Stumpwm Is One Strange Window Manager DistroTube
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Date: 2022-03-30
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Comments and reviews: 10
David
Hi, I'm the current maintainer of StumpWM. I wanted to thank you for the thorough review. I also appreciate the feedback of our lack of documentation. StumpWM grew out of ratpoison, but it also has (now esoteric) ideas about documentation. The manual is compiled into an info file from doc-strings in the source code. While this is very lispy and inline with emacs, we don't do a good job advertising this.
In fact, getting started with StumpWM is nearly impossible (it took me three times when I first started). The common lisp ecosystem is nearly impossible to navigate and the paradigm's stumpwm uses to manage windows are, as you point out, not in line with the majority of tiling/dynamic window managers.
Once you spend enough time with it, the paradigm clicks and you slowly build knowledge of the ecosystem until one day all of the pitfalls and mis-features seem well planned intentional parts of the experience.
If you could change one thing about the -Getting Started with StumpWM- experience, what would it be? A guided tutorial? A well written intro document? What needs to be covered? Do we need to work on the example init file? Better Defaults?
While -the emacs of window managers- is part of our ethos, I think StumpWM is better defined as -a window managing API with some reasonable defaults if you use GNU Screen-.
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Hi, I'm the current maintainer of StumpWM. I wanted to thank you for the thorough review. I also appreciate the feedback of our lack of documentation. StumpWM grew out of ratpoison, but it also has (now esoteric) ideas about documentation. The manual is compiled into an info file from doc-strings in the source code. While this is very lispy and inline with emacs, we don't do a good job advertising this.
In fact, getting started with StumpWM is nearly impossible (it took me three times when I first started). The common lisp ecosystem is nearly impossible to navigate and the paradigm's stumpwm uses to manage windows are, as you point out, not in line with the majority of tiling/dynamic window managers.
Once you spend enough time with it, the paradigm clicks and you slowly build knowledge of the ecosystem until one day all of the pitfalls and mis-features seem well planned intentional parts of the experience.
If you could change one thing about the -Getting Started with StumpWM- experience, what would it be? A guided tutorial? A well written intro document? What needs to be covered? Do we need to work on the example init file? Better Defaults?
While -the emacs of window managers- is part of our ethos, I think StumpWM is better defined as -a window managing API with some reasonable defaults if you use GNU Screen-.
reply
Thomas
Thanks for making this video, you have some very useful points about stump. I think it would be helpful if there was more documentation geared towards new users out there too. As a stump user, I do think you're being a bit hard on the software, though. One of the main things that comes through is that you find the keybindings overly-complex and frustrating. I can understand why, but as an emacs user they seemed to me to be intuitive and logical. In fact I found the software much easier to pick up than the other window managers I've tried (Awesome and i3). I don't see why anyone would use stump as a window manager unless they are both (1) very fond of emacs and (2) comfortable with lisp programming. So it's important to remember that this software has a niche audience who really appreciate it. Also, I never had a problem with the mouse scrolling. I got the impression this issue was resolved since you made the video.
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Thanks for making this video, you have some very useful points about stump. I think it would be helpful if there was more documentation geared towards new users out there too. As a stump user, I do think you're being a bit hard on the software, though. One of the main things that comes through is that you find the keybindings overly-complex and frustrating. I can understand why, but as an emacs user they seemed to me to be intuitive and logical. In fact I found the software much easier to pick up than the other window managers I've tried (Awesome and i3). I don't see why anyone would use stump as a window manager unless they are both (1) very fond of emacs and (2) comfortable with lisp programming. So it's important to remember that this software has a niche audience who really appreciate it. Also, I never had a problem with the mouse scrolling. I got the impression this issue was resolved since you made the video.
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KmartKade
StumpWM is a perfect launch point for those who want to learn Common Lisp. I enjoy just how customizable it can be, as Lisp is one of those -there's no one way to do things- types of languages. I'm not a frequent developer, but it's that... esoteric or arcane concept what grasps me.
I do notice you are using defuns instead of defcommands in your config for your mode-line info. Like stated above - there's no one way to do it, but using a defcommand would make it more of a StumpWM only setting instead of a global common lisp function.
Also, one thing I think any Stump user here would suggest is to set up slynk or swank in your Stump config, as this spins up a REPL server within the running Lisp image, so you can easily add functions and quickly reload before adding them into the config file.
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StumpWM is a perfect launch point for those who want to learn Common Lisp. I enjoy just how customizable it can be, as Lisp is one of those -there's no one way to do things- types of languages. I'm not a frequent developer, but it's that... esoteric or arcane concept what grasps me.
I do notice you are using defuns instead of defcommands in your config for your mode-line info. Like stated above - there's no one way to do it, but using a defcommand would make it more of a StumpWM only setting instead of a global common lisp function.
Also, one thing I think any Stump user here would suggest is to set up slynk or swank in your Stump config, as this spins up a REPL server within the running Lisp image, so you can easily add functions and quickly reload before adding them into the config file.
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birmanets
Stumpwm configuration can take months to hone. Its always a work in progress like Emacs.
Stump is not something you can learn in 4 days. It is a maximalist WM not minimalist.
If speed is what your looking for Stump is not the WM you want.
You can write menus to select stuff or your own commands. You need to know some Common lisp. Then it opens up opportunities. Other Window managers seem as alien to me as Stump does to you.
Some tips:
You can rebind keys to anything you like.
Sending too much info from functions to the modeline slows Stumpwm down. You can use timers to delay functions. Thats another video.
Fonts can be changed to ttf fonts using the ttf-fonts from the the Stump contrib/modules section.
Type Prefix : and then commands to see all the commands Stump has.
reply
Stumpwm configuration can take months to hone. Its always a work in progress like Emacs.
Stump is not something you can learn in 4 days. It is a maximalist WM not minimalist.
If speed is what your looking for Stump is not the WM you want.
You can write menus to select stuff or your own commands. You need to know some Common lisp. Then it opens up opportunities. Other Window managers seem as alien to me as Stump does to you.
Some tips:
You can rebind keys to anything you like.
Sending too much info from functions to the modeline slows Stumpwm down. You can use timers to delay functions. Thats another video.
Fonts can be changed to ttf fonts using the ttf-fonts from the the Stump contrib/modules section.
Type Prefix : and then commands to see all the commands Stump has.
reply
Peter
No idea about stump but I learned lisp. For somebody new to lisp your code looks beautiful. What makes lisp slow - the machine is watching you closely trying to figure out what this guy has in his mind. It doesnot care what you want. It only wants to figure out what you have in your mind. Elypsis around elypses inside of elypses. That is how you get epilyptic ...
I ran away of lisp only to find out forth is lisp written backward and forth is postscript. Be careful lisp is inteligence as an artform or the french say AI. By the way twm. Other windowmanagers only are subsets of twm.
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No idea about stump but I learned lisp. For somebody new to lisp your code looks beautiful. What makes lisp slow - the machine is watching you closely trying to figure out what this guy has in his mind. It doesnot care what you want. It only wants to figure out what you have in your mind. Elypsis around elypses inside of elypses. That is how you get epilyptic ...
I ran away of lisp only to find out forth is lisp written backward and forth is postscript. Be careful lisp is inteligence as an artform or the french say AI. By the way twm. Other windowmanagers only are subsets of twm.
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Dave
funny. I am so new to all this and stump is the only one I can get working the way i imaged it would. Its probably because I found a way into emacs thru space macs and I just bound all the keys to match spacemacs bindings so it makes sense to me. Also I came to it as an alternative to exwm. I saw that people were complaining about threading with exwm so i went the stump route. would love to hear what you had to say about exwm. I learn heaps from your vids. thanks
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funny. I am so new to all this and stump is the only one I can get working the way i imaged it would. Its probably because I found a way into emacs thru space macs and I just bound all the keys to match spacemacs bindings so it makes sense to me. Also I came to it as an alternative to exwm. I saw that people were complaining about threading with exwm so i went the stump route. would love to hear what you had to say about exwm. I learn heaps from your vids. thanks
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Neg
Stumpwm is interesting enough, if you prefer static tiling wm like I am. But unfortunately it's based on clx x11 common lisp bindings which are buggy and slow enough, also this library not async like xcb. For now it's almost no reason to use it because of ion3/notion3/notion4 looks better espessially if you want semi-builtin stuff. Or you can create some similar stuff with i3ipc if you like, but it requires a lot of time to spent.
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Stumpwm is interesting enough, if you prefer static tiling wm like I am. But unfortunately it's based on clx x11 common lisp bindings which are buggy and slow enough, also this library not async like xcb. For now it's almost no reason to use it because of ion3/notion3/notion4 looks better espessially if you want semi-builtin stuff. Or you can create some similar stuff with i3ipc if you like, but it requires a lot of time to spent.
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kc8rwr
I'm not sure why everyone goes right to an emacs comparison when describing Stump's key bindings. I guess I can see there is some resemblance and it's no secret that for both users and developers stump and emacs kind of go together.
Actually looking at the default key bindings though.. the baby came out looking a lot more like screen than emacs IMHOP.
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I'm not sure why everyone goes right to an emacs comparison when describing Stump's key bindings. I guess I can see there is some resemblance and it's no secret that for both users and developers stump and emacs kind of go together.
Actually looking at the default key bindings though.. the baby came out looking a lot more like screen than emacs IMHOP.
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it_industry
i like modifying desktop environments but working on a tiling window manager just kills me, i dont know a single reason why but it always bugs the hell out of me. i spent like over three days just trying to get qtile to work for me but i just cant, its the same with fluxbox, openbox, or anything. but anyways great video DT, keep up the good work
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i like modifying desktop environments but working on a tiling window manager just kills me, i dont know a single reason why but it always bugs the hell out of me. i spent like over three days just trying to get qtile to work for me but i just cant, its the same with fluxbox, openbox, or anything. but anyways great video DT, keep up the good work
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Juha
Re performance issues, your modeline format seems a bit fishy to me. You're executing 3 shell commands every time the modeline is refreshed. Try caching the shell command results to variables and see if that improves performance.
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Re performance issues, your modeline format seems a bit fishy to me. You're executing 3 shell commands every time the modeline is refreshed. Try caching the shell command results to variables and see if that improves performance.
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