Comment by saysjonathan
4 hours ago
For me, personally, the value was in have something similar to a window manager for the terminal. As I was constantly spawning, killing, and reorganizing panes, a tiling-based approach gave me more control over my terminal and allowed me to perform complex operations without having to memorize or execute multiple commands. My use of a terminal is not static and therefore having a more dynamic option made my life easier.
This is really just a personal project that I wanted to share in case others might like to try it.
I will add that, especially at the time of creation, I was heavily in the 'unix is my IDE' camp. A terminal window manager was a logical next step to that notion. As someone called out below, I even used `ed` as my main editor for a while (which was as bad as it sounds).
I'm intrigued - as tmux has been my window manager for my desktop for 10+ years now ( I typically have 80-100 different windows/panes in play by the end of any given week, where I take time to close down all sessions that aren't still in progress).
I'm wondering what the difference is between this and just tmux basic environment - which already has a lot of pane / window management. What's the key distinction between using tmux and dwm.tmux?
<5 minutes later> - Ah - this is just tmux with some custom config. The window manager is tmux - I would suggest changing the title a bit - maybe something like, "DWM.TMUX - dwm inspired tmux configs. "
<Further review - note the "10 years ago" timestamp - ahh.. This has been gestating for a while>
I think the key distinction is the consistent layout (main pane + stack) along with keyboard shortcuts to manage. To me it's similar to running vanilla X{11,org} vs using a window manager (hence the name). A vanilla configuration will work just fine but sometimes a constrained or opinionated environment gets more out of your way and better fits your preferred workflow.
If you already have a robust tmux workflow with a desired layout (or lack of layout) and custom keyboard shortcuts then this may not work for you. It's just one way to manage panes/windows in tmux that I hadn't seen before and different from the usual ad hoc methods.
Like most window managers, I think it's all preference. What're your current preferences for pane layout, window management, etc? Do you always create/layout panes in the same way or is it situationally dependent?
It's not just configs though, as there is some logic implemented via shell that could not be handled entirely in configs. "Window Manager" was chosen as it the logic imposes a specific layout without necessarily preventing you from using other configuration options. It's almost solely layout management and keyboard shortcuts to assist.