Dec
15
After using linux for years now I find myself rarely needing to use the mouse except for moving windows around, giving them focus, resizing them, etc. I decided to evaluate a bunch of tiling windows managers.
The best one I found was awesome. Literally, that’s its name.
http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Main_Page
Basically I wanted something with a notification area, tell me which desktop desktop I am on and a systray area.
Awesome is great because it uses the Mod (Windows) key to perform all window based operations like to cycle through windows layouts by just pressing Mod+Space. Using the windows key is great because it doesn’t get in the way of other hot keys in programs like IntelliJ. This is great because I don’t have to customize everything manually. The defaults seem fine so far.
It supports D-Bus, pango, XRandR, Xinerama which is pretty sweet. Its definitely fast and there are TONS of tips on their wiki to customize it anyway you like.
I’m even starting to browse the web with just a keyboard. I’m not sure how I like it yet. I normally use my mouse as a speed reading guide, dragging it down the page. Then I’m usually close to a link I want to click. This may be faster than pressing ctrl+f, typing the name of the link, hitting escaping, then enter.