Diving into Tiling - BSPWM, Polybar and Rofi

hello and welcome to the OTB channel they do say that the best way to learn anything is to get on with it and just do it learning by doing well that's what I've been doing over the last few weeks and I've taught myself to configure BS pwn the window manager poly bar and row fee I'll show you what I've been doing is the intro okay welcome back so with time on my hands I've continued to play around with tiling window managers and for the last three weeks of forced myself to stay in tiling window managers I'll say right from the outset that I'm not yet convinced that they are entirely for me what I am convinced about is the Marte desktop the Marte desktop is probably something I won't be going back to because I've been so impressed with open box however it's about familiarity more than anything else and once you get used to a different system I've been surprised at how quickly I've started to adapt and looking at new things is good I mean I've been a desktop user for 16 years now and before I started this video channel I have to admit I was getting a bit bored I'd learn Linux back in the day when Linux really hurt and that was a good thing because it forced you to learn because he just didn't work properly out of the box and once I'd learnt it all and I found the desktop environment that I liked I sort of lost the excitement it was regenerated again when I started this channel because that was something I wanted to do and with time on my hands I've started to dig into things that I've never touched before so one of them has been the open box window manager I really enjoyed doing that I then played around with i3 and that was okay you know I didn't have a problem with it but I thought let's go out and let's do something completely different let's look at something that really isn't configured at all and this is where BS p WM sits it's a window manager it manages windows it doesn't manage your key bindings it doesn't have a status bar it just manages your windows and on its own it can do absolutely nothing so you have to put it together with a program that manages your key bindings and if you want to stay to spar well you have to go out and find one and decide what you're gonna use and in my case I've chosen poly bar I have to say that the bar probably took longer to get to grips with than anything else and in fact that was the case with X monad in queue tile which I still haven't cracked but I will crack in the end but I've now cracked poly bar it took an awful long time but I've really enjoyed the experience I'm really happy with the desktop that I've got up and running which is not just a window manager anymore it's my own desktop environment and I thought some of you with time on your hands might like to have a play doing the same things what I'm going to do is I'm going to take you through the basic installation on a VM and then bring you back to my desktop it won't be a long video it will be food for thought and a lot of the ideas that I've picked up from the Great and the good out there I'll include links in the video description so let's kick off and have a look at the VM so I'm just gonna run through how I installed BS PWM and poly bar I'm using my virtual machine endeavour OS which seems to have become my trusty demo VM it doesn't really matter if it's arch though an arch based distro you can do it in any district oould name what I actually did was I went to the arch wiki and again it doesn't really matter what distribution place because there's a couple of packages that you're going to need to install irrespective of which distro you actually use the first one is a package called BS pwn this is in the standard pac-man repos of arch and in Debian or a bun too you can also install it as per normal you will also need to install a small package called sx HKD this is because BSP WM doesn't have a method of actually managing key bindings it has to use a separate program which in this case is sx h KD what an awful name but yes so you'll need to install that as well if that isn't installed you will have no way to actually get around BSP WM so install both both of them the quite small programs it doesn't take very long either an apt-get install or pacman - s install either will work depending upon what repo you're in I also decided to install poly bar you have a few options with BSP WM a lot of people seem to run something called lemon bar and there is a BS PWM bar as well but poly bar seems to be the most popular so I went over to again the arch wiki and there's an aur package poly bar and I install that with yay and then I went about setting it up now once you've got the packages installed do not just try and log into BSP WM because you won't get anywhere first of all you're going to have to create your configuration files so I've done this in my doc config directory first create a directory called BS PWM in your doc config directory and also create a directory called SS sx h KD in your doc config directory whilst you're there you might as well also create a directory Paul called poly bar right now all three of those directories are going to be completely empty at the moment so what you need to do is you need to copy over example configuration files and four BS PWM and SS sx h KD RC or si si I can't even say this sx h KD you'll find them in us our share doc BS PWM examples so you literally just fire up a terminal CP us our share doc vs PWM examples and you first copy over a file called BS p WM r or c + sx h dr c into their respective directories i'm not going to show you how to do this it's all here just follow along with poly bar it's pretty much the same process you've created a directory in your dock config directory you need to copy over the example configuration from us our shared dock poly poly bar config and put it into that directory you've just created and along with that the arch wiki actually has a little script there if you create a script in your poly bar directory called launch dot sh copy this into it and then do a chmod plus x to make it executable this will control how poly bar actually starts so that's it in a nutshell install BS pwm install the key bindings program in scott install poly bar again at this stage do not try and log in first of all let's go to BS pwm to see what it says your default BS p WM RC file which isn't really a configuration file to be honest it's pretty small the only thing it has in it and ignore these two entries here which i've just put in is it has SI sx h KD and the ampersand which means that when you start up PS pwm it's saying you should start up the key bindings file at the same time which is a good idea otherwise you won't be able to do anything and you'll have to crash out what I've actually put in here is I've put in a link to a little script I've got running to set my resolution XR NR if you're just running a single screen setup you're probably not gonna need anything like this but on VirtualBox I found that there was no way to set this as full-hd just by logging in I have to have a script in order to do it and it might as well run as I'm logging in you're also going to need to launch poly bar you'll remember that we copied that script across and so I've literally just pointed the bsp WM config file to that launch dot sh script okay other than that you've got ten monitors already set up and a couple of little options as far as what the border width fears and the window gap etc etc but essentially I've done nothing there right let's move on to the sx HK config file this literally is all of the default key bindings for for your window manager now you can change any of these and it's actually quite easy to work work with it's relatively simple as far as formatting is concerned it's not like when you use X monad and you're messing about with Haskell or Python Inc you tile it's a nice straightforward plain text file the one thing you do need to take note of though right from the word go is right at the beginning there's an entry there for terminal emulator and it's super key which is actually your Windows key plus return as it seems to be with most of the window managers however by default this wants to run you are xvt in other words the RX VT unicode terminal and if you don't have that installed you can be hitting super plus return all day long and you will not get a terminal in fact I made that mistake right from the word go and I had to open a TTY and restart like the end to actually get out of the system so install you are xvt or alternatively if you prefer a different program put the name of the program there I actually use Terminator so I replaced you are xvt with terminator last but not least your poly bar config this is a a work of the well it takes more to configure this than it takes to configure BF p WM so I'm not going to go into this at all other than to say that the standard bar that we've just copied in is called example but the launch script that we copied from the arch wiki was called my bar or II had my bar in so you need to make a quick change to that and at the bottom of the script where it says launch poly bar it shouldn't have poly bar my bar followed by the amperes and it should have poly bar example followed by the ampersand whew ok let's see how we get on and I'll show you what you should say right from the word go so I will look logout of this VM or rather I'll log out of marte and we should get up the light DM screen you can already see I've lost the resolution here and so if I didn't have that little script I wouldn't be able to get it back and let's login to BSP WM and hope it all works ok so this is your default you can see that some were within endeavor they hard-code this wallpaper in butt-ass of course as soon as the x-rounder settings have changed it goes all over the place you have up on your left the ten workspaces you can actually click with your mouse if you want to to go to these different workspaces and you have a few little bits and pieces it's like a status bar here telling you various things I'm not quite sure what all of these are actually telling me I can see that's an IP address that's my time presumably that's my GB keyboard who knows right so from here I've actually got you err you are xvt installed on this if I hit super key + enter hello what's this later that came from endeavour so I have no idea what that was but if I hit a super key placenta it will open the terminal if I do it again it'll open another terminal for do it again it will open another terminal if I do super key w-w-w it will close the terminals so this is your starting point with BS PWM and you can do an awful lot with it so let's come out of this VM now and I'll go into my install system right so we're out of the VM now and we're back at my main screen and as you can see it now looks quite different I've been playing around with this now for about two weeks and I've had the time to do quite a bit of messing as you can see I've got little icons up here rather than numbered workspaces no 1 2 3 4 but little awesome icons in order to get them I did to install the awesome fonts and in order to configure it I stole the section out of DTS Polly bar dot file I'll put a link to that in the description I didn't use the whole of Dee T's configuration for Polly bar but his and whole range of other dot files that are found on on github and get lap saw to form the basis of how I built up my Polly bar config you'll also see that I've got a number of what we call modules running on the right hand side so CPU percentage memory down speed up speed a little applet here that's given me the combined pac-man and aur updates and date and time and I've also got my system tray there what did I do to get it looking like this well to start off with if we go to my BS PWM config file it's fairly similar to the one the example one that I showed you the main changes here are I've still got the SS x HKD start up line in it I haven't got the other lines in it because I've put that elsewhere and I'll show you that in a minute but what I had to do was actually set up my system on a multi screen basis I've got two screens and what I decided to do was to put screens one two three four on my primary monitor which is called DP - - - - you'll get there those names just by running exact x-rounder - queue and workspace five six seven eight on my second monitor I believe in theory that you could actually run ten workspaces for each display but I'm not quite sure you'd shift round then these are independent workspaces tied to each screen I certainly don't need more than eight workspaces so it just made sense for me to put the first four on my main screen the next four on my second I did encounter a minor problem the minor problem was that I think BS p WM likes to always think that the screen on the left is your main screen and the screen on the right is the second screen so it's going in a logical order I actually have my setup slightly different I have my main screen on the right and then my second screen on the left and when I was trying to move between workspaces it seemed to be getting confused until some google searching brought up this command which seemed to swap that assumption round and it's all working good ever since I still do launch poly bar and SX HKD from my BS p.m. config file in terms of the key bindings file haven't made a huge amount of changes I've changed my terminal emulator to terminator which is what you're seeing here what else have I done I've added a couple of short cuts to things like chromium PC man FM genie and a couple of scripts I've got that are using Rafi what else have I done right yeah so I think I mentioned this in a previous video that actually I had started to use light DM to start things up and I've actually put a link in the light DM config file to the X random and I've basically saved an ex Randor command into a script with a R and R I've put that into us our share and then in my light DM dot-com file I've linked that script there so that x-rounder sets up the resolution as soon as like DM launches if I put my x-rounder script in here what I was finding was with the dual monitors II kept messing it up and messing up my wallpaper so I wanted a way of starting X R&R before that even happened okay um so that was really good I might do a little video on that what I also did is I created a startup file which is pretty much the same as are used in the likes of open box but again I've linked this into like DM so if you look here at the script I've created a script called ronk bs pwm in us our share and i have the standard things here you know set up compton set up polka authentication so if you launch something like synaptic it prompts you for a password I've done my nitrogen restore there for my wallpaper I've got my Marte volume icon which is up there I've got my network manager applet my per mac tray I force the kia keyboard to be GB I found that without that setting it was going back to us each time I've got the X screensaver there and the last command is be SP WM okay so how have I used that script well like DM actually looks in us our share X session every time you log in so if I CD to us our share helps them I can type I'm still suffering with that yeah X sessions and if I go to BSP alright let's just this what's the BSP WM desktop ok so CAF's BSP W desktop this is created as soon as you install vs PWM and it's just a desktop file and this is all it contains the name vs PWM a comments binary space partitioning window manager and then a link to the exact file now originally this just contained the word BS PWM what I've done on the exact line is I've pointed it to that script run BSP @wm and what it does as I'll log into light DM it runs that script and it starts up all those applications before b SP r WM finishes loading and I found it resolved so many issues when I was just sticking them all in in the standard BS PWM config file as I say x-rounder was causing me problems some of my little applets in my system tray weren't launching it's just taken away lots of issues I'm sure there's many ways to do this but that's the way that I did it what else have I done oh yes I configured my poly bar of course so if I see de config or CD back to start off with and then CD dot config poly there's a whole range of things in here some of it is in fact pretty much all of it is taken from lots of different people's dot files I have some general settings at the top I've then created two different bar sections a primary screen bar which I've just called bar one where on the left hand side this one that you can see I've got something called the BSP WM module which shows all these little icons and on the right I've got CPU memory etc etc are then created a second bar and that's for my secondary screen and I'll just briefly show you that where are we and you will see on here that actually you won't see any of the modules on the right hand side I just have basically the icons for the desktop so then after the screen we have the various modules that can use along with the little icons the awesome icons that I've used so yeah works pretty well what are found in using this is I was missing some things that you take for granted in a desktop environments and just just how to launch one of the applications so I created you know a couple of shortcuts so if for instance I wanted to launch a file manager I just use super alt F and the file manager launches and I wanted an easier way to do that though cuz I didn't want to create shortcuts for every single application that I use I could have used D menu and I've used that in the past but I saw lots of references to this little program that works like D menu called Rafi and that's it and was even a way to include your icons there and you just search for whatever you're searching for and I really like that I've found that I'm using that all the time now I've said before when I was using i3 I had real problems as well remembering the the keyboard shortcuts well to the rescue again using Rafi here the author I've got a cheat sheet that I can just bring up with my super Z key binding which is brilliant these are all little scripts that are found all over the place and I will put links to them in in the video description I've changed some of them around a little bit but you'll see where they're based off also I didn't want to just crash out of the system I wanted the option when I finished to logout to restart to shut down completely and so another little Rafi script so cancel that logout shutdown reboot suspend absolutely brilliant I've been playing with Rafi a lot one I've just done is a fine script again the basic stolen offer tinta web so if I wanted to go into BSP WM for instance I can see down there there's the script just click on that and it opens up the script in genie so actually it's starting to become workable now vs PWM itself it has an unusual way of placing Windows it's almost like in a spiral I can keep doing this and they just get small and smaller and smaller I don't so much mine because the chances of me ever using more than three sections of the screen pretty unlikely so let's keep two terminals open there now at the moment they are child I could make one on a full screen by hitting super F or I could go back to the standard tile layout I could also float one by hitting super s and if it's floating I can move it about with the mouse and do all the normal jiggery-pokery that you do and then go back to the tile layout there's also what we call the monocle layout which is a little bit like stapped so there's the monocle layout and if I just put dfh there is something to see and I wanted to go to the window behind it there you go and super see a switch between them so yeah it does everything else you know I can move between screens I I quite like the fact that it's Mouse friendly I have different things on different workspaces and so far it's just working for me I've been quite surprised but I'm actually learning to like it what I'm doing of course is what everybody does when you go into one of these basic window managers I'm building something that does nothing but manage windows into its own desktop environment which is what it's all about right so that's how I've been keeping myself busy thoroughly enjoyed it and I have to say probably because it's taken so much work I enjoy the finished result more than I enjoyed I three which is a fine window manager but I prefer BS PWM even though it is a mouthful why can't Lennox just come up with simple name so I really don't know there are some real disadvantages to using bs PWM and I'll tell you right now the documentation is appalling so you have to get your Google Flu head on and do some real googling to find answers but apart from that you know the informations out there you'll find it on the likes of Reddit and in various configuration files on github and get lab and you'll figure it out that's what I did so oh what else have I gone well I'd tell you it's really triggered my interest again and I've started looking at other little projects I've been in the back of my mind that I've not touched I'm currently having a go at configuring neo muck for email which is a bit of a pig to configure but I've got it working sort of and I'm determined I am going to start looking at vai I tend to use GUI text editors most of the time Jeanne is what I'm using at the moment but I'll go to the likes of Nano when forced to really when working as route or with pseudo I don't do much I know how to copy and paste and I know how to save and how to exit that's about it so would it be easier using them well perhaps he would I don't know I don't know what I don't know I know how to go into the different modes in vim and how to save a file and exit so the basics but I've never looked deeper than that the point is I suppose what I'm trying to say is the more work that you have to do the more interest it seems to generate or it does for me anyway I hope you've enjoyed this video and you know if you want to give it a go give it a go I'm playing with lots of different things at the moment and I'm not going to just focus on these quite technical aspects on the videos and I'm gonna do my standard reviews in-between but these rambley sort of this is what I've been doing videos are certainly going to become more a part of what I produce now I'm likely to be producing three or four videos a week so yeah the only thing I'll say from here is don't forget to join me on library' and we do have that the old tech bloke Facebook group is growing I think is 25 26 of us there now I'm not really a social media person so I didn't want to go on discord or anything else but a little group on Facebook for a small amount of people it's great I'll probably do things like you know save my config files there because I don't think I'm ready to to go to github or get lab yet but so come and join us by all means anyway enjoy the rest of your day and I'll see you later in the week thank you [Music] you

Channel: OldTechBloke

Views: 20,400

Keywords: oldtechbloke, linux, bspwm install, bspwm polybar, bspwm setup, bspwm configuration, bspwm multi monitor, bspwm config, polybar, polybar configuration, tiling window manager, rofi, rofi scripts, rofi-locate, rofi application menu, rofi power menu, rofi bspwm cheatsheet, bspwm keybinds, sxhkd tutorial, sxhkdrc, sxhkd config, bspwm, sxhkd, rofi bspwm cheat sheet, Diving into Tiling - BSPWM, Polybar and Rofi, ricing, distrotube, window manager, bspwm tutorial, desktop envorinment

Id: FZHjE5H-B-M

Length: 36min 31sec (2191 seconds)

Published: Mon Mar 30 2020