The free world is the new continent in cyberspace that we have built so we can live here in freedom. It's impossible to live in freedom in the old world of cyberspace, where every program has its feudal lord that bullies and mistreats the users. So, to live in freedom we have to build a new continent. Because this is a virtual continent, it has room for everyone, and there are no immigration restrictions. - Richard Stallman -
wmii is a small, dynamic window manager for X11. It is scriptable, has a 9p filesystem interface and supports classic and tiling (acme-like) window management. It aims to maintain a small and clean (read hackable and beautiful) codebase.
Links.
Make sure that the X Window System headers are installed if you want to build wmii from source.
Packages.
If there are no packages for your Linux distribution/OS yet, ask the appropriate maintainers to create one or compile wmii from source. Debian.
Official debian packages are available in the unstable and testing repository on debian.org. Backports for stable are available on backports.org. Prospective packages and/or snapshots can be downloaded from the maintainers website. There is also a user-supplied apt repository at dpkg.org.
wmii also comes with debian packaging materials. To build a deb, type:
make deb-dep # Installs any missing build dependencies.
make deb # Builds a deb
See also Ubuntu, below.
Ubuntu.
Official ubuntu packages are available in the universe repository. Up-to-date snapshots are also available in the wmii Launchpad PPA. These packages may also work on debian systems. To build your own deb, see Debian above.
wmii-3.6 is available in the Arch [extra] repository.
wmii-hg is available in AUR [unsupported]. Building with makepkg pulls the latest hg revision.
It is also possible to build an Arch package by simply running makepkg from the base of the wmii source tree.
For up-do-date packages, you can add the suckless repo to /etc/pacman.conf:
[suckless]
Server = http://dl.suckless.org/arch/$arch
First of all, have a look if there are binary packages of wmii in your distribution. Debian, Ubuntu and Gentoo should already have good packages. If you found a trustworthy package, you may now safely skip this section.
For all those who are still reading this, let me tell you that you are on the good side because if you grab the sources and compile them yourself you'll benefit from having everything in it's original place, which will ease your use of wmii.
Uninstalling a previous version:
cd /path/to/wmii-previous
make uninstall && make clean
In case you're installing a newer version of wmii, this is the first thing you should do otherwise you'll end up mixing binaries, configuration files and manual-pages of different and potentially incompatible versions.
Unpack it:
tar xzf wmii-3.tar.gz
cd wmii-3
Edit the configuration:
vim config.mk
The most important variable to set is the PREFIX, which states, where you want wmii-3 to be installed to. If you are unsure, keep the default, it won't break your system.
Run make and make install:
make && make install
Setup the X-server to start wmii as your default window manager. You may do that by editing the file ~/.xinitrc.
#!/bin/sh
exec wmii
Now you are finished. Please note that autoconf tools are not used for various reasons 6. Please don't ask the wmii developers to use autoconf, they won't listen to you.
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Ratpoison is a tiling window manager for the X Window System primarily developed by Shawn Betts.
Ratpoison is a simple Window Manager with no fat library dependencies, no fancy graphics, no window decorations, and no rodent dependence. It is largely modelled after GNU Screen which has done wonders in the virtual terminal market.
The screen can be split into non-overlapping frames. All windows are kept maximized inside their frames to take full advantage of your precious screen real estate.
All interaction with the window manager is done through keystrokes. ratpoison has a prefix map to minimize the key clobbering that cripples Emacs and other quality pieces of software.
If you're wondering how we came up with the name ratpoison, here is the usenet post that started it all.
Its user interface and much of its functionality are inspired by the GNU Screen terminal multiplexer.
Its name reflects a major design goal of ratpoison: it lets the user manage windows without using the mouse. Unlike other tiling window managers like Ion, ratpoison completely ignores the mouse, and avoids window decorations as much as possible.
Ratpoison is free software licensed under the GNU General Public License.
Reception
Mark Pilgrim, a frequent user, praised it for being "minimalist" and "configurable".[5] Jeff Covey found it "lightning fast and perfectly stable".
Peter Seebach remarked that "the convenience and performance are impressive; the learning curve, however, daunts many users.
Similarly, Brian Proffitt observes that "the key commands are well explained in this window manager's man pages, and whatever you do, read these first. The keyboard commands do make sense after some use but initially the learning curve is pretty steep."
In the same vein, Bruce Byfield found it (and stumpwm) "virtually unusable until you read the documentation".
Stumpwm is a window manager intended as a successor to ratpoison, created when Betts found ratpoison growing increasingly large and "lispy". As explained on the StumpWM wiki, the developers decided to largely reimplement ratpoison in Common Lisp:
StumpWM grew out of the authors' frustration with writing ratpoison in C. Very quickly we realized we were building into ratpoison lispy-emacs style paradigms. We had a REPL hanging off 'C-t :', hooks, and a growing subset of Common Lisp in the implementation... It was clear what we really wanted was a window manager written in Lisp from the ground up with lots of room for customizing and real-time hacking.
Ratpoison is, however, just the Linux window manager some people need. It is an ultra-lite tiling window manager, very fast, and does not use the mouse for any user action. If you prefer to work primarily from the keyboard, this might be just your ticket. Note that though ratpoison doesn't use the mouse, applications that use the mouse can still do so.
Ratpoison, like Dwm, is a tiling window manager, meaning that it lets the user arrange the multiple open windows on a screen in a tile manner. The windows fit tightly together and do not overlap. It's about using up all the screen surface area with window content -- not frills. It's also about being able to quickly move between windows without use of a mouse.
Ratpoison initially presents a plain, unadorned screen to the user. There is no floating window support, no tab support, and no direct multiple workspace support. There's no title bar on the window, no icons, no buttons, and no panel. Sounds pretty grim, yes?
But ratpoison does have some interesting tricks up its sleeve, including tiling windows, window groups, and the ability to save and restore tile arrangements. The cleverly designed rpws script (for ratpoison Work Space) makes use of some of these features to provide support for a multiple workspace utility. If you decide to experiment with the ratpoison window manager, I urge you to download and install this perl script. Running rpws help will get you started on how to use rpws to augment ratpoison.
In most Linux distributions, ratpoison is easy to install. I use Debian Linux, so I was able to install by doing:
apt-get install ratpoison.
To get the rpws script working with your ratpoison install, insert the following command into your .ratpoisonrc file:
exec rpws init 4 -k
To make this work the rpws has to be marked as executable. You may have to include the full path of rpws in the exec statement. With this addition, ratpoison will have 4 workspace available, and an alt-Fn key (where n is the key numer, like alt-F3) will move you to the respective workspace.
As an example of an ideal application for ratpoison, I have a resuscitated Old Laptop that has only about 83 megabytes of memory. The screen resolution is 800x600 tops. Yet in that old laptop I'm running the Etch version of Debian Linux. I thus am running a significant operating system on what is now considered very meager resources.
I get away with it because I use the ratpoison and dwm window managers. Both are very small in memory requirement, and both can make heavy use of keyboard commands. In fact, ratpoison makes use of only the keyboard.
You might wonder why I don't use ratpoison exclusively. The reason is because ratpoison is purely a tiling window manager. It always consumes the entire screen with whatever frames are open, and windows never partially cover one another. They can exist in side by side frames, or totally cover one another. Applications, like GIMP that desire to open multiple windows of specific size are clobbered by ratpoison's insistence on forcing windows to fit tiles.
With ratpoison, each utility window of Xephem, for example, becomes a full frame by default. You have to either page through the windows to see the various utilities, or tell ratpoison to split the windows into tiled frames and arrange the utilities into the tiled frames. That's not convenient, and not what ratpoison does well. But when you read about how to save frames and create scripts, you may see how you can conquer even those pesky multi-window applications.
For general work, ratpoison provides a very small, very efficient, and very handy environment for those who like to work primarily through the keyboard. For the instances where ratpoison is somewhat of a hindrance, I always have dwm at the ready. Dwm's resource use is as small as ratpoison's, but it can support floating windows as an option.
To use dwm for those special occasions, I can either exit ratpoison and change my .xinitrc file to run dwm, or I can stay in ratpoison, enter alt-t : and when prompted enter tmpwm dwm. This will bring up the dwm window manager, but return to ratpoison when I exit dwm.
Ratpoison Screen Control.
At left you see an example screenshot of ratpoison. You can click on the image to get a full-sized view.
The screen in this example is split into 4 frames of unequal size. At upper left is an xterm showing the ratpoison info file. At upper right is xclock. At lower left is the file manager program thunar. At lower right is xosview
The first thing you might notice is the unusual look of xosview. This is because ratpoison always adjusts a window's size to fit the available frame. The only way to shrink the height of xosview to give a more normal view, in this example, is to simultaneously expand the height of the xclock frame, making it distorted.
That's an example of the nature of the way ratpoison uses tiled frames. However many you set up by splitting the screen, whatever is in each frame is adjusted to fill the frame.
So that brings up a question. How do you split the screen into multiple tiled frames? That's discussed in the next segment.
Getting Around In And Controlling Ratpoison.
If you decide to install ratpoison, at first you might be quite lost. What you get when you login is a big gray screen. Where do you go next?
The first thing to do is type a cntl-t ? command. That's hold down the control key while pressing the t key, then press the ? key. That will fill the screen with the available keyboard commands. The cntl-t key is considered the command key, and precedes any other key on the illustrated help screen to accomplish the respective action. Hit Esc to escape from the help screen.
To get more information about the features and control commands for ratpoison, you should try info ratpoison. If info is installed, it will present a nice, structured help system. You can also do man ratpoison to get some information, though not as much as with the info command.
If you run a command from your big gray screen, such as xterm -e mc to open another xterm with Midnight Commander, you'll find yourself in Midnight Commander. So how do you get back to the window you were just in? It's completely covered up with the Midnight Commander window.
There are a number of ways to switch to different open windows, and to split the screen up into multiple frames. The following table shows a few of the handy commands you may want to start with to help find yourself around to all your open windows. Note that the word window is used to denote the display opened by a task, and the word frame is used to denote a tiled area of the full screen.
# cntl-t space - Switch to next window. Repeated, it cycles through all open windows.
# cntl-t n - Switch to next window -- same as space.
# cntl-t p - Switch to previous window.
# cntl-t w - Display list of open windows
# cntl-t 0-9 - Switch to numbered window (see cntl-t w).
# cntl-t A - Name a window.
# cntl-t ' - Switch to window by name.
# cntl-t s - Split frame into upper and lower frames.
# cntl-t S - Split frame into left and right frames.
# cntl-t Q - Make frame full screen (close other frames).
# cntl-t r - Resize current frame. Press enter when done.
# cntl-t tab - Switch to next frame (if screen is split)
# cntl-t ? - Get help screen.
# cntl-t ! - Run a shell command.
This list is by no means a complete list of ratpoison key commands, but the help screen (cntl-t ?) and the info file will give a complete list. It is possible to change any of the commands to a sequence you find more comfortable. It's also possible to add additional commands, such as key sequences that launch some of your favorite applications. It's even possible to change the command key from cntl-t to something else (I use cntl-k).
To customize your ratpoison window manager setup, make a $HOME/.ratpoisonrc file, and make your own tailored commands. Below is a snippet of my $HOME/.ratpoisonrc file:
# Change the command key to cntl-k
escape C-k
# Set up easier ability to move to frames than tab
bind j focus
# Set up easier key to maximize window than Q (use o)
bind o only
# Bind x to launch a new xterm
bind x exec xterm -bg grey -fg black -fn 8x13 &
# Bind e to my favorite editor
bind e exec xterm -e vim
These new keys now operate in conjunction with the command key to do the operations desired. For example, cntl-t x launches an x terminal. The full list of ratpoison commands that can be bound to keys is in the info file under Command Index
Download.
Some Help With Tiling.
I've already suggested that you use the rpws script to augment your Linux ratpoison install. With rpws, you have what is functionally multiple workspaces. Whatever tiles you set up on a computer workspace are preserved by rpws. When you change go another workspace, the new workspace's tile arrangement will be recovered.
I've added a couple of simple scripts of my own to give me the ability to save screen tile arrangements for later use, then restore them at will. These scripts, which I named rput for saving tile arrangements and rget for retrieving tile arrangements, are defined as follows:
...rput...
#!/bin/tcsh
# save a current frame setup
ratpoison -c fdump >$1
Typing rput some_name from a Linux xterm within a tile arrangement will save the tile arrangement in a file by the name I choose. When I run rget the_same_name at a later time (even another session), the tile arrangement will be restored, and the focus will be on the tile I was in when I saved the arrangement.
Not too terrific, I admit. But when combined with the ability to pass commands to ratpoison from script files, this concept can be used to make a script file to launch some multi-windowing utility or some arrangement of multiple tasks and automatically reconstruct the tile arrangement with each tile hosting the windows as I wish.
For example, by saving a tile arrangement and making a launch script, I can have the screen arrangement shown at left pop up in it's same arrangement every time I run it. The setting up of tiles, loading of the program, and assignment of windows to tiles can be automatic.
The first trick is to save the tile arrangement with rput, then find out their focus sequence for later reference in the launch script. To do that you can use the cntl-t j command to step focus through the tiles, and take note of the sequence.
In the screenshot shown here, I have an xephem configuration that always shows the xephem control window, the xephem sky view and the xephem Jupiter view. With the auto-tiling launch script I can restore my xephem setup a single command.
The following script for the illustrated xephem display is shown below:
Notice that the script starts with my rget script, which restores a previously saved (with rput) tile arrangement. Then the script instructs ratpoison to start the xephem program. The sleep command is used to give xephem time to run so that the windows it creates will exist before the remainder of the script references them.
The focus command advances focus to the next tile. In this case, I wanted the control window of xephem to be in the next tile from the one I was in when I saved the tile arrangement. Each focus command instructs ratpoison to advance focus to the next tile, just like the cntl-t j key sequence does.
The select command instructs ratpoison to select the indicated window name for the currently focused tile. The window names are the same as those shown by the cntl-t w ratpoison command for displaying a list of opened windows.
The sequence of ratpoison -c commands shown in the illustration can be broken down into a single, merged command as follows:
Once you master the use of a few scripts to handle those applications that need multiple windows, you'll be able to fly with ratpoison, using about the minimum possible overhead for the X windows system.
Hopefully this whirlwind explanation will help you see how you can save and restore tile arrangements, and combine that ability with launch scripts to auto-load and arrange program windows.
Summary.
So is ratpoison what you want for your high powered desktop computer?
Probably not. Unless -- you are a developer or high powered programmer who finds reaching for the mouse an enormous distraction. But for my old laptop, with its minimal memory and ailing track ball mouse, ratpoison works very well. In fact, even if the tiny track ball was working perfectly, I'd likely still find ratpoison to be very handy in applications where I do mostly word processing, spell checking, programming, and similar tasks. I find that using ratpoison as my laptop default and dwm as my floating window alternative works very well. Maybe it will for at least some of your applications also.
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Puppy Linux is yet another Linux distribution. What's different here is that Puppy is extraordinarily small, yet quite full-featured.
Puppy boots into a ramdisk and, unlike live CD distributions that have to keep pulling stuff off the CD, it loads into RAM. This means that all applications start in the blink of an eye and respond to user input instantly.
Puppy Linux has the ability to boot off a flash card or any USB memory device, CDROM, Zip disk or LS/120/240 Superdisk, floppy disks, internal hard drive. It can even use a multisession formatted CD-RW/DVD-RW to save everything back to the CD/DVD with no hard drive required at all.
Updates (via Distrowatch):
Larry Short has announced the release of Puppy Linux 5.2.8, a small and fast desktop distribution built from scratch and compatible with Ubuntu binary packages: "Lucid Puppy is our edition of Puppy Linux that is built from Ubuntu binary packages, hence has compatibility with, and access to, the vast Ubuntu package repositories. Lucid Puppy 5.2.8 is the fastest and friendliest Lucid yet. It is the fastest because it is the first Lucid to use the C and FFmpeg libraries optimized for i686 computers rather than the older i386 computers. Lucid 5.2.8 has also received a thorough going-over under the hood. There is new and updated firmware and drivers for many devices and the hardware detection and configuration routines have been extensively tested and enhanced."
• 2011-05-25: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.1.2 "Wary"
• 2011-04-03: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.2.5
• 2011-02-21: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.1 "Wary"
• 2011-01-06: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.2
• 2010-12-29: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.0 "Wary"
• 2010-08-13: Distribution Release: Puppy Linux 5.1
Puppy can be easily installed to many different media. Having downloaded the live-CD "ISO" file, you would normally burn that to a CD or DVD and then "boot" the computer from it, and you have a running Puppy. The "Puppy on a CD" link below explains all about that, but firstly, here is a link to download Puppy:
Warning to MS Windows users: In the Puppy Linux forum, there are a few reports of the files on the Puppy live-CD being incorrectly named. Especially "PUP_430.SFS" (in the case of Puppy version 4.3). What needs to be understood is that this is not a new "bug", all prior puppies have it. The reason that you are seeing the wrong filenames is because you are using MS Windows. That is, running Windows, you plug in the Puppy CD and view the files in Windows Explorer. I presume that you are doing this to copy the files for doing a frugal hard-drive install or USB Flash drive install. The Puppy live-CD ISO file (CD image) is created without Joliet extensions -- this is needed for MS Windows to read the filenames on a CD/DVD correctly. This is what causes the problem. The reason that Joliet extensions is left off is because I had experience that it breaks saving of sessions for the multisession-CD/DVD (saving sessions back to the CD/DVD, no hard-drive or other storage media required on the PC). So, the question must be raised, why are you running Windows to copy the files off the Puppy CD? You need to wean yourself off this dependence on Windows. Boot the live-CD, then you have a running Puppy! Alternatively, maybe you only have the downloaded 'pup-430.iso' live-CD image, you have not burnt it to CD, and you are running MS Windows, and you use a Windows application (Isobuster?) to view the contents of the ISO file and copy out the files. Really, you "should" be running Puppy or some other Linux, but if you really must be running Windows to perform this operation, then copy the files and then rename them... This is how Windows sees the files:
For frugal install, copy the required files to the destination then rename them to (note only some builds of Puppy have the 'z*' file):
initrd.gz pup-430.sfs vmlinuz zp430305.sfs
...most important, rename PUP_430.SFS to pup-430.sfs! Note, viewing inside an ISO file when running Puppy is a piece of cake. Just click on it!
Puppy Linux is a full-fledged operating system, bundled with a collection of application suites for a wide variety of tasks suitable for general use. Puppy is small-sized, so it can boot from many media. It is also useful as a rescue disk, a demonstration system, leaving the original/existing operating system unaltered, or as an OS to a system with a blank or missing hard drive, or for keeping old computers useful.
Puppy can boot from:
* A live USB, including USB flash drives or any other bootable USB storage device (flash-Puppy)
* A live CD (live-Puppy)
* An SD card or built in Flash drive
* A Zip drive or LS-120/240 SuperDisk
* An internal hard disk drive
* A computer network (thin-Puppy)
* An emulator (emulated-puppy)
* A floppy boot disk that loads the rest of the operating system from a USB drive, CD-ROM, or internal hard drive
Puppy Linux features built-in tools which can be used to create bootable USB drives, create new Puppy CDs, or remaster a new live CD with different packages.
Puppy Linux has a unique feature which sets it apart from other Linux distributions: the ability to offer a normal persistently updating working environment on a write-once multisession CD/DVD. (It does not require a rewritable CD/DVD.) Puppy automatically detects changes in the file system and saves them incrementally on the disc. This feature works particularly well with DVDs, partly because of the much larger space available. While other distributions offer Live CD versions of their operating systems, they do not allow programs to be permanently added nor do they allow files to be written to the CD.
Puppy also features sophisticated write-caching system designed to extend the life of USB flash drives that Puppy Linux runs from.
Unlike some other OSes, Puppy Linux does not mount (allow for writing to) hard drives nor connect to the network automatically. This reduces the odds that a bug or even intentionally-added incompatible software could corrupt the contents of a hard drive.
Since Puppy Linux fundamentally runs in RAM, all the files and operations that are created in a session would disappear when the system is shut down. However, it is possible to save files upon shutdown. This feature allows the user to either save the file to disk (USB, HDD etc.) or even write the file system to the same CD puppy is booted from if "multisession" was used to create the booted CD (on CD-Rs as well as CD-RW) where a CD burner is present.
It is also possible to save all files to a disk instead of the file system; examples include a hard drive, USB stick, or even a floppy disk. Puppy can also be installed to a hard disk.
User interface
Desktop with one of multiple integrated themes with XMMS a multimedia player, mtPaint a painting program for creating pixel art and manipulating digital photos and mplayer running, plus an opened text file under Puppy Linux 2.15 CE Viz (with default WM: IceWM)
The default WM in most Puppy releases is JWM.
Packages of the IceWM desktop, Fluxbox and Enlightenment are also available via Puppy's PetGet package (application) management system (see below). Some derivative distributions, called puplets, come with default window managers other than JWM.
When the operating system boots, everything in the Puppy package uncompresses into a RAM area, the "ramdisk". The PC needs to have at least 128 MB of RAM (with no more than 8 MB shared video) for all of Puppy to load into the ramdisk. However, it is possible for it to run on a PC with only about 48 MB of RAM because part of the system can be kept on the hard drive, or less effectively, left on the CD.
Puppy is fairly full-featured for a system that runs entirely in a ramdisk, when booted as Live system or from a 'frugal' installation; however, Puppy also supports the 'full' installation mode, which allows Puppy to run from a hard drive partition, without a ramdisk. Applications were chosen that met various constraints, size in particular. Because one of the aims of the distribution is to be extremely easy to set up, there are many wizards that take the user through the process of a range of common tasks.
Package and distribution management.
Puppy Unleashed (currently replaced by Woof) is a tool used to create Puppy ISO images. It consists of more than 500 packages that are put together according to the user's needs.
Woof is an advanced tool for creating Puppy installations. It requires an Internet connection and some knowledge of Linux to use. It is able to download the binary source packages from another Linux distribution and process them into Puppy Linux packages by just defining the name of that Linux distro. It is equipped with a simpler version control named Bones.
Puppy also comes with a remastering tool that takes a "snapshot" of the current system and lets the user create a live CD from it, and an additional remastering tool that is able to remove installed components.
Puppy Linux uses the T2 SDE build scripts to build the base binary packages.
Puppy Linux's package manager, Puppy Package Manager, accepts packages from other distros (such as .deb packages).
Variants.
Because of the relative ease with which the tool Woof and the remaster tool can be used to build variants of Puppy Linux, there are many variants available. Variants of Puppy Linux are known as puplets.
After Barry Kauler reduced his involvement with the Puppy Project, he designed two new distributions within the same Puppy Linux family, Quirky and Wary.
Quirky
An embedded distro inside the kernel. All files required to make the system was put altogether inside the kernel. It has a simple module loading management but less drivers included.
Wary
A puplet targeted for old hardware and it has long term support. It uses old but long term support Linux kernel. It has newest apps bundled yet retain the old hardware support.
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wmii is a small, dynamic window manager for X11. It is scriptable, has a 9p filesystem interface and supports classic and tiling (acme-like) window management. It aims to maintain a small and clean (read hackable and beautiful) codebase.
Larry Short has announced the release of 
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