How to incorporate bspwm in Puppy?

Window managers, icon programs, widgets, etc.
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gherico
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How to incorporate bspwm in Puppy?

#1 Post by gherico »

Hi. I was trying to test bspwm on xenial puppy. I built bspwm and sxhkd and was able to install it. The problem is that when i reboot to command line, i ran

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startx & bspwm
Bspwm and rox-filer doesnt seem to like each other..
So my question is
1. Is it ok for rox and bspwm to co-exist at a given time?
Im not sure, correct me if im wrong, rox is the desktop environment and jwm is its window manager. Was it right? So since ill be using bspwm instead, shall i need to shut off jwm? Or do i need to also shut off rox?
2. Is my code right? Startx & bspwm?

Im just starting out with Bspwm on manjaro and im thinking it could be useful here in puppy linux.

I just cant make it work correctly, it seems rox is pushing the windows above the partition's icons at some hundred pixels. And jwm is still running together with bspwm.

Have anyone tried bspwm already here? If you do, pls help me.
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musher0
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#2 Post by musher0 »

Hi, gherico.

That's an easy one!

On Puppy, it's xwin window_manager, not startx window_manager.
E.g.

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xwin bspwm
IHTH
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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gherico
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Have not done this yet.

#3 Post by gherico »

Been too busy nearing christmas. Just finished a vue.js project and a new project is already laid-out. We use windows and my boss dont know linux. Probably this morning since its my rest, ill be able to fiddle my puppy. Im trying to have bspwm with polybar and xlunch to dress up my puppy. Wish it works. If ever can i turn this bspwm, polybar and xlaunch to a pet and submit it?
[color=red]will the revolution ever win?[/color]if you wont participate, perhaps you'll never know. do you want to stay a loser?

musher0
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#4 Post by musher0 »

Of course! :) That's what this forum is for!
musher0
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gherico
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Solved!

#5 Post by gherico »

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xwin bspwm

made my weekend happy.

Though it still looks ugly.
Is there anyone here who have used bspwm and polybar before who can lend a better config file?

Im still searching for how i can make .pet file. I already forgot how to do it.
But probably I'll be doing that once i arrived at a better configuration of this things.

Thanks a lot.

Also, how can i make bspwm as my default window manager?
And is it possible to turn-off rox as a desktop environment but still be able to use as a file manager?
[color=red]will the revolution ever win?[/color]if you wont participate, perhaps you'll never know. do you want to stay a loser?

musher0
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Re: Solved!

#6 Post by musher0 »

gherico wrote:

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xwin bspwm

made my weekend happy.

Though it still looks ugly.
Is there anyone here who have used bspwm and polybar before who can lend a better config file?

Im still searching for how i can make .pet file. I already forgot how to do it.
But probably I'll be doing that once i arrived at a better configuration of this things.

Thanks a lot.

Also, how can i make bspwm as my default window manager?
And is it possible to turn-off rox as a desktop environment but still be able to use as a file manager?
Hi gherico,

You're welcome.

i do not know bspwm. But I can answer your other questions.

As to your questions:
you do not need to do anything to make a WM as default in Puppy. You
start the new WM once, and it's registered in /etc/windowmanager. After
that, you can start it simply with the command <xwin >.
~~~~~~~~

Turning off ROX as DE is probably feasible if you tamper with its Options
in Options -> Desktop. PLUS in /root/.xinirc file, there are several lines
concerning ROX, so maybe deactivate them.

I have never done this, I know of no user here that has done it, so... it's
at your own peril!

(Make a good back-up of everything before you start tampering, yes?)

~~~~~~~~
To make a pet archive, you essentially create a mirror of the Puppy hierarchy
as needed under a directory called <program-version.number >.

For your bspwm, I would suspect (but double-check) that you would have:
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1 (name of directory, with version number)
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1/root/.bspwmrc (???)
or perhaps
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1/root/.config/bspwmrc (???)
then
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1/usr/bin/bspwm (the executable)
maybe some libraries in
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1/uwr/lib/...
maybe some general configs in
/mnt/sda1/bspwm-1.1/etc/

When you have finished, cd to /mnt/sda1, open a console and issue
command < dir2pet bspwm-version.number > and follow the prompts.
You need to include a number at the end, otherwise dir2pet won't work.

Including the tree for my waimea pet, to give you an idea:

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.
├── pet.specs
└── usr
    ├── bin
    │   └── waimea
    └── share
        ├── man
        │   └── man1
        │       └── waimea.1
        ├── waimea
        │   ├── actions
        │   │   ├── action -> action.sloppy-focus
        │   │   ├── action.click-to-focus
        │   │   ├── action.non-opaque
        │   │   └── action.sloppy-focus
        │   ├── backgrounds
        │   │   └── waimea.png
        │   ├── config
        │   ├── menu
        │   ├── scripts
        │   │   ├── filelist.pl
        │   │   ├── procinfo.pl
        │   │   └── stylesdir.pl
        │   └── styles
        │       └── Default.style
        └── xsessions
            └── waimea.desktop
This tree is under /mnt/sdb2/WMs/waimea/waimea-151025_32bits.

Later, upon install, at the user end, the petget utility will place the items in
the tree that you have prepared in the right places in the Puppy's hierarchy.

IHTH.
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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bigpup
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#7 Post by bigpup »

The part of Rox that is used for the desktop is the Pinboard.
Unless there is something in bspwm that does not work and you have to have it. Do nothing to the Pinboard setting in Rox>options.

Rox Pinboard is baked into Puppy as normal operation of desktop.
I have used many different window mangers with Puppy and never done anything to Rox Pinboard setup.
Certain things in the desktop are controlled by the Rox Pinboard and others by whatever window manager is used.
They kind of work together.

This info may help you understand.
A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment.
If there is something in bspwm that does not work.
Tell us and we can figure out what to do.
The things they do not tell you, are usually the clue to solving the problem.
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williams2
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#8 Post by williams2 »

Some window managers do not play well with the Rox pinboard (desktop.)
You can set compatibility options in Rox. I have "Override window manager control of the pinboard and panels" set to work better with Echinus.

I tried bspwm, I don't remember how well it worked with Rox. I think I found it too complicated for my purposes.

To turn off the Rox pinboard/desktop, just open a console terminal window and type:

rox -p=

You can create as many alternative pinboards as you want. For example, you can make a pinboard named "1" by typing:

rox -p 1
or
rox -p1

These pinboards will be put automatically in /root/.config/rox.sourceforge.net/ROX-Filer/. A pinboard named "1" will create a pinboard file named pb_1. A pinboard named "mydesktop" would create a file pb_mydesktop.

The default Puppy pinboard is not in the standard place. You would need to type:

rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin

If you put a symlink to PuppyPin in .config/ named pb_1 you can get the default desktop back by typing:

rox -p1

You could write a script named pb or dt or something and put it somewhere like /usr/bin/ so you can type "pb" to get the default pinboard back.

#!/bin/sh
cd
rox -p /root/Choices/ROX-Filer/PuppyPin

Of course, you can click on the pinboard scripts and switch pinboards with a single click. Or even make a gtkdialog program to switch desktops, each with its own icons and wallpaper.

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gherico
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#9 Post by gherico »

Hi mishero and williams2.
Thanks for the elaborate reply.

Actually,, im doing these things for educational purposes. Im also new to bspwm and tiling window managers.

Yeah, bspwm is not well documented and the learning curve is steep. But i take it as a challenge.

The problem i currently have is that running bspwm makes it occupy either 100% of the screen or the other way around.

Im running these on a netbook with a small screen. The netbook's screen is no longer working so i connected a larger monitor to it.

I did some research online, and i realized that the problem is not on puppy, rox or even bspwm itself.

Using default bspwm configuration works well and the window manager ables to recognize the actual screen size.

However. Since im also running manjaro-bspwm, i tried to copy/paste the configuration files of sxhkd and bspwm from it and used it on puppy, Changing some lines of scripts that i know is not needed. And thats when bspwm gets some problem.

At first i thought was because of rox still running the pinboard.

As it turns out, bspwm detects the first smaller screen on the netbook thats no longer working (when using configurations from manjaro-bspwm) and assumes that its the current monitor in use and renders that screen size.

On manjaro-bspwm's bspwmrc file, there's a line at the bottom that says:


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exec autostart.sh
And i was not abe to check that file before. Haha.

So to summarize, the problem i have appears to be a misconfigured bspwmrc file.

I cant have a screenshot of any of these currently because im not at home at the moment.

And yeah. Running bspwm on puppy will surely work provided it has a correct configuration file based on what i see. And copy/pasting things can sometimes be considered a bad habit if your not sure yet at what those codes are supposed to do.

Ill be psoting probably sunday or sunday on results of what im doing.

I remember before,, there was a tool on puppy where one can easily change window managers. But anyway, doinh this manually serves its purpose.
[color=red]will the revolution ever win?[/color]if you wont participate, perhaps you'll never know. do you want to stay a loser?

musher0
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#10 Post by musher0 »

Hello gherico.

Before altering any configuration file of bspwm, and assuming your
configuration for xorgwizard is ok, try using < lxrandr > to define and
make active (aka default) the outside monitor.

It's better to first have the configuration for your hardware down pat
before you fiddle with the config of the WM. Just a thought.

IHTH
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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gherico
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#11 Post by gherico »

Merry x-mas everyone!

So, again the real problem was this:
Image

See, bspwm assumes a smaller screen size. I thought that it was because of rox managing a pin board, which is the desktop with the icons on the wallpaper.

But as musher0 pointed-out, using

Code: Select all

lxrandr
opens a graphic version of xrandr. Just setting it correctly fixes the issue.

Image

Again, i can say this problem is not really attributed to bspwm as using its default configuration (supplied at the examples folder of the source code) will perfectly render the screen size correctly to be used by application windows.

The problem i had occurred due to using configurations from another distro. That as it turned-out, relies on other scripts.

Also, looking at the image, the icons on the desktop is no longer clickable, as if its part of the wallpaper. Im expecting this behavior with bspwm. I will be removing the pinboard and i'll be adding a bar on top and an application launcher. Im planning to use polybar and xlaunch for this.

Though what im trying to do right now is really not needed as puppy linux caters almost everything an end user needs, proving the flexibility of puppy linux to have just what anyone wants/prefers is something i want to achieve.

I can say this is almost solved. But integrating bspwm still needs adding other stuffs like polybar and an application launcher (like dmenu or xlaunch).
[color=red]will the revolution ever win?[/color]if you wont participate, perhaps you'll never know. do you want to stay a loser?

musher0
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Joined: Mon 05 Jan 2009, 00:54
Location: Gatineau (Qc), Canada

#12 Post by musher0 »

Good work, gherico! Keep at it! :)

And Happy Holidays to you too!
musher0
~~~~~~~~~~
"You want it darker? We kill the flame." (L. Cohen)

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