windowchef for dummies

Tables of Contents

• Introduction
• Installation
• Configuration
• Testing
• Disclaimer
• Credits

Welcome to windowchef wiki!

I created this wiki because i'm motivated by bspwm for dummies maybe the wiki title like another joke, hahahah.

Some people ask to windowchef user : "Why are you using windowchef?

My opinion : "I don't know why i using this window manager, maybe the name of this wm is interesting, windowchef hmm like another wm who want try stacking window manager but using simple configuration like bspwm to control rule of window and wm itself like border, etc."

That's one of the advantages of this wm, Ok we already know what it is windowchef lets started to cooking in the kitchen Learn more...

Introduction

What is windowchef? windowchef is stacking window manager written in C with the help of the XCB library, using waitron as sends commands to windowchef through X client messages created by tudurom. How about keybind? windowchef use a third party program like sxhkd to send pointer events to waitron using keyboard.

Installation

Preparation to install windowchef from source, you must install third party for this wm and another stuff what you want maybe wmutils.

Dependencies

Before installing, you must install some dependencies for windowchef :

• xcb
• xcb-randr
• xcb-util-wm
• xcb-keysyms
• xproto (compile-time dependency)

On Arch-based distros : $ sudo pacman -S xcb-util-wm xcb-util-keysyms xproto

**Note: installation for linux deritative are coming soon because i just only tested on Archlinux **

Stuff

• sxhkd
• ruler

Let's install the stuff.

First, sxhkd :

1. $ git clone https://github.com/baskerville/sxhkd
2. $ cd sxhkd && make && sudo make install

And create new directory for saving keybind configuration

3. $ mkdir ~/.config/sxhkd

Second, ruler for window rule like a rule on bspwmrc :

1. $ git clone https://github.com/tudurom/ruler
2. $ cd ruler && make && sudo make install

And, the last is windowchef :

1. $ git clone https://github.com/tudurom/windowchef
2. $ cd windowchef && make && sudo make install

Windowchef also available on AUR : *windowchef *windowchef-git

Configuration

After install, we must copy example config from windowchef.

cp windowchef/examples/windowchefrc ~/.config

cp windowchef/examples/sxhkdrc ~/.config/sxhkd/

**Note: you must created your own ruler config located in ~/.config/ruler/rulerrc

Testing

Log in into windowchef!

Just add this command to .xinitrc :

exec windowchef -c $HOME/.config/windowchefrc

You can save windowchefrc on any directory.

Panels

Windowchef doesn't come with a bar/panel on its own. Windowchef ignores windows with the _NET_WM_WINDOW_TYPE_DOCK type. Panels can get information about the state of the window manager through ewmh properties.

Tested using lemonbar, you can exec the panel on .xinitrc or windowchefrc for referense you can see this or another.

Disclaimer

Windowchef is in active development, and this wiki under development to be better documentation. And if you interested to writing, you can pull request.

Credits

• Thanks to tudurom.
• Ruka Nanda Vera yuune for references.
• Linuxer Desktop Art, Eye Candy Linux and r/unixporn.
• And another user to sharing their dotfiles.

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