Awesome-WM settings and workplace setup
Awesome is a great tiled window manager that is completely configurable, basically it gives you the tools to write the window manager you want it to be. I use it as minimal I can get but I’m used to have a lot of information about the machine I’m working on so I can act before problems arise, in example a memory overflow basically I can see the program eating up the memory on my monitors, or I can notice if a program is consuming too much memory and it wasn’t supposed to be doing that, same goes for network leeches and system temperature.
I don’t have setup many “launchers” besides the ones that comes from the monitors that I rarely use but are handy when quick reaction is needed. To startup programs I just use the keyboard, Mod4 some keys launches a program for me, like Mod4+f fires up Firefox.
One of the things that I like most from Awesome is that I can get rid of the taskbar, overlapping windows etc. I don’t like looking up for the app I want, I just want to know where is it, and that is where awesome tags are really handy, Alt 1-9 switchs to the proper tag, Mod 1-9 moves the current window to the according tab. I have a strict use for every number, 1 music, 2 chat, 3 browser, 4 emacs, 5 terminal, 6-9 buffer tags for varied stuff, most of the time 6-7 are for xpdf . I got this habit from Fluxbox and other wm with virtual desktops, but awesome gives you a little bit more, you can temporary merge them so you can have two apps side to side on a buffer tag and still keep them single in the usual tags.
Here’s the screenshot, I hosted it on flickr so I could add some notes over the image, you can follow the link on the image to Flickrs page and see the comments
Here’s the config file for Awesome, I don’t recommend if someone want’s to try it, to use it right away since It has so much stuff that it’s different from conventional keybindings, locations and it uses some scripts I haven’t published. Like Murxvtc that picks a random color for the transparency or awimap who does the check and uses awesome-client to print out the messages you see on the screenshot for mail.
The icons I use for this are from Nuvola, and the current background you see I can’t give credit since I don’t get to know which image is that since it comes from Flickr’s Interestingness at random. I hope the owner pardons me for using his image for this background, if you know/are the owner please leave me a word so I can comply with the license you have over the image.
Finally and for the reader, I wonder how much time/effort people spend customizing their workspace like I try to do, I feel I can work faster and I concentrate more using this setup, but your experience might be different, would you mind sharing?
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