How the hell do you use awesome?

R

richbsd

I can't stand people who claim their thing is so well documented when it's not. I read all the awesome documentation and after spending almost a whole day with this frustrating thing I can't even get a simple application to run. I can type firefox3 from the terminal and it runs but I can't figure out how to get it running from the menu. It's a real stupid name too. When I google for awesome every thing under the sun shows up with the word awesome in it that has nothing to do with this program. It's very difficult to find help. When I move my mouse out of the firefox window it closes the app too. I can tell this is going to be a real pain. In myawesomemenu in rc.lua I put this line;

{ "Firefox", firefox3 },

But when I click it in the menu it does nothing. Can anyone help me to understand how to use this window manager? Their documentation is close to useless. Sure, it's full of words but it's not clear what they mean or how to use them. It doesn't clearly explain how to do anything. I'm about ready to chuck this thing and go back to fluxbox but I couldn't get transparent windows working with eterm so this was supposed to be the latest and greatest window manager but it's just wasting my time. What do you have to do to get something to run from the menu? How do I get the windows to float instead of take up all the space? Do you do everything in the rc.lua file? And what's the difference between rc.lua and awesomerc?

x(
 
Since I can't see an edit button next to my post i'll start another. When I right click the awesome desktop the popup menu shows the contents of myawesomemenu. But I've noticed in other people's rc.lua files that they put their apps in the mymainmenu section. How do you see that menu?
 
Sorry, can't help specifically, but you might like dwm if you like the promise of "awesome", as it was originally forked from dwm.

Configuration of dwm is editing a .h file and recompiling. Simple.
 
richbsd said:
In myawesomemenu in rc.lua I put this line;

{ "Firefox", firefox3 },
Click to expand...

Try this:

Code: 
mymainmenu = awful.menu.new({ items = {
{ "awesome", myawesomemenu, beautiful.awesome_icon },
{ "firefox", "/usr/local/bin/firefox3" },
{ "open terminal", terminal } }})

richbsd said:
How do I get the windows to float instead of take up all the space?
Click to expand...

You can change tiling layout by pressing <special>+space. Current layout is indicated by icon in the top bar. Floating layout is indicated by a small cloud. I hope you can change the default layout changing line

Code: 
awful.layout.set(layouts[1], tags[s][tagnumber])

in

Code: 
-- Define tags table.
tags = {}
for s = 1, screen.count() do
    -- Each screen has its own tag table.
    tags[s] = {}
    -- Create 9 tags per screen.
    for tagnumber = 1, 9 do
        tags[s][tagnumber] = tag(tagnumber)
        -- Add tags to screen one by one
        tags[s][tagnumber].screen = s
        awful.layout.set(layouts[1], tags[s][tagnumber])
    end
    -- I'm sure you want to see at least one tag.
    tags[s][1].selected = true
end

to

Code: 
awful.layout.set(layouts[10], tags[s][tagnumber])

But why to use a tiling windows manager if you want all windows floating? ;)

richbsd said:
Do you do everything in the rc.lua file?
Click to expand...

Except theme configuration, yes.

richbsd said:
And what's the difference between rc.lua and awesomerc?
Click to expand...

awesomerc is used by awesome version 2.x, version 3.x is configured thru ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua.
 
Thanks pbd, I got it working :beergrin but noticed that while most windows have a titlebar that I can click and move the window around, Firefox, xterm, and Rox don't have a titlebar. They open in the upper left corner and I can't move them.

I didn't get awesome for tiling but for the transparency. I'm having intermittent problems with eterm crashing my fluxbox desktop and dumping me out to the command prompt when I open a terminal. So I'm going to try to get transparent floating windows with awesome.

I have a few more questions;

How do you resize windows? I can't seem to drag the corners to resize the window and Amarok starts in fullscreen mode and I can't resize it.

What do the star, plus sign and blue arrow mean in the upper right of the windows? The rocket is obviously fullscreen.
 
I know this post is a few years old, but why use a tiling window manager if you want all floating?

I use awesome 3.3, 3.4 and 3.5 and I never seem to have problems. Programming in LUA is quite simple and awesome is pretty straight forward. It's not as easy as Fluxbox, but it's not too hard to figured out. The name awesome is an odd name when u you search for it. But adding WM at the end can give u you better results. If you're interested in a simple floating window manager that is quite similar to a tiling window manager but it doesn't tile, I would try out MCWM, it is my favourite WM. u You can also try out 2bwm or EvilWM, they are very great and quite simple WM as well mcwm is all in C similar to DWM like some mention earlier and yeah u you edit the config.h file and just remake it. Quite simple right?

So if anyone new comes to this post maybe try this out.

Cheers!
 
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