As the user interfaces for Gnome/KDE advance I sometimes miss the old days when you had to chose your own window manager, compile, and carefully configure it to have a generally useful desktop.  I remember putting hours into setting up Window Maker just the way I wanted it to be.

As I became a professional System Administrator I starting using the desktop environment that I “support” or otherwise encourage my own users to use.  If I can’t stand my own dog food, I know I’ve got work to do.

While reading LWN I came across the Awesome Window Manager.  I was very intrigued by LWN’s review.  Its a modern window manager ment to get out of your way and windows are organized and delt with in much the same way as GNU Screen operates.  I’m a big fan of GNU Screen.  (Yes, I know about tmux.  Tmux and Awesome, I think, may be even more similar.)  Great keyboard support, less mousing around.  Best yet, completely programmable.  If I put the time and effort into setting it up well I may have a very functional and efficient desktop.  Better yet, no one will know how to use it but me.  ;-)

On the flip side, using and configuring other terminal applications like urxvt can be tricky.  I like having my terminals 80 characters wide, but I still have 1280x1024 resolution monitors.  Either terminal fonts are way too small, or I can get 79 columns across with two terminals side by side with the Terminus fonts.  I haven’t found a winning combination there.  But it may be worth the research.  Suggestions?