EvilWM - Minimalist Window Manager

DasZweiten writes "Being a minimalist, I have run across a window manager by the name of EvilWM in which finally my standards have been completely met. Being an ex-fvwm addict, after the recent slashdot post about the ten year birthday of fvwm, I felt the need to share my overwhelming joy of my discovery of EvilWM with the rest of slashdot. The manager is small, efficient, beautifully coded, decorated with one pixel borders - all one needs or could ask for. The authors say it best on the EvilWM main site with "'Minimalist' here doesn't mean it's too bare to be usable - it just means it omits a lot of the stuff that make other window managers unusable." I frankly, could not have said it better myself. It lacks the unnecessary features, memory, and total bloating that most other window managers unfortunately contain. All of you die hard fvwm fans will love it. I'll never go back to anything else."

Comments

So what?

[Pyromage]

Alright, karma burn time:

who cares? No offense to the Evil author, it's a good WM, I've used it. But it's existence isn't news. It's been listed on Freshmeat for *years*.

Does slashdot now do OSS project announcements? I have a few I may like to promote on slashdot.

Or is the X topic really that starved for news?

No offense, and Kudos to the EvilWM team, but still!

Bloat?

[DickBreath]

I really resent the submitters remarks about bloated window managers.

This kind of false baloney really needs to be countered.

And I don't mean to suggest that you should not run any window manager that you like. But don't make silly statements abuot what other people like.

One could argue that Linux is bloated compared to many things that came before. (DOS, Apple II, Commodore 64, etc.)

One could argue that <insert favorite feature rich software> is bloated. I'll try to avoid starting a flamewar but mention some possible feature rich ones that could be substituted: emacs, bash; I'll stay away from gui apps like mozilla, openoffice, because I'm afraid those I'm arguing against are gui-phobic.

The real point I'm making here is that one man's "bloat" is another man's "features".

There is another argument about "bloat". One could say that even a feature-rich program is bloated if it is implemented inefficiently.

But then it can be legitimately argued that you can trade human implementation efficiency for runtime inefficiency. I'm NOT talking about poor design, poor choice of algorithms, lack of skill, etc. I'm talking about purposeful, concious decisions to make certian choices that lead to quicker implementation, not more efficient runtime.

I could implement a garbage collection system into my complex project. Now the rest with extremely complex data structures is vastly easier to write. But has higher runtime cost. Is this bloat? I could forego garbage collection, have a longer implementation time, use some kind of careful memory management discipline, and still end up with object lifecycle bugs. Is this efficient? Well, I suppose so, if you measure everything only in terms of cpu cycles.

Re:Bloat?

[iabervon]

The real measure of bloat is how many features are provided to you with no real reason to believe that you want them. The major cause of bloat is a flat feature space, where the program has no way to know what features the user might want (or might want at this particular moment) and therefore has to offer all of them. This makes for big programs in terms of memory usage, and, more significantly, very complicated interfaces.

Emacs is probably actually the program most effective at controlling (as opposed to not having) bloat. It has a huge number of features, both useful and silly, enormous flexibility, support for a large number of tasks, and extensible support for a lot of file formats. On the other hand, it doesn't load any of these features or offer them in menus unless you ask for them.

Compare this with Word, which probably has a comparable number of features, but they're all in the menus all the time. It takes forever to load all of this code (versus a mere moment to load enough of Emacs to do the thing you're trying to do), and you have to sort through all of the features to find the one you want to use.

The real measure of efficiency is how long it takes the user to complete the task. The largest factor, these days, is the complexity and speed of the interface. Smaller than this is runtime efficiency of the software (although some tasks still take noticeable processor/disk time; generally loading the program). Of varying significance is the time the user spends redoing work lost (due the crashes or user mistakes). Lastly, there is the amount of time the user spends waiting for the software to be written.

Of course, the task that window managers enable the uer to accomplish is sufficiently straightforward that there are few features which would improve efficiency; most of the common features are intended to improve the user's enjoyment, which is a somewhat different thing. For this reason, most window managers are bloated, although it may be worthwhile bloat if the user finishes the task later but happier.

Re:linux confusion

[simetra]

walk up to every windows machine and know exactly where to go to get what...

Except when you hit the magic Windows machine of Joe Jackass 'Leet Windows Power User who moved his taskbar to the top, is using a high-contrast flourescent color scheme, and is using 2mb wav files for every stinking windows event, has a screensaver that kicks on after 1 minute of idle time and features that guy saying "Hey Vern!" over and over, has changed all desktop items from the somewhat useful standard to one identical image - say golf balls, has renamed shortcuts from the application name to what they REALLY are; for example, Internet Explorer is now The Internet.......

Re:linux confusion

[Weaselmancer]

for every good one way to do something, there are 1600 more ways of doing it that just confuse the hell out of me

At first, I had the same problem. But after a bit, I realized this is a Good Thing. True, everyone and their brother has a solution to a given problem. And you have to poke around a while to find it.

The important fact is that you can.

More popular OSes make these decisions for you, and expect you to cope. If you hate it, you can't change it. You learn to deal with it. Assuming everyone is going to like what you like is what causes these problems.

Figuring out the window manager you like is IMHO a Linux tradition. Congrats on hitting a milestone.

Weaselmancer

Re:If it serves no utility, it is bloat

[DickBreath]

If it serves no utility other than "looking pretty" or "sounding good", it's bloat in a WM. Skinning. Translucent icons. Glowing/popping/spinning animted icons. Playing audio whenever you perform some particular manipulation.

Funny. I remember hearing the exact same argument about guis when the Macintosh first appeared in 1984.

After all, I can just type "cp" or "mv" without using a mouse to drag a file.

GUI's are bloat.

Playing audio in response to certian manipulations is something called feedback. If you don't like it, turn it off. It's a feature.

Kind of like the "bloat" of having air conditioning in a car. It is completely unnecessary. Uses lots of cpu power.

Games are pure bloat. We should eliminate them. They provide no "functionality". Why is this different than your argument about audio or translucent / glowing / spinning / animated icons?

Most screensavers are just pure bloat. We should make them illegal.

Back to my original point: If you don't like it, then don't run it. But don't make silly assertions that they are bloat. Some would argue that games and screensavers are bloat.

Some would argue that having preloaded compilers and development tools on their system is bloat.

Been using EvilWM for a while

[r3jjs]

I've been a long time fan of EvilWM. Found myself in possession of an old Toshiba Laptop with only 16M of RAM and a 1.3G drive.

Found its quite possible to run a basic useable system but I had to choose my software carefully. Links (configured for graphics) and/or dillo make a useable web browser while I use run GAIM for a chat client. (Gaim is a bit too heavy weight for what I like, but oh well.)

EvilWM is the window manager that makes this possible, but I did couple that with a basic menuing system written using bash and xmessage. Just because most computer users fall into the "norm" doesn't mean there are no uses outside the box, so to speak.

Parent post is a good definition of Bloat

[llywrch]

> The real measure of bloat is how many features are provided to you with no real reason to believe that you want them.

I think that gets to the heart of the matter: bloat is the stuff included in a program that you do not want, & cannot get rid of. Some programmers have faced this problem, & offer solutions (e.g., the case of emacs in the parent post). Other programmers only realize this is an issue late, & leave it to their non-programming colleagues to address (e.g., the typical PR response by a company many people here hate, ``But our customers have asked for these features!")

The reason I like Linux is that I know I always have a way to trim the stuff I don't want from the programs I run; the reason I dislike almost every distribution is that they were created without this requirement clearly addressed to my satisfaction.

YMMV.

Geoff