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change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 18. Nov 2016, 12:14
by jsfarinet
Relatively often, i have to do book (translation) corrections and to do that it comes handy, to split the screen in a right and a left half. In know there are several tiling wm but i was always afraid of them, since they seemed to me stuff for coding people - i.e. not me :) So, the function to be able to split the screen in JWM (which does either upper half/lower half or rihgt half/left half, was just what i needed.

Therefore, i tried to change the default mate windowmanager by jwm - which does not really work. In some way the decoration does not work. So my question:

Is there either a possibility to do that with marco? Or with another window manager, which might compatible with the mate DE?

TIA for any pointer!

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 18. Nov 2016, 12:37
by DidierSpaier
See this: http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/guide.shtml
And more in depth information here: http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/config.shtml

Also, xdgmenumaker allows you to include an application menu in the root menu, read "man fvwm"

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 18. Nov 2016, 13:46
by jsfarinet
DidierSpaier wrote:See this: http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/guide.shtml
And more in depth information here: http://joewing.net/projects/jwm/config.shtml

Also, xdgmenumaker allows you to include an application menu in the root menu, read "man fvwm"
Didier, thanks a lot for the pointers, but in this case i believe to be pretty much experienced with (jwm; i mean ... ;) )

I could pass you the setup i was used to use with debian non-systemd in the past - with jwm as standalone DE. And i also know pretty well the manjaro jwm openrc flavour too. I learned from them to have a very small $HOME/.jwmrc which consists only of some lines (like this:

Code: Select all

Include>$HOME/.jwm/groups</Include>
which point to $HOME/.jwm/groups. The same goes for several other settings like start, theme, menu ecc. ecc.

To integrate jwm into Mate DE, i'd not need the menu option, since Mate provides it. Same goes for the start configuration ...

The problem is:

With any setting and configuration, the decoration (i.e. the frame/window title) of the window does not work, the jwm drawn windows are all placed *OVER* the mate panel and the do not have the minimize/full/exit buttons. I do not see, where the error might be (if at all). Rather, i'm afraid , it's not really "love" between Mate and JWM (?)

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 18. Nov 2016, 14:28
by mimosa
Why not just install it alongside Maté, and select whichever you prefer? To do so, you don't even have to reboot, just log off your user and log back in through GDM.

Actually integrating the two is likely to be a tall order. The only time I've seen anything like that was a "spoonfeeding" version of Xmonad for, I beleve, Ubuntu.

Tiling WMs tend to be minimalist by default, and highly customizable (though not all are). Both design principles are inevitably at loggerheads with any fully-fledged DE.

I regularly use Ratpoison and Xmonad as my default WMs, on two different machines, and I don't even have a tray. It's no frills, but one finds ways to do things as needed. That's kind of the point ...

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 20. Nov 2016, 19:34
by jsfarinet
To make it short: I gave up on Mate because apparently it has big problems to deal correctly with qt4 or qt5 related applications (like vlc or the SpideroakOne, eg.) and i went back to xfce. May be i should go with lxde - which is way more familiar to me (and which exists as a set in the repositories).

[OFF TOPIC ON]But, you made me curious and so i played a bit around with xnomad (times ago i did it with awesome, but probably, i was unfit or it was not that great. For xnomad i followed a bit the description (on the hasekell site) how to install it WITHIN the xfce desktop environment. So far, i had success and got it running - and i see - or better i have a vague idea it might be very fast and also practical. Now, i'd like to adapt the settings a bit better to MY needs and/or desires (there is a panel only in the first workspace (mod-1) but not in the 8 others, moreover, i'd like to have my wallpaper as the background at least of the empty windows; also it would be nice to have compton running correctly ecc. ecc.). But i'm afraid, the comunity might be nerds only and a simple minded user like me would appear nothing else than infinitely stupid (kind of "if you'd like to use something like xmonad rtmf and learn coding ... " ;) ). So, my question: are you aware of some friendly and patient site, where i could ask my questions?

Thanks a lot in advance!
[OFF TOPIC OFF]

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 21. Nov 2016, 08:12
by mimosa
No doubt you've seen xmonad.org. I love xmonad, and I'm not aware of the xfce integration you mention. Please feel free to open a separate topic and post the details!

My suggestion is still to install something like ratpoison alongside xfce, and select it at login. I mention ratpoison especially because of its history with Salix. It's also pretty straightforward. You can do that split screen thing with mod-shift-S.

Re: change windowmanager for mate

Posted: 21. Nov 2016, 12:26
by gapan
jsfarinet wrote:To make it short: I gave up on Mate because apparently it has big problems to deal correctly with qt4 or qt5 related applications (like vlc or the SpideroakOne, eg.) and i went back to xfce. May be i should go with lxde - which is way more familiar to me (and which exists as a set in the repositories).
There is nothing different between how xfce and mate handle qt applications. What may be different is the theme you're using in each one.