Ratpoison : Love it or Leave it !?

[antmon]

I have been trying/playing with Ratpoison. The firsts steps were strange. But with a little persistence I have come to enjoy it. It's different from what I have seen and work with. I have seen some screen shots and have been trying to do the same, but have some trouble with conky but it's just me. I have to say that what attracts me the most is I have to do a lot of work on the keyboard and no mouse.
Xmonad is a interesting window manager, and as more followers as I see more screen shots of it. And I have to ask what was the reason for choosing Ratpoison.

So what do you think : love it or leave it ?

[gapan]

Xmonad is a interesting window manager, and as more followers as I see more screen shots of it. And I have to ask what was the reason for choosing Ratpoison.

You're making assumptions that aren't necessarily the way you think they are.

First of all, you're assuming that if you see more screenshots of xmonad, it has to have more followers than ratpoison. Why? How do you know that? Especially since there isn't much to take a screenshot of in ratpoison. Why would anyone want to show a screenshot of ratpoison? There is nothing to show! And there is no way anybody can understand anything about how ratpoison works by a screenshot.

Then, you're assuming that if xmonad has more followers, it would have been a better choice. Who says ratpoison was chosen in terms of popularity? Xmonad and ratpoison are not the same, they don't behave the same and they don't offer the same experience. And there was no choosing. Someone wanted to make a ratpoison edition. Nobody wanted to make an xmonad (or _insert other WM here_) edition.

So what do you think : love it or leave it ?

That's a question that only you can answer for yourself.

[mimosa]

It's not too hard to install XMonad in Salix, and there are some posts on the forum on the subject. It might be interesting to do so in Salix Ratpoison, and set up two X startup scripts, one for each WM. The default apps that come with the Ratpoison edition are probably a good initial selection for using with Xmonad, too.

A great deal depends on configuration, in both cases. Suggestions abound online. I'd say Ratpoison was more straightforward to configure, though, except perhaps if you know Haskell.

[antmon]

@gapan
Very well explained and an opinion that I must agree. Like you said " Why would anyone want to show a screenshot of ratpoison? There is nothing to show!". I was focused on making the desktop nice and that is not what Ratpoison is all about. Point made. Thanks!

@mimosa
Tried to install and started to throw errors back. Didn't bordered to correct them has I am testing at work. Thanks!

[mimosa]

I think there's some problem with a library - but the solution is available on this forum. You need to install Haskell first, which is a big item (ghc). Check the dependencies.

EDIT

ghc not gcc! (corrected)

EDIT

Just do

Code: Select all

# ln -s /usr/lib/libgmp.so.10 /usr/lib/libgmp.so.3

before installing ghc. I'm compiling it now with a view to setting up xmonad in parallel with ratpoison, as I suggested above.

This should really be a separate topic ...