62 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
62 lines
2.7 KiB
Markdown
# What is this awesome window manager?
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**awesome** is a highly configurable, next generation framework window
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manager for X. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the
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[GNU GPLv2 license](http://www.gnu.org/licenses/old-licenses/gpl-2.0.html).
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It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with
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every day computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their
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graphical environment.
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<div class="screenshot">
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[[!img images/screen.png alt="awesome screenshot" size="382x216"]]
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</div>
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# Concepts
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A window manager is probably one of the most used software applications in
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your day-to-day tasks, along with your web browser, mail reader and text editor.
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Power users and programmers have a big range of choice between several tools
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for these day-to-day tasks. Some are heavily extensible and configurable.
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**awesome** tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible,
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highly configurable window manager.
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To achieve this goal, **awesome** has been designed as a framework window
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manager.
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It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the
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[Lua](http://www.lua.org) programming language.
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We provide a documented API to configure and define the behavior of your
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window manager.
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<div class="screenshot">
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[[!img images/6mon.small.png link="images/6mon.medium.png" alt="awesome running on 6 monitors"]]
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</div>
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# Features and non-features
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* Very stable, fast and small codebase and footprint.
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* First window manager using the asynchronous [XCB](http://xcb.freedesktop.org)
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library instead of the old, synchronous
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[Xlib](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Xlib), which makes **awesome** less
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subject to latency compared to other window managers.
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* Documented source code and API.
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* No mouse needed: everything can be performed with the keyboard.
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* Real multihead support (XRandR) with per screen desktops (tags).
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* Implements many [Freedesktop](http://www.freedesktop.org) standards:
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[EWMH](http://standards.freedesktop.org/wm-spec/wm-spec-latest.html),
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[XDG Base Directory](http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html),
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[XEmbed](http://standards.freedesktop.org/xembed-spec/xembed-spec-latest.html),
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[Desktop Notification](http://www.galago-project.org/specs/notification/),
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[System Tray](http://standards.freedesktop.org/systemtray-spec/systemtray-spec-latest.html).
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* Does not distinguish between layers: there is no floating or tiled layer.
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* Uses tags instead of workspaces: allow to place clients on several tags, and
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display several tags at the same time.
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* A lot of Lua extensions to add features: dynamic tagging, widget feeding,
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tabs, layouts, …
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* [D-Bus](http://dbus.freedesktop.org) support.
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* And more.
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This is gonna be LEGEN... wait for it... DARY!
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