wanted, I think gnome + extensions should be the way to go.
That’s something you can do with most window managers, but if you want to write your own wm, you can use DWM as a start.
AwesomeWM and i3 are great options.
But, if you’re looking in Wayland, check out Hyprland.
I wouldn’t say it’s too stable yet, but is really smooth and you can customise the bar accordingly.
I think the awesomeWM has the status bar you’ve described.
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I want to add an advice to the other answers. You can get a vertical menu with Rofi. Its easy to make it nice. You can config a button in the bar on any bar, I’m not sure about Gnome and KDE bars.
You could look into sxmo, something like i3 but designed for phones
Sounds like my setup except no split
Unless you wanna write your own window manager (all the power to you!) almost any barebones window manager can pretty much be customised to meet your needs with their scripting APIs.Oh damn, maybe you might wanna write your own for such a specific use case.
