Day 12 (dwm) - Status Bar Configuration DistroTube
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Date: 2022-03-30
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Comments and reviews: 10
Kevin
Finally found a setup that I can live with. I have always thought computers mostly suck. My problem has always been that -floating windows- are so maddeningly inexact and the best version of a floating windows system is in fact windows 10, but more and more windows 10 was getting buggier and buggier, especially since chrome wants to be your desktop envorinement. Plus the fact that windows tracks me.
Last year I decided I would give linux a try and while I thought many parts of it were great, especially the terminal, I found that many things left me cold about the system. For one, firefox, on linux, is terrible in comparison to edge or even chrome in windows. Chrome is better in linux, but you can't always get in every distro easily. Also, linux was just less compatible on the whole than windows. Honestly, a lot of things were just plain bad. The only thing that was the opposite of bad was the fantastic terminal. Linux is slower and more inexact than even windows in most desktop envoriments, no matter how minimalistic you want to get.
So late last year I tried to live in a non-gui, terminal-based environment and I lasted 6 months in it. But after those 6 months I kept craving a graphical browser and went back to windows. And it didn't take long for me to realize I hate windows and all the -non exactness- of those floating windows. What to do?
Flash foward to today. To make a long story short I have went through great lengths to come up with a setup that I am really happy with. Here is my setup:
I am using Void Linux's no-gui install. I also installed xorg-minimal, xinit and xorg-fonts. I then installed ratpoison and the alacritty terminal emulator, plus tmux. I then installed qutebrowser. All of my programs I am using, other than the graphical browser, are terminal based. The thing about ratpoison is that it mimicks a shell-like experience. I have no title bars, staus bars, nothing but the black screen of ratpoison. I am using alacritty because every other modern terminal emulator is frustratingly laggy. And all I need a terminal emulator for is to run vim, mutt, tmux and links and allow me to manipulate my files.
The long and the short of it is that my system is finally distraction-free, blazing fast and does everything I want to and nothing I don't.
reply
Finally found a setup that I can live with. I have always thought computers mostly suck. My problem has always been that -floating windows- are so maddeningly inexact and the best version of a floating windows system is in fact windows 10, but more and more windows 10 was getting buggier and buggier, especially since chrome wants to be your desktop envorinement. Plus the fact that windows tracks me.
Last year I decided I would give linux a try and while I thought many parts of it were great, especially the terminal, I found that many things left me cold about the system. For one, firefox, on linux, is terrible in comparison to edge or even chrome in windows. Chrome is better in linux, but you can't always get in every distro easily. Also, linux was just less compatible on the whole than windows. Honestly, a lot of things were just plain bad. The only thing that was the opposite of bad was the fantastic terminal. Linux is slower and more inexact than even windows in most desktop envoriments, no matter how minimalistic you want to get.
So late last year I tried to live in a non-gui, terminal-based environment and I lasted 6 months in it. But after those 6 months I kept craving a graphical browser and went back to windows. And it didn't take long for me to realize I hate windows and all the -non exactness- of those floating windows. What to do?
Flash foward to today. To make a long story short I have went through great lengths to come up with a setup that I am really happy with. Here is my setup:
I am using Void Linux's no-gui install. I also installed xorg-minimal, xinit and xorg-fonts. I then installed ratpoison and the alacritty terminal emulator, plus tmux. I then installed qutebrowser. All of my programs I am using, other than the graphical browser, are terminal based. The thing about ratpoison is that it mimicks a shell-like experience. I have no title bars, staus bars, nothing but the black screen of ratpoison. I am using alacritty because every other modern terminal emulator is frustratingly laggy. And all I need a terminal emulator for is to run vim, mutt, tmux and links and allow me to manipulate my files.
The long and the short of it is that my system is finally distraction-free, blazing fast and does everything I want to and nothing I don't.
reply
The
As a programmer that hates bloat and want lean software, this is still not the solution for me. This is too much of a hassle. This is a tinkerers desktop system IMO. The minimal design is great when it comes to not wasting memory and cycles, but the functionality out of the box is just not there for me. IF I had done a desktop system I would have started out like this, but with a lean UI for a plugin based system. By default you wouldn't get anything more than this, but with a couple of clicks could plugin more stuff. Somewhat more bloat but a hell of a lot more flexible where you can decide based on your system what kind of bloat you are prepared to accept.
I would still make memory and cpu usage high on the priority but with a more flexible base. For me a PC is a tool to get other stuff done on, the less time it takes me to get to that point or modify it without intricate knowledge of the system the better. Combine that with a lean user focused interface and we have a winner.
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As a programmer that hates bloat and want lean software, this is still not the solution for me. This is too much of a hassle. This is a tinkerers desktop system IMO. The minimal design is great when it comes to not wasting memory and cycles, but the functionality out of the box is just not there for me. IF I had done a desktop system I would have started out like this, but with a lean UI for a plugin based system. By default you wouldn't get anything more than this, but with a couple of clicks could plugin more stuff. Somewhat more bloat but a hell of a lot more flexible where you can decide based on your system what kind of bloat you are prepared to accept.
I would still make memory and cpu usage high on the priority but with a more flexible base. For me a PC is a tool to get other stuff done on, the less time it takes me to get to that point or modify it without intricate knowledge of the system the better. Combine that with a lean user focused interface and we have a winner.
reply
Jon
Is that checkupdates command blocking your statusbar updates? I'm not sure how to do this in bash, but if you could listen for events from the checkupdates command and only write the -updates- portion when it returns, I think that might be better, since it won't block the time and memory, and you're also not firing off a checkupdates every 10s.
Maybe for the checkupdates part, instead of echoing its output, place the output in a variable in the top scope, run it in the background, and have the xsetroot portion read from the variable instead of the command? I think that might be less taxing on your system, theoretically.
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Is that checkupdates command blocking your statusbar updates? I'm not sure how to do this in bash, but if you could listen for events from the checkupdates command and only write the -updates- portion when it returns, I think that might be better, since it won't block the time and memory, and you're also not firing off a checkupdates every 10s.
Maybe for the checkupdates part, instead of echoing its output, place the output in a variable in the top scope, run it in the background, and have the xsetroot portion read from the variable instead of the command? I think that might be less taxing on your system, theoretically.
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Ulterno
I liked the thought of -suckless-, but -it doesn't feel very efficient to have a separate process running for all those small things. Now if the shell script were only running those as threads, I would have been more for it- (but I don't know what it actually does. Yeah turned out I really didn't get what it did.
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I liked the thought of -suckless-, but -it doesn't feel very efficient to have a separate process running for all those small things. Now if the shell script were only running those as threads, I would have been more for it- (but I don't know what it actually does. Yeah turned out I really didn't get what it did.
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blackrastafarian
Thank you for the tutorial, I find it really useful. Quick question though, as an alternative of using while loop with shell script, would it be better to either register a systemctl timer or cron jobs?
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Thank you for the tutorial, I find it really useful. Quick question though, as an alternative of using while loop with shell script, would it be better to either register a systemctl timer or cron jobs?
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-iga
4: 30 Even if you use a login screen (-slim-) you can set it to use the -. xinitrc- file! Just take a look in -/etc/slim. conf- and search for -. xinitrc-. Then uncomment one line and comment the other! Woila!
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4: 30 Even if you use a login screen (-slim-) you can set it to use the -. xinitrc- file! Just take a look in -/etc/slim. conf- and search for -. xinitrc-. Then uncomment one line and comment the other! Woila!
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Paul
Still an i3 user here. I want to move to dwm. I know it's told to me greatm just wondering how we can detect a click on the status bar and trigger and event like we do in i3 blocks.
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Still an i3 user here. I want to move to dwm. I know it's told to me greatm just wondering how we can detect a click on the status bar and trigger and event like we do in i3 blocks.
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Teh
I know you don't use ranger much anymore, but I'd love if you could see if w3m image previews work inside of it using St+dwm, it doesn't work for me. Not sure why.
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I know you don't use ranger much anymore, but I'd love if you could see if w3m image previews work inside of it using St+dwm, it doesn't work for me. Not sure why.
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Please use \uxxxx form of icons for tags, because it's implementation defined, wheter that symbols are supported by the extended source character set, or not.
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Please use \uxxxx form of icons for tags, because it's implementation defined, wheter that symbols are supported by the extended source character set, or not.
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Thirsty
As there are no config files, how is updating these applications? Do you pull from the repo, and repatch manually? Do the packages in the AUR handle that?
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As there are no config files, how is updating these applications? Do you pull from the repo, and repatch manually? Do the packages in the AUR handle that?
reply
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