Solved DE and WM for easy keyboard navigation

Hello everyone,

I want to start using FreeBSD on my Desktop PC and need advice about what Windows Manager and Desktop Environment to use (with Xorg/X11).

After using Windows on my PC for over 15 years I switched to Pop!_OS about 2 years ago. On both I used keyboard shortcuts where ever possible as well as virtual desktops.

If possible, I would like to set up my FreeBSD PC in a way similar to them.

For example, I want virtual desktops to be "isolated" from each other, so that pressing Alt+Tab only switches between windows in the active virtual desktop, and not also switch between virtual desktop 1 and 2 (looking at you Pop!_OS / GNOME).

I don't need tiling, fancy animations or effects like transparancy, just something simple/lightweight.

Im happy for recommendations :)
 
I like JWM. If you're familiar with XML, it's good for it. Thread howto-jwm-configuration.59265 has a lot of information on setting this one up.

I'm not good with hotkey or tiling window managers. x11-wm/mcwm is a window manager which only requies a text console. There's hotkey tools in ports which can be used for window managers that don't have them. Also, there's x11/thingylaunch.


For a handful of window managers and their appearance, see: Thread screenshots-of-bsd-window-managers-for-x11.81505. There's plenty of other ones too, so you can get ideas on using those.
 
It's been my experience over the years that simply trying desktop environments and window managers is the best. Back in the day when I switched from IBM mainframe to UNIX (Solaris and SunOS) I used OpenLook and fvwm2. Since then I've tried numerous window managers and desktop environments, using Gnome2 for quite some time, abandoning it for its huge memory footprint. Which BTW KDE also consumed a lot of memory. At the time I was using a laptop with 768 MB RAM, with ZFS. At that time I ditched Gnome and KDE in favour of fvwm2 again. Since then switching to Motif and finally CDE.

Why all this bouncing around? This was over more than 25 years. My tastes have changed and having experienced different window managers and desktop environments I finally settled on CDE because it has a small footprint -- meaning my current laptop can use more RAM for ZFS ARC, it's faster than waiting for disk or even SSD -- AND, it feels more like the exciting time back when I was new to UNIX, learning a lot of new stuff. I'm used to it.

Now, I'm not trying to sell you on CDE or any DE or WM for that matter. My message to you is install one -- pkg install and pkg delete are easy these days -- try it and if you like it use it. IF you want to compare move on to the next one.

Currently I have CDE, Motif (obviously), and a couple of others installed on my laptop. I don't use the others but when I'm with other people, like at OpenHack (we meet at a pub, open our laptops, chat and code), I may log into one of the other desktops simply to show people that FreeBSD has choices. Having said that, the last time I was at OpenHack a month ago a number of people (in their 20's) mentioned how pleasant CDE looked -- and I'm in my 60's.

A desktop environment is a personal choice. I can't tell you what choice you should make but I can suggest to simply try a few out and stick with the one you like. But when you do, try a tiling WM/DE and try a stacking WM/DE. I don't like tiling WMs but you may. But you won't know unless you try.

You may try different WMs over your UNIX career but you'll probably gravitate back to one that you've found to be most productive with. That was my story. Try a few and stick with the one you like.
 
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