Awesome WM on big/small screen

To get back after some time, a report on a new discovery: Awesome Window Manager for X. One (meaning, me) just gets bored ever so often with the look of Compiz/Metacity/Beryl… whatever. I just go and get a new theme every now and then, when I am content with one, I might stick with it for a month or two – New Wave I found THAT good, or Mac4Lin. However, now after close to two years of life in the Linux world, using Gnome without exception, I got bored of the feel of the standard Gnome desktop too. Sad as it is, I began searching for a satisfying solution to this problem.
The result was Awesome WM, a window manager belonging in the category of „tiling“ WMs. It spreads windows across the whole screen in order to utilize the whole screen.
This makes it especially suitable for large displays. My 22 inch LCD is really put to its use with three rows of windows: Pidgin plus a message window, one, two, three terminals, maybe Rythmbox and Firefox somewhere. My second monitor, an old 17 inch flat screen is also managed separately. This means, the „view“, so to speak, can be arranged for each monitor accordingly. Awesome, even though being a tiling WM can also do regular floating windows, arrange them by „spiral“ or „Z“ or maxmimize a window at two strokes on the keyboard.
Also, it features 9 virtual desktops that are not really virtual desktops but „tags“. Tags are assigned to each programm (one can contain multiple tags) and when a tag is selected the so tagged programms are shown arranged in whatever view the tag is set to. Each monitor also has individual taggs – quite comfortable and flexibel to use.
Best by far is the usability via keyboard. By default, the „Windows“ Key, also called „Super“ or „Mod4″ is the action key which, combined with some shortcuts, gives you full controll over your screen – great for people who type a lot and don’t want to be bothered by their mouse. Developing is just so much fun in Awesome!
Now the disclaimer: Awesome is not for nOObs. Why? Cause it does not feature nice GUIs to configure its behaviour. It can be scripted very flexibely in Lua via a config file but ONLY via this config file. The awesome menu is not necesserily a A+ in usability, but who needs a menu when via Mod4 + R you can run any command as we were used to via Alt + F2.
Installation is simple on Debian based systems – its in the repos. For Fedora it’s more of a demanding process since it does not come via yum – however, there are RPMs available.

Enjoy trying it, i can strongly recommend it!