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Comment by petepete | Hacker News Reader

I used to use and love AwesomeWM for years, super fast, moderately easy to customise and very lightweight.

Eventually I switched to Gnome 3 simply because it made configuring wi-fi and power options easier.

Yup, been there too, but I simply can't go back to a non-tiling WM after being spoiled with tiling ones.

If you want to give it a shot, there's a guide on using Awesome with Gnome [0], and the last time I tried it worked just fine. Though, awesome replaces both mutter (Gnome's WM) and the Gnome Shell itself, so you won't have Gnome's panel etc anymore.

I wanted a nicer integration between a DE and a WM, and the two nicest options by far have been Xfce and LXQt for me.

LXQt makes it trivial to use your own WM (they use Openbox by default) since they have an option for it in their Preferences [1].

With Xfce however it's a bit more involved [2], since Xfce is more tightly coupled with Xfwm and using a custom WM is not as easy as LXQt makes it.

That said, I'm using Xfce + bspwm for now (as opposed to LXQt + bspwm) mainly because Xfce's display and power manager are more matured than LXQt's.

[0]: https://web.archive.org/web/20160726160922/https://awesomewm...

[1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/LXQt#Replace_Openbox

[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Xfce#Default_window_man...

I use i3 wm and I like it a lot, don't ever want to go back to a non-tiling WM. But I do understand complaints about the hassle of configuring wifi, power options, and other stuff, e.g., sound, display brightness. All of this is done automically by desktop environments; none of it is done by a mere window manager.

I wonder whether Awesome is similar to i3 in this regard. On the i3 help forum a good number of questions are about configuring these things. Many people respond that these aren't part of a window manager, which is of course correct. Nevertheless, it seems to me that these WM projects harm their own popularity by not having clear and easily findable instructions on how to do these configurations in the most popular linux distributions. Newcomers to i3 (or, I assume, Awesome) can find the configuration info on their own, of course, but you have to dig for it. It seems to me this is the only downside of adopting a tiling WM, the need to have some expertise and willingness to poke around and learn how to configure the necessary "desktop environment" options.

Everyone in the i3/etc community is capable of filling in those gaps themselves, or they give up and go to a full DE. I appreciate that these users are leveling up their skills and asking fewer dumb questions. Nothing stopping anyone from releasing something like Spacemacs for i3, but once you spend a little time on your configs, it just gets easy (and fun). YMMV.

It's totally possible to use parts of Gnome with Awesome. Pulling Network Manager is easy because they try to not make it too dependent on Gnome (to be able to make it usable on servers). Other parts may require gnome-session but if you don't mind running half of Gnome in addition of Awesome, it should work just fine.

+1, I use nm-applet with Awesome, works great.

I don't know about power management but configuring wireless is as easy as auto starting 'nm-applet'. I imagine you could do the same with the gnome or xfce4 power management applet.

I, too, am currently using Gnome Shell (Fedora 25) after some time on dwm [1]. If you have got used to hitting a meta-key and typing a command, then Gnome Shell actually seems quite normal. I used to set the dwm meta key to mod4 for convenience.

These days we have nmtui for wifi and powertop for power management profiles. dwm/awewsome with a desktop file launched from a desktop manager might make more sense these days.

[1] http://www.sohcahtoa.org.uk/pages/linux-dwm-window-manager-o...

Gnome 3 users may find refuge in extensions, eg. shellshape provides reasonable tiling experience. Too bad it doesn't work with Wayland.

Actually, the 'killer app' for me is tmux. Almost all the windows I had open were shells or browser windows, tmux is so good at managing my shell sessions I no longer feel the need for more than one window. Gnome's simple split is enough if I need side by side on one monitor (which is rare).

I use awesome on top of KDE to get the benefits of a full desktop environment with the efficiency of awesome's window management.

"Eventually I switched to Gnome 3 simply because it made configuring wi-fi and power options easier."

I don't understand this comment ... possibly because I have not used modern X (gnome, KDE, whatever) very much at all ...

How is configuring wifi and power a window manager issue ? Isn't there an application for wifi config that everyone on Linux uses, regardless of WM ?

I use FreeBSD and OSX and my FreeBSD wifi config is all done via the command line, but I always assumed there was a nice "wifi config" app for Linux ... you are saying that is part of the window manager and is different for all of them ?

It is on my box. I'm running Ubuntu on this one. Like with Windows, there's an icon for networking. It automatically connects if it's Ethernet. If wireless, clicking it displays a list of access points to use. Clicking on a protected one asks for a password. It saves the password then just connects to it anytime it's near. Pretty simple but probably distro-specific app.

You're conflating your desktop environment with your window manager. For example, I run xmonad on top of xfce and use the standard xfce tray, wifi config, etc. Xmonad just replaces the xfce window manager.

What the parent said.

To be even more specific, network management is really distro- and DE-agnostic. For instance, Arch wiki describes a multitude of ways for wired [0] and wireless [1] network configuration, that would technically work in other distros as well.

Most distros and DEs ship with Gnome's NetworkManager [2] but with different front-ends: distros with GTK-based DEs like Gnome or Unity usually ship network-manager-applet, and distros with Qt-based DEs like KDE usually ship plasma-nm or networkmanager-qt.

Power management [3] is a bit different. There are distro-specific recommendations and also 3rd party apps, but DEs usually have their own power manager.

Now, when you choose to use a DE, the choice of which network or power management solution you use is already made for you, but when you don't use a DE then you will be choosing them yourself.

[0]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Network_configuration [1]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Wireless_network_config...

[2]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/NetworkManager [3]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Power_management

Appreciate the corrections from both of you.

AwesomeWM has no in built wi-fi config (rightfully, as it's just a window manager). You need to use (and research, learn etc) another tool.

Gnome has it built in (as it's a DE, not just a WM). Select network from applet, type in password, done. Same for sound, power options, displays, wallpaper and things I want to spend as little time as possible thinking about.

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