awesome (window manager)
awesome with a number of terminals open | |
Original author(s) | Julien Danjou |
Stable release | 3.4.9 / January 17, 2011 |
Written in | C and Lua |
Operating system | Unix-like |
Type | Window manager |
License | GNU General Public License |
Website | awesome.naquadah.org |
awesome is a
The fork was initially nicknamed jdwm, with 'jd' denoting the first letters of its principal programmer's name, and with dwm reminding of the
Aim of the project
“ | A window manager is probably one of the most used software in your day-to-day tasks, with your Web browser, mail reader and text editor. Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several tools for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable. awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible, highly configurable window manager. To achieve this goal, awesome has been designed as a framework window manager. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language. | ” |
Awesome has emerged as a
Features
Configuration and customization
From the very beginning, awesome was conceived as a
Early configuration file formats
Prior to the third major release, one of awesome's features was what Danjou termed a 'no complicated configuration'. First versions of awesome (1.x) were simple modification of
New configuration file
On May 20, 2008, Danjou announced in an e-mail to awesome mailing list that a new format for the configuration file will be used in 3.0 release. The new format was placed in a file ~/.awesomerc.lua, and was later moved to ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua. As the extension suggests, the configuration file is written in
awesome Lua API is now hosted on awesome's homepage, and a tutorial-style article about configuring awesome is posted on the awesome Wiki.
awesome configuration converter
For users migrating from 2.x releases, awesome configuration converter is being developed, although its wiki page states that the development is still in early stages and the software "doesn't work at the moment".
Themes and widgets
It is possible to
Although the default awesome configuration as of 3.2.1 release does not have any status indicators (like wireless network status, battery indicators, etc), users can add these items using widgets. Data for the widgets is supplied using arbitrary
There is also an alternative Wicked Lua library which can be used for creating widgets. Wicked is not included with awesome, but it can be obtained in binary package form, or otherwise installed with distribution's packaging system, in many distributions including
Migration to XCB
The 3.0 version, released September 18, 2008, uses the
Arnaud Fontaine announced the move to XCB on the XCB mailing list on April 9, 2008. In his message to the list, he emphasized the following as main advantages of using XCB: "modular architecture; direct access to the protocols; multithreading; asynchronous requests/replies;". The XCB port was completed the following month and Danjou created a new branch based on XCB.
Lua integration
Because of the perceived problems that limited expanding and customization in pre-3.0 version of awesome, the author decided to integrate Lua-based configuration into awesome. The rc1 of the new Lua-scriptable implementation was announced in August 2008. In September 2008, the first version of awesome with Lua API completed in parallel with XCB implementation.
Distribution package availability
awesome is distributed on a wide range of Unix-like operating systems, including
A list of supported packages can be found on download page.
Named releases
awesome versions 1.0 through 1.3 (September–October 2007) were not named. Starting with the first 2.0 release candidate (November 2007), awesome has used named releases. As of January 17, 2011, the latest stable version is 3.4.9 "Smack".
Invaders module
Among standard awesome libraries, there was a library called 'invaders', which contains the
Licensing
awesome is free software licensed under the
See also
References
External links
- Official website
- Man page
- Screenshots
- Falko Benthin (2008-12-01). "Herr der Fenster. Schlanker Windowmanager Awesome [Lord of the window. Slim Awesome Window Manager]" (in German). Linux User (12/2008). ISSN 1615-4444. https://www.linux-user.de/ausgabe/2008/12/039/index.html. Retrieved 2010-03-16.
Retrieved from : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Awesome_(window_manager)