 One of the things that's always defined my YouTube channel has been window managers I've always been known as the window manager guy because I cover so many different window managers and But here in the last three four months. I really haven't done that You know, I kind of quit trying out new window managers And the reason I quit that is because I've already covered all the ones really worth looking at at this point I really have I've covered all the floating window managers and tiling window managers that People are actually going to use at this point. I have to get into some really obscure window managers I'm talking about window managers that have been dead for years that see no development or window managers That are so unusual that I don't think most people would find them enjoyable to use But I did come across one that I thought was Interesting enough. I did want to get this on camera. This window manager is called notion I found this on the arch Linux wiki page for tiling window managers and The description of it was really interesting. It is a tiling tabbed window manager So it's tiling and tabbing similar to what you can do with the i3 window manager For example, a lot of people love i3 for that tabbed format that it has And I've never really got into tabbing with my window managers But a lot of i3 users, especially get used to that tabbing layout in i3 and if you like that notion Might just be a window manager. You guys need to check out if I switch over to my web browser here You can find the web page for notion at notion Wm net and again, it's a tiling tabbing Static window manager, so it's not dynamic So I prefer my tiling window managers to be dynamic meaning that as you open and close windows They are dynamically resized and placed on the screen for you You don't have to decide where those windows are placed on the screen, you know things like dwm x moned qtile Awesome, those are all dynamic window managers and that's what I prefer Static window managers You have to decide where things go and how to resize them and things like that That's not my kind of window manager, but those of you that use things like i3 herbs to Luft BS PWM You're probably used to this sort of window manager, so I think notion I think you guys would be right at home using notion notion is extensible using the Lua Programming language, so those of you that are familiar with Lua and this may be great for you Those of you that have hacked on awesome window manager, which is also configurable with Lua again May be comfortable with notion notion is a fork of a earlier tiling window manager, which was called ion I think there was a fork of ion called ion 3 both of those projects ended up eventually just dying and then somebody created Notion, which is really not ion Play on words you see the N o t is in bold and then regular font for ion here But I'm sure it's probably pronounced notion So this is going to be kind of a first look here I'm not going to dive too deep into notion because now I would have to spend some time to do so But really it's usually the initial getting started with a window manager that typically is the hard part So I have installed notion from the standard arch repositories with a pseudo pac-man dash capital s notion and logged in for the first time and I'm presented with a black screen no wallpaper anything and Because obviously I haven't configured it to settle wallpaper anything This is just how notion will look when you first install it I've got an empty frame at the top and I believe if I look up the key bindings if I do Mod plus J and mod in this case is the super key. Let me type that I will get a run prompt at the bottom This is not D menu. This is actually built into the notion window manager. I'm assuming It's probably something written in Lua, but you get this run prompt and if I wanted to launch my terminal from here I could type a Lackardy hit enter and a Lackardy of course enters this frame that was empty before I Go back to the web browser here I'm going to do the quick reference for keyboard commands and they do have a nice visual Representation of what all the keyboard commands are the key bindings are and they have it in written form here as well And I will need this because the key bindings for notion or unlike any other Tiling window manager. I've ever used it doesn't use the same key bindings that most use like when you use DWM and Xmone add and awesome and Qtile those four window managers, especially pretty much all use the same key bindings Out of the box. They use the same key bindings for the most part. Some things are different But notion is not going to use any standard key bindings Now I do notice that the return key here, so I'm assuming mod plus return launches X term It's hard-coded as X term not just your default terminal emulator on your system But it X term needs to be there. I actually don't have X term Installed on my system and if you guys don't have X term installed You may want to go ahead and install that before getting started just so you know that key binding works for you until you can change it to whatever Terminal emulator you prefer to use. I know well most people probably don't want to use X term But now that I have X term installed on the system. Let's see if super enter Launches X term it does it actually launches X term in a new tab You see now I have two tabs at the top That's a Lackardy where I was running that Pac-Man command and then that is the X term that just spawned if I hit Super enter one more time I get another X term and now I have three tabs at the top Looking back at the key binding cheat sheet. It looks like mod plus ASDF You know the home row on the left hand that switches between the tabs So if I go back here and I do super a that's the first tab Okay, super s is the second tab super D is the third Super D is the second super a is the first and it looks like I can move the tabs with super and comma and period So if I do super period this tab I'm on which is the first of three tabs is now the second tab You know I moved it in its order in the tab listing super period again I move it to the far right tab super comma moves it back super comma moves it back again So you can see that this window manager really is all about tabbing You know it's kind of the default is a tabbed layout now If you wanted to split it into some frames and vertical splits or horizontal splits You can do a super plus I to split it if I do super I I split it horizontally here And now I've basically taken that frame that was the third frame here And I've split it off until into a horizontal split if I do super shift I I can do another split But this split will be an empty frame vertically split so super I Horizontal split super shift I is a vertical split. I hope that makes sense to close frames You can do I think super X. Yeah kills that empty frame if I do super X on this window It also kills that frame that had something in it now I am on a triple monitor system So I actually have stuff on three different monitors you guys are seeing the second of the three monitors But if I wanted to switch focus between the monitors It looks like I could do super shift plus a number. So if I do super shift one Focus goes to my far left monitor, which is the first monitor if I do super shift to Focus comes back to the second monitor the middle monitor, which I'm recording right now Super shift three takes it to the far right monitor the third monitor. So that's actually really neat I really don't mind the keyboard shortcuts the key bindings even though they're a little not standard from what I'm used to I mean, I could always change them you can always customize these things But really they're pretty easy to learn like I could probably spend a couple of hours And I could probably get used to the default key bindings if I really wanted to learn them now Let me do a super eye again because I'm gonna do another horizontal split and I'm just gonna check some of the mouse Functionality, can I actually resize these well? I can drag that frame. Can I put it back over into the tabs? I drug it back into the tabs the window that was over here I drug it back over here and now the split is an empty frame. Okay, that's pretty interesting. Can I resize with the mouse? Yes, you can adjust the size of the frames with the mouse. I'm sure you could also do that with the keyboard Let me look for the key bindings for this Looking at the documentation. It looks like mod plus R super R Gets us into a resize mode. Okay So I think this is something similar to like how you have a resize mode in I3 where you get into this Resize layer basically and then you have a set of new key bindings just to resize the frames if I do super R Okay, that frame is highlighted and then can I actually well, I guess I waited too long Let me do super R again and if I do the arrow keys It does let you resize it. Okay, and if I hit enter Pretty cool. So super R and then start using the arrow keys to resize whatever you want to resize it Hit enter and it should resize it for you Let me do a super X to close that empty frame and let me get back into a Lackardy because my key bindings To zoom in work with a Lackardy. So if I do a LS in my home directory Let's see. I have a Directory here called dot notion and that is where your config files should go any config files that you create yourself and edit So if you want to play around with the key bindings or the theming or anything by CD into dot notion Let me see if there's actually anything in there Looks like by default. There really isn't anything in this directory now. What you need to do Let me CD back into the home directory. I'm gonna CD into slash Etsy Slash notion. Okay and do an LS and when I do an LS and slash Etsy slash notion, you see all these Lua files config underscore bindings config underscore defaults config underscore doc, etc And it looks like there's about 30 of these things. These are your config files You can copy these files from slash Etsy slash notion Over to your dot notion directory in your home directory and then when you configure them, you know Those changes will take effect when you restart notion. So if I wanted to change the bindings What I would do is I would copy config bindings dot Lua Over to my dot notion directory. I hope that makes sense. Well, let's do it So I'm gonna do a copy config underscore bindings dot Lua and I'm gonna copy it in my case the slash home slash DT slash dot notion And copy that over now. Let me CD back in the home directory I'm gonna CD now into dot notion do an LS and we have config underscore bindings dot Lua here now So if I do a VM config underscore bindings, you know, we could now edit this file So some of the key bindings that are a little strange to me You know, I could go in here and change them to something more appropriate something I'm more used to if I wanted to for right now, though. I just want to keep it as stock I just want to take a look at this thing as he is But this is how you would do it when you get to the point where you want to configure this thing yourself Well, let me go ahead and quit out of that. One other key binding worth noting is I did notice that super L Should enable a lock screen. I have a couple of different lock programs installed on my computer Let's see if super L recognizes either one of them. So super L Does lock the screen. I'm gonna do a password here and it verifies the password. I think that was I3 lock You guys just saw I know it's installed. I think the suckless S lock program is also installed But yeah, so, you know pretty nice out of the box many window managers It's hard to get any work done with them until you configure them a little bit But honestly just having the cheat sheet up in the browser for the key bindings This is not bad now I don't like static window managers and I don't like tabbed layouts But I know a lot of you guys do and for those of you that love things like I3 and herbs Luft and BSPWM You might like notion and especially if you love the tabbed layout in I3 I think notion may be worth checking out. Anyway, that's just a quick first look first impression at notion But I'm gonna keep it installed on my system. I think it's something I could find myself playing around with a little bit Now before I go, I need to think a few special people I need to think Michael Gabe Corbinian Mitchell Devin Fran Arch 5530 a comic channel Chuck Claudio Donnie Dillon George Call of Devils Lewis Paul Scott and Willie these guys They are my highest tier patrons over on patreon without these guys this episode You just watched about the notion tolling tabbed window manager It wouldn't have been possible The show is also brought to you by each and every one of these fine ladies and gentlemen that help support My work over on patreon if you would like to support my work consider doing so you'll find distro tube over on Patreon all right guys Peace