dwm
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| dwm | |
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 dwm-4.7 showing rxvt, dclock and ROX-Filer |
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| Developed by | Anselm R. Garbe |
| Latest release | 4.9 / 3 April 2008 |
| Written in | C |
| OS | Unix-like |
| Genre | Window manager |
| License | MIT License |
| Website | suckless.org/wiki/dwm |
dwm is a minimalist dynamic tiling window manager for X11. It is externally similar to wmii, but internally much simpler. dwm is written purely in C and, for simplicity, lacks any configuration interface besides editing the source code. This is not as inconvenient as it sounds, however: one of the project's guidelines is that the source code will never exceed 2000 lines, and options meant to be user-configurable are all represented by macros and contained in a single header file. According to the author, it is optimized for high resolution laptop and widescreen displays.
An interesting feature of dwm is that it displays its STDIN in a status line at the top of the screen (the screen edge can be changed by editing the source code). This is often used to show information that would appear in the notification area of other desktop environments - a clock, system load info, laptop battery and network status, music player information and the like, by piping text in from dwm's parent process (usually an .xsession script.) This status line is often complemented with dmenu, a textual application launcher from the same developer as dwm.
[edit] Drawbacks
dwm has some properties that may be considered drawbacks by users of more conventional window-management systems:
- No configuration files; display properties can only be changed by editing the source code and recompiling the executable
- Click-to-focus model not supported; rather, it uses a combination of focus-follows-mouse and keyboard focus switch
- The floating layout does not display a window titlebar, or support the conventional click/drag method of moving or resizing windows. The Alt key must be held down, requiring two hands.
[edit] Forks and Patches
- awesome extends dwm with FreeType support, reconfigurability, and more layout types.
- echinus extends dwm with FreeType support, EWMH, click-to-focus, reconfigurability, and more layout types.
- dwm-gottox is a branch of dwm, adding a 'deck' layout and better Xinerama support.
[edit] External links
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