Introducing Awesome Window Manager
Tiling window managers.
So called tiling window managers are minimalistic in that they tend to have minimal decorations/eye candy, often just a frame, and make extensive use of key bindings (keyboard shortcuts).
The advantages of tiling window managers are that they are light weight, fast, and make maximal use of monitor real estate.
If you are not familiar with these window managers, there are several demonstrations on the web:
Awesome window manager
Awesome was chosen as it has superior mouse integration then most tiling window managers, including a graphical menu when clicking on the desktop.
There is an overview of awesome here .
With many of the tiling window managers, uses are expected to read the man pages, and awesome is no exception.
Helpful tips
First, awesome is configured in lua. This set of tutorials is extremely helpful for learning lua and the awesome wiki and awesome man pages are helpful for learning to configure awesome.
Key bindings
The following is a brief list of what I found to be the most helpful initial key bindings.
mod4 = key with windows logo on it
Grab windows → mod4 + right mouse
In "floating mode" you can move a windows within the "viewport" (Awesome calls "desktops" "viewports") similar to non-tiling window managers.
Grab (move) a window → mod4 + left mouse button
Resize a window → mod4 + right mouse button
In a tiled layout, window are resized and positioned according to various algorithms. The advantage is windows then make maximal use of monitor real estate.
Resize windows mod4 + left mouse
Open a terminal mod4 + enter (return)
Open a menu left click on the desktop or on the menu icon in the panel on the upper left
Menu shortcut, similar to dmenu mod4 + r - opens a command line the top near the names of the workspaces. You can use tab completion when entering commands. Hit the esc key to cancel, the enter key to execute the command.
Change tiling algorithms → mod4 + space bar
go back one → mod4 + shift + spacebar
Close current (focused) window → mod4 + shift + c
Move between viewports (desktops) → mod4 + r/l arrow keys
Minimize a window → mod4 + n
Maximize a window → mod4 + m
Cycle focus through the windows → mod4 + j or k
See also : man awesome
Algorhthums for window size and placement.
To change the algorithm used by awesome for windows, click the icon in the upper right corner of the screen.
Or use mod4 + space bar