There's a lot to respond to here - would you mind terribly if we move this discussion over to the antiX forum post? https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic … 21-respin/

That is a wise decision . I will also shorten my previous post to maintain more of a JWM Kit focus.

@andyprough

Just trying to be helpful.  I want to see you project do well. So I hope you are open to some more suggestions.

The first item is on me to do the work in JWM Kit....

There's a lot to respond to here - would you mind terribly if we move this discussion over to the antiX forum post? https://www.antixforum.com/forums/topic … 21-respin/

I hate to ask you to sign up for an account on another forum, but I also think it's a much better place for this discussion, since the antiX devs could also jump in and talk about some of their thoughts and design decisions. Also, your project is a perfect project for antiX in general, I think it could ultimately find a natural home with the main antiX distro.

Let me know if that's not going to work for you, We can stay here if that's better for you, but over there would be much more productive.

I'm going to post my response to your thoughts in this last post over on that thread, just post something here and tell me if you don't want to join me over there for continued discussion.

antix has a lot of apps in a Category called X-antiX.  This is a non-standard category so JWM Kit's Easy menu put them in the Other's category. Changing the category will probably affect the other desktop sessions as they are probably configured to dealing with this category.

I can make a fix for this in the next version. It looks like most of these apps belong in settings. So how about merging anything with the X-antiX category into Settings. With the default JWM Kit config this would mean these items would be added to t he JWM Kit Settings panel.

If you want I can also have JWM KIt Settings group these X-antiX apps  together with an "antiX" title over it. (like it does the JWM Kit tools)

Let me know your opinion.

I checked out your AntiX respin. Nice. Glad you're keeping 32bit alive. Providing an iso with multiple window manager must be a lot of work. Never heard of zzzfm. Reminds me of SpaceFM. I will have to look into it.

I noticed a few missing icons in the menus. Might I suggest using JWM Kit Icons to add the following icon paths to your config.

/usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/24x24/apps/
/usr/share/icons/antix-papirus/
/usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/24x24/places/

zzzfm is an updated fork of spacefm that's maintained by one of the antiX devs. And the multiple window managers are put in place by the antiX devs upstream - I'm just making a simple respin primarily designed to offer a version of 32-bit antiX without any non-free software or firmware.

The icons that are missing are all because they are menu items pointing to bash scripts or terminal commands. I used Freedesktops from the JWMKIT menu and was able to get all the regular programs together with their icons, but none of the scripts or terminal commands would take an icon, even though icons were available for them. Do you know if this is a known limitation with JWMKIT, where you cannot assign an icon to a menu item representing a script or a terminal command? I wasn't too worried about it.

I will add the icon paths you mentioned in the config, that would make it much easier than assigning the icons to the antiX programs each by hand like I was doing with Freedesktops.

Thanks for your help!!!! I'm really liking JWMKIT the more time I spend in it, and I'm feeling like I'm starting to understand a bit about how it works and it's put together. My first hour with it I was lost, but your wiki pages spell almost everything out.

EDIT: Sorry, you are right - once I added the icon paths, all the icons showed up in the menu, even for the scripts and the terminal commands. OK, this is great!! Looking really good.

I checked out your AntiX respin. Nice. Glad you're keeping 32bit alive. Providing an iso with multiple window manager must be a lot of work. Never heard of zzzfm. Reminds me of SpaceFM. I will have to look into it.

I noticed a few missing icons in the menus. Might I suggest using JWM Kit Icons to add the following icon paths to your config.

/usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/24x24/apps/
/usr/share/icons/antix-papirus/
/usr/share/icons/papirus-antix/24x24/places/

I see you used JWM 2.4.0.  Nice. I have notice that sometime 2.4.0 will not load the data from an executable Include on startup.  When this happens JWM Kit Easy Menu's data is not loaded. You need to refresh jwm for the menu to load. In the default JWM Kit config just select "Refresh" from the exit menu, or run jwm -restart from the terminal. I've seen this issue discussed somewhere else and they said they had to logout and log back in. That is not true. Just refresh JWM and it's good. I've submit an issue to the JWM github about this.  I figured I'd make you aware of this issue so  you'd know how to advise if a user complained about it.

You can try out the new JWM Kit Desktops in the new Release of JWM Kit

I just did a new respin of antiX yesterday where I'm showcasing JWMKIT. I should have checked with you first to see if you had a new release in the works.

Got to try this out, might be time for a .1 release to get this in.

I'm getting good feedback so far, people like it. "Better than stock JWM or than Icewm" is what I'm hearing. More organized, better appearance.

• Specific different background for each Virtual Desktops

• Configure the number of desktops

• Configure additional window behaviors such as focus, moving, resizing, snapping

• Configure the button order for the window title bar

• NOTE : The button order feature requires JWM 2.4 or greater

• Find more info and image of JWM Kit Desktops at the Wiki page

You can try out the new JWM Kit Desktops in the new Release of JWM Kit

Source

Packages and build files

Downloads - Updated packages and build files

If you need an updated JWM Kit Linux you must download and install the deb package on JWM Kit Linux

What's NEW? Mostly fixes, small improvements, cleanup, optimization, etc, but the big change is :

• Create and edit Themes with JWM Kit Appearance

• Find more info and pretty pictures of the new JWM Kit Appearance in the Wiki page

What happened to the 4th release? It was released Yesterday and was quickly replaced after I found and fixed a couple of issues.

    A system with more memory automatically uses more memory for cache.

    At such low memory usage hardware driver account for a larger percent of the used RAM. Hardware affects which drivers get loaded and this affects memory usage."

Just going to focus on this part, for now...

That seems accurate to me as well.

It really doesn't add much of anything unless you choose to have other apps autostarted with JWM,

I think for me at most, it adds like 10-20mb on my other laptop, but bare in mind, I have 16GB of RAM on that comp. xD

Although, it also depends on one thing, how many apps have been started before you check memory

free -m

like that in terminal

also, even if you close those particular apps, it still shows residual memory being used...

I have no idea why.

xD

That has been my experience anyways.

As ironic as it sounds, you just made the most KISS friendly low resource window manager, that isn't too complex and has the basic functionality I need into more usable, then Lumina Desktop. 

Kind of ironic, but I appreciate it alot. 

Edit: Also, it really doesn't add much extra ram usage either.

Just wanted to express my appreciation to others, but reading back over it I think it sound like an acceptance speech at an award ceremony. Oh well not changing it, I'll just let y'all laugh at it.  Wait did I just type y'all? Well I'm not changing that either.

I've noticed JWM (with or without JWM Kit) hardly uses more ram than a session without a window Manager or DE. Pretty amazing. I've also noticed that the memory usage can differ by a good percentage from one machine to another.  I've tracked this down to 2 things.

• A system with more memory automatically uses more memory for cache.

• At such low memory usage hardware driver account for a larger percent of the used RAM. Hardware affects which drivers get loaded and this affects memory usage.

• Also memory usage is a little higher in a virtual machine

zapper wrote:

Curious though how efficient the newest stable will be though.

I expect a slight improvement of efficiency in the up coming stable, I doubt this will help system performance though since JWM Kit has always been designed to not run in the background and avoid execution when not need. In other words an improved JWM Kit will do little to improve performance if JWM Kit was not the cause of any performance issues to begin with.

The big difference will be JWM Kit Keys which is used to configure key binding. Keys is now 40% less code, lighter on resource while providing major interface improvements. To be clear that is Just the "Keys" tool not the whole kit. While their will be improvements to the rest of the kit it will not be as drastic.

While smaller code size does not always mean more efficient code, it is a good sign.  I'd like to point out that new packages are almost always smaller than the previous version despite the addition of features along with new or improved icons, etc. Of course I don't know how much longer I can keep that up, because simply put more features means more code. I've just managed to keep it down by refining the code every release.

As for the DWM vs JWM. I'm not a fan of Dynamic tiling. As Andy said "once you get used to  it." The deal is I don't get used to it. I think it's my vision. I don't want my screen divided in to smaller parts. I want what I"m looking at big and up front with the ability to float another window on top out of the way when needed.

To be fair to DWM I've not really used it. So who knows.  Maybe it gets tiling right for me.

I don't blame you, figuring out the keybindings and how to change them, gave me a massive headache. 

As for the efficiency, yeah that's a good point, it is already used for the most lightweight window manager with the basic functionality that is needed, with or without your tool.   Though your tool makes it way more useful + easier.

I probably made too many comments already... cutting it short, peace all!

just stumbled across this. (thanks google) . It's fantastic. Thanks for sharing.

Indeed, I very much appreciate him making this as well, it is the lightest window manager I have seen yet, that has basic functionality akin to i3-wm or anything heavier without sucking at all.

You can of course check for yourself.

zapper wrote:

I must be missing something, otherwise this wouldn't be an enigma to me.

Dynamic tiling. Once you get used to it, everything else feels deficient by design.

Yeah, except I never could get used to it, I tried like almost 6 times in the past to my knowledge, but its kind of a haze as to how to get it patched to my liking, or change how the keys work, so they actually are efficent for me.

On the other hand though, JWM, with or without JWMKIT, is a lot easier, with or without the menus.

That being said, being able to change keybindings really easily is very helpful.

I actually at one point figured out how to use it exactly like i3-wm, in most ways, except I couldn't use double activation to start an app or logout, shutdown or suspend or reboot as easily.

Double activation being:

Alt Shift x would start, redshift for example or w/e

Although, it really didn't take long for me to figure out how to autostart apps when I log in.

Long story short, DWM = mega hard  JWM = Only moderately hard even without the jwmkit

Besides, JWM is the lighest window manager I have found, that is actually useful like i3-wm but with a menu, also you yourself said JWM was lighter...

I have experienced something similar as well...

The mixer, the system actions of poweroff, reboot, logout and the ability to set keybindings with double requirements, just make this a really good addition.

Rant done

Either way,  for me, the way I set it up, makes it even more useful then a DE.

But yeah, ask if you want my config... I can give it to you. If you want inspiration for making it awesome.