MX 23 awesome xfce

[crackbarrel]

Currently updating second release.

It is working fine. There's alt tab, multi display supported, hide bars and I've added a few shortcuts in rc.lua.

Some configs needs to be added again after installing.

sudo chmod +x /usr/local/bin/toggle-panel.sh
Right click panel -> panel -> Panel config -> set to hide intelligently
Set panel to bottom
In MX tweak, set theme to dark

[crackbarrel]

After playing around with AwesomeWm and xfce, I'm back to xfwm. Sometimes the window won't fit with xfce panel for unknown reason and I need to logout and login until it size windows properly. In the end, I don't really need a tiling window manager. Xfwm has almost everything I need, it only lacks workspace per screen (but the stickly window is a good alternative) and being able to tile in 3 column (and I don't actually think I need that).

I also have some unexpected crashing bugs. I haven't really investigated. It also happened when I've set back to xfwm so it may be related to the snapshot, the configs I've done or not at all. I suspect logseq to have something to do with it. I think it alwayhs have happened while logseq was running (but I also have it running often), which I don't think ever hapened with ubuntu + dwm.

Here's what I use with xfwm:
tiling with super + arrow (as default) and qwas (for 1/4 tiling)
alt + tab and super + tab (the later, quite useful for cycling console)
super + x to maximize windows (I couldn't find something that would maximize everything by default)
alt+F6 to stick an app on secondary monitor

[crackbarrel]

I'm back to AwesomeWM!

I don't know if there's any interest into that since I'm the only one posting here (perhaps I should start a blog). Anyway, I think I don't have any crash when I just use regular MX XFCE but something is crashing randomly and I believe it has to do with power management. I need to test this on another device to make sure it isn,t my SSD. I,ve removed XFCE screen saver app, seems like it helps but it still crash.

I've stopped bothering with the XFCE panel and just let it appear on whatever screen it defaults to. I just want muggles to be able to navigate on my device. I've also removed title bars, those are too vintage to fit in a modern system.

I've added some rofi stuff, it's great. I'm not able to do something as good as a whole distro by myself obviously but rofi defenitely holds a lot of possibilities. I've also got Nix package manager to get the latest qutebrowser working properly. If you want that, you may need to install nixGL then create a .desktop file that launch nixGL qutebrowser. I also got rofimoji from nix, which for some reason doesn't work as a standalone, but it works fine with rofi, so I don't care.

I'm also running AwesomeWM instead of XFCE (on the login). XFCE session rely on its config file and I need to remove XFWM from it otherwise it won't work (if I recall properly). So to run regular XFCE MX, just launch a terminal and manually launch XFWM so now you can get Awesome and XFCE (pretty sure there's a better way to do that). The best would be to get rid of XFCE session (the culprit to all this hack) and start apps in .xsession or something like that but I don't know if XFCE session does something else I want plus I like the startup app as is.

And that's where I'm at with MX linux and Awesome.

[CharlesV]

I would say there is definitely some interest ... the view count on this topic is now over 1043, so someone besides me is watching :-)

I tried running awesome some time back ( non MX ) and found it a frustration in effort so gave up. But, in following your posting it looks like you have found a way, so I may be checking it all out again in the near future.

In the event nobody else says it ... Thank you for your detail, notes and posting your efforts here.

[crackbarrel]

Thanks!

I have to install it on another device . I will try to make a release then or provide a git with all the configs.

I've made Awesome keybinding for arrows so it works the same as hjkl, although in my DWM I was using simpler keybinding with arrows, Awesome has some features I'm not so sure I understand but I am able to get a 3 column layout. I will probably look into these layout thing. To me, it makes more sens to have column and horizontal layout with simple keybinding to hide windows and cycle them all. I don't know if I'll get there though because I pretty much always use maximized layout (something I wasn't able to get with XFCE).

[crackbarrel]

I've used MX boot app to change the spash screen and almost locked myself out of the computer. Fortunately, I've changed the boot menu from 0 to 5 seconds at the same time. Otherwise ,I don't know how I would have recovered.

So now, splash no longer work unless I use systemd. Sysvinit does work without spash screen at least, but this morning it crashed early which wasn't happening before. For now, I'll be on SystemD and see if it still crashes.

I've remembered that my device had lot of troubles when I first installed linux back then. Having to remove battery to restart it...

I don't know if SystemD is doing something that fixes these crash, perhaps my device is too recent for sysvinit (for now). I'll report back if it still crashes.

[crackbarrel]

... still got a freeze with systemD. It was different but I couldn't do anything.

[crackbarrel]

These crash are quite random. I did not get any since I've posted last time. Still using systemD and leaving computer on while I'm away (which is what seem to cause a crash). Perhaps, I wasn't actually on systemd last time? Anyway, I think I'll do a repo for the setup and configs in june. I'm too busy for now and I won't be testing on another device till the end of may.

Stay tuned!

[crackbarrel]

So I've finally got my fix, was SSD.

Here's the post about it:
viewtopic.php?f=107&t=80666&p=788672#p788672

Will soon install MX on a new device and setup Awesome. I hope I will have enough time to make something refined.

I don't know why, my XFCE panel apps won't redirect to Awesome Tab so it has become quite useless. Possibly has something to do with stuff I changed for sleep, apps were moving to tab 1.

I think I will go for a git with .config files instead of making an ISO