 Here in the last few years I have spent a lot of time window manager hopping. It seems like every few weeks to every few months I get bored of the window manager that I'm currently living in and I move to something else But really I stopped window manager hopping. I would say about a year and a half to two years ago I've kind of settled into X-mone ad and I just quit hopping because honestly X-mone ad just works And if what's working for me is working for me Why hop why keep window manager hopping thinking I'm going to find something more than what I'm already on but Here recently I've kind of got that urge again to play around especially with some of the window managers I've explored a little bit in the past, but I didn't really do that deep of a dive in so what I'm in today Is actually this window manager here now looking at this screen some of you guys are gonna wonder Hey, that looks exactly like your X-mone ad desktop and if you said that you would be right It does look exactly like my X-mone ad desktop because it is the same kind of cocky. It's the same panel That's the X-mobar panel, but I'm not actually in X-mone ad what you're looking at here is left WM So what prompted me to revisit left WM was about two weeks ago Or so it came to my attention that there were some major changes with left WM as far as their config file their config file Was a Tomo file you had a config dot Tomo and now they have moved from using that Tomo file to a Ron file so now you should have a config dot Ron Ron I've never actually heard of that particular syntax, but I guess it is a more rust like syntax rather than Tomo Which makes sense because left WM is written in rust So for their config file it makes sense why they want to use this dot Ron fall and it's very easy to convert your Config dot Tomo over to a config dot Ron the left WM guys They've made it very easy because there's a simple command you enter at the terminal and it Automagically converts your config dot Tomo over to a config dot Ron for you. So you don't have to rewrite that config yourself Let me switch over to my desktop and switch workspaces here. So I've got my browser open This is the left WM github and if I scroll down really at the very top of their github read me here You can actually get the command. They make this important note letting you know about the change from Tomo to Ron And then just copy this line here left WM dash chick copy that go to a terminal and then You know just enter that command and that's exactly what I did first of all to run that command You should probably CD into your left WM config directory. So in my case I'm in Home directory slash dot config slash left WM Let me LS and you can see I've got a config dot run But before I had a config dot Tomo here instead and then all I did was Entered this command hit enter and then it rewrites the config dot Tomo over to config dot Ron And let me go ahead and Show you the config dot Ron. Let me make this full screen here One interesting thing they did is the comments at the top of the page They added this nice little ASCII art left WM config dot Ron in these bubble letters. That's not something I did that's just how it converted this and my left WM config is really not a very lengthy config It's rather simple. You can see the mod key I'm using the super key which is mod for and then my workspace list So there are my nine workspaces with their names. You can see the workspaces by switch workspaces here These are the nine workspace names you see in my XMO bar in this case Then if I scroll down, you can see the various layouts that are available for me You can see I have a scratch pad for the alacrity terminal if I want to use scratch pads So that's a nice feature that left WM has not all window managers have scratch pads But most of the good ones do have a scratch pad a feature that you can use and then finally my Keybinding section one gripe I do have with left WM I don't believe there is a way to use key cords and left WM Which is unfortunate because I use key cords a lot Well, one of the things I love about Xmone ad and about q-tile and even about the awesome window manager Even DWM they all allow me to use emacs like key cords for key bindings And I find it limiting now when I go to a tiling window manager that does not offer that because I have so many key bindings I can't just use you know a single mod key such as the super key and then the keys on the keyboard I'm gonna run out of key bindings if that's all I can do I need to be able to do these more complicated key cords for key bindings and unfortunately that is a limitation here with left WM And that's really all of the config here and you can see one thing I will say minor gripe about the config dot run is I don't really love the syntax It does seem a little confusing to me As far as just the layout I thought it was a lot cleaner as a tumble fall as far as it was easier to read Let me switch back over to my browser And if I go into my get lab and go into my get lab history here Let me show you my old config dot tumble before it was converted And as you can see the tumble here the syntax for it It's actually very easy to read very clean even if you're not that comfortable with tumble It's not something you usually use right It's definitely pretty easy to grasp and obviously I find it much easier to read than the run fall Now let me quit out of that. Let's talk a little bit about theming So now one of the cool things with left WM is you can have multiple themes installed Meaning that if you want different color schemes or different panels different bars different widgets You can quickly have several different themes for left WM installed and switch between them now That's not something I'm necessarily that interested in but for those of you that like that kind of rising ability You can certainly do it So if you go to the github for left WM and if you go into the themes directory you can see they have These basic EWW that's the wacky widgets Thing I've never people have asked me to take a look at that at some point Maybe I will but it's a little weird to grasp and it's not as user-friendly as I think what most people imagine It's the kind of thing that is you can do a lot with EWW But it because it's not as user-friendly as standard panels and bars and stuff I think a lot of people would probably be put off by it. I know for me I don't find it worth my time and effort unfortunately because you can create some beautiful widgets with it But I haven't got into it Then you also have this lemon bar theme a poly bar theme and an XMO bar theme Of course, I downloaded the basic XMO bar theme and then all I did was throw that into my dot config slash left WM slash themes directory So if I go back here, so I'm in dot config slash left WM and you can see if I do an LS There is the themes directory if I go into themes and LS you can see there is basic underscore XMO bar So let's CD into That directory and you can see there's quite a number of files associated with the theme the important ones really are up Up is a bash script and then down is also a bash script now. Let me actually open. I'll open it with them There is the up script. This is the most important script It is the script that executes your programs when you launch a theme or when you launch a left WM You think of it when you switch themes What program should be launched with that particular theme? So you can see when I'm launching my basic XMO bar theme I'm launching LX session I'm launching pycom for a compositor Network manager applet volume icon. I'm also starting the emacs daemon I'm starting cocky with this location of the cocky. I'm also launching trailer Although trailer doesn't quite work here. Trayor is running, but it is behind the panel Even though the panel is saving space for Trayor Trayor is actually underneath the panel So you can't actually see Trayor and if you could see it though It does have the network manager applet in it. It also has the volume icon I've got to figure out what is causing that little bug there. I'm also setting a wallpaper using xargs So you can think of the up script kind of as a Auto-start script as startup hook essentially and the down script think of down as the opposite of the up script So when you switch from this theme, so if you were switching between themes Think of this as all the processes that were running in your current theme that need to be killed before you start Launching all the processes on the new theme that you're going to so in my case. I'm just killing everything I'm starting in the up script. So the down script is basically I'm just running a kill all pi com cocky Trayor X mobar network manager applet and volume icon That's what I've got in my down script anyway And then other than that I have my X mobar config and this is the X mobar config here X mobar dash config dot HS They had it labeled with a dot HS extension even though the X mobar config Typically is not written in Haskell. It's written in a user-friendly syntax, but the dot HS would make you think it's actually a Haskell file But that's not actually what the X mobar config is written in this year Was the original that came with the template that I got off a github But what I did is I just straight up copied my X mobar that I was using an X moden ed to this fall It's the exact same X mobar minus. I think one line. Let me go ahead and open this. So let's open X mobar dash config dot HS And again, it's the exact same X mobar. I was using in X mode add the only line I had to add to make this work was this one here override redirect equals false because without this line The padding at the top was a little off windows would kind of sort of cover X mobar sometimes But by adding this line it works perfectly. So really, it's very easy if you're already using Got X monad installed and you you've already configured your X mobar left of them is very similar to X monad It's basically the same layouts the set it handles multi monitors the exact same way as X monad it handles workspaces The exact same way. Obviously you can already use the panel you were used to an X monad Let me go ahead and close all of these windows. So it's very easy It's a very easy transition for me as primarily X monad user to just comfortably slip into left WM It's practically the same window manager itself It's not as fully featured because left WM is a much newer window manager Obviously, you're a little bit more limited in the config file and that config dot Ron fall than what you are and X Monads config fall which is straight Haskell so anything you can do with Haskell you can make happen in X monad Which I prefer but I know many people don't know Haskell hate the Haskell language They find it confusing and complicated and if you're one of those people that you kind of like the way X Monad does things, but you hate Haskell left WM is probably the window manager You want to give a try now before I go. I need to thank a few special people I need to thank the producers of this episode Gabe James Matt Maxim mimic Mitchell Paul West why you all Homie Alex armor dragon Chuck commander angry dieokai George Lee Mars drum Nate or yon Alexander Paul piece archer of door Polytech reality's for less red-profit Roland Steven tools devler and Willie these guys they're my highest tier patrons over on patreon They are the producers of this show. I'm also brought to you by all of these ladies and gentlemen all these names You're seeing on the screen. These are all my supporters over on patreon because I don't have any corporate sponsors I'm sponsored by you guys the community if you like my work I want to see more videos about Linux and friend open source software subscribe to distro tube over on patreon peace Honestly, I think Qtile is the best X Monad clone