A good window manager for me?
For some time now I’ve been wanting to find a window manager that allows me to improve my current “implementation” of my workflow. I currently use KWin.
Since I’m a bit overwhelmed by the number of window managers available, some of them being perhaps too flexible, and since what I want is very, very specific, I thought I’d go for a lazy-web post.
My workflow is simple: I don’t do tiling, and my sole wish is that a simple key combo (Mod + one letter) can activate the window designated by that combo. Ideally I can statically assign combos to each application (or, in general, window properties) from the configuration file, but I can also use a special combo to change on-the-fly the current keybindings for a particular window.
At the moment I’m “faking” this with several methods combined:
keeping the number of windows in my main virtual desktop low, so that one or two Alt-Tab always bring me to the right window.
using a terminal emulator with tab support, so that I can switch terminal context on a separate level than Alt-Tab.
assiging a simple key combo to “next/previous virtual desktop”, and have in that one a number of small applications I only seldomly use.
minimizing to the system tray applications that support it, so that they are one click away (eg. Akregator).
using, when available, a global key shortcut to show/hide a window (eg. Minirok, or previously Amarok).
In my new world, I’d be able to just type Mod+M to activate Minirok, Mod+A to activate Akregator, Mod+B for the browser, and several others keybindings for each instance of my terminal emulator (one for my -release work, one for my ongoing Uni work, another for my ongoing programming work).
I really, really want that’s it’s just one Mod plus a key, because I’m convinced that’d work out very well for me (though it should offer a way to cycle among all windows as well). As for the rest, ability to display Kicker (KDE’s panel) gracefully would be a plus.
Please mail me with your suggestions, but I’d appreciate if you could include pointers to the relevant parts of the documentation, or even examples, of how to accomplish what I want. I’ve tried eg. awesome 3, and I only managed to get lost in Lua-land.