Awesome in Archlinux

If you are used to typical graphic environments, perhaps Awesome is not for you, but if your intention is to get the most out of your computer there is nothing better from my point of view.

From the Awesome website:

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

Windows Manager (or window manager) is a program that controls the location and appearance of windows under a window system. Do not confuse window manager with graphical environment.

Gnome! = Metacity

Kde! = Kwin

Xfce! = Xfwm

Putting it a little simpler, it is the way to manage windows in GNU / Linux operating systems, aimed at average and advanced users.

My personal experience with this Windows Manager (window manager) is for a couple of months, at first a bit complicated like all good things, however it is a matter of dedicating a little time, patience and making the most of the resources of the computer.

History

According to Sebastián Montini, it was written as an experiment in a model other than the usual window management. Try to solve the navigation problem by dividing the screen into mutually non-overlapping frames that try to cover the entire screen. The organization of the frames is dynamic and different in each workspace, the use of the keyboard is convenient, effective and efficient.

Features

• Tiling system (wmii, dwm, ion, etc)
• LUA widgets can be configured
• It is a flexible system (float, tile, fair, max, full, focus)
• Use a tag system instead of viewports
• It is quite light
• It is oriented to the use of the keyboard
• It is much more customizable than others

According to Wikipedia Awesome is written in Moon, an imperative, structured and fairly lightweight programming language that was designed as an interpreted language with extensible semantics. The name means "moon" in Portuguese.

It is advisable to use a session manager like Slim, KDM, GDM or the one of your preference and add applications (vicious, scrot, notify-osd and xcompmgr)

How is it installed in Archlinux?

# pacman -S awesome

All configuration lies in the file rc.lua located in / etc / xdg / awesome /, it is customary to create a folder called awesome in the path /home/user/.config and create a symbolic link of said file.

$ mkdir /home/usuario/.config/awesome

With the folder created, the symbolic link will be created

# ln -s /etc/xdg/awesome/rc.lua /home/usuario/.config/awesome/

If you are interested in changing the Awesome icon or the wallpaper, you must modify the file theme.lua within the route / usr / share / awesome / themes / default /, I usually use the editor dwarf.

# nano /usr/share/awesome/themes/default/theme.lua

Change the icon of awesome

Find the section theme.awesome_icon = and add the path of the image that you want to be the start menu icon. Don't forget to put it in double quotes.

Change the Wallpaper

Find the section theme.wallpaper = and add the path of the image you want as wallpaper. Don't forget to put it in double quotes

How do I improve my Awesome settings?

To improve Awesome, you may be interested in modifying the rc.lua file, you can do it by adding a simple menu, remember that it is LUA programming.

# nano /home/usuario/.config/awesome/rc.lua

Find the section

- {{{Menu - Create a laucher widget and a main menu

And add something like this

myawesomemenu = {{"manual", terminal .. "-e man awesome"}, {"edit config", editor_cmd .. "" .. awesome.conffile}, {"restart", awesome.restart}, {"quit ", awesome.quit}} menugraphics = {{" GIMP "," gimp "," /usr/share/icons/Faenza/apps/22/gimp.png "} mymainmenu = awful.menu ({items = {{" Awesome ", myawesomemenu}, {" Graphics ", menugraphics},}})

Modify it according to your preferred applications. now you can add widgets, objects that can be added to any Wibox (status bars and title bars) can provide various information about your system, window manager and X clients directly from your desktop.

The widgets are easy to use and offer great flexibility, to add them you must go to the section - {{{Wibox

- Create a textclock widget mytextclock = awful.widget.textclock ()

Later you go to the section - Widgets that are aligned to the righ and you add them as follows

right_layout:add(mytextclock)

You recharge your awesome with the keys Ctrl + Home + R and you can see how they appear in the upper left part of the screen, you can add the ones you consider pertinent, it is just a matter of reading a little more about the subject in the official pages.

Remember: Every time you modify the rc.lua file use

$ awesome --check

If you throw the message ✔ Configuration file syntax OK. you can rest assured, otherwise check the errors, it may take you a bit unpleasant surprise if it is not configured correctly.

Dare to take minimalism to the extreme with Awesome, as a help I share my configuration of the main files in this link.

Sources:

Awesome Archlinux

Moon

Widgets in Awesome

Awesome Installation Guide

Presentation of Sebastían Montini at Jornadas del Sur 2009 Awesome: a different WM