On 2013–12–09 psycho_punch wrote: > How did you do it? I've also been looking for a way to run Awesome stand > alone, but I'm not that familiar with Desktop Environments, Window > Managers, and related initialization procedures to get this working. If you > could point me to the right direction, I'd very much appreciate it.
Here's what I did:
I removed my gnome session. Then I installed the lightdm display
manager and removed gdm. This is not necessary, of course, but while
I was getting rid of the gnome parts, I thought this would be a good
opportunity since the system was in an unusable state anyway.
Then I had a plain “awesome” login from lightdm which loaded awesome
and nothing else. The next task is to find out what additional
functionality you need that was provided by the gnome desktop
environment. Here's what I felt was missing:
1) SSH and GPG keys are not cached and do not work e.g. in cronjobs
2) media/brightness keys didn't work
3) no power management and battery state in systray
4) no volume control in systray
5) issues with network-manager (don't remember exactly, probably due
to the missing password storage)
6) environment variables from ~/.profile not available any longer
7) “autostart” programs did not start
I fixed most of the things. Here a short note to every item:
1) installation and setup of keychain. Put this in your ~/.profile:
if [ -x /usr/bin/keychain ]; then
eval $(keychain --eval --quiet --quick)
fi
export GPG_TTY=$(tty)
Then you need to inherit the environment when required:
if [ -x /usr/bin/keychain ]; then
eval $(keychain --eval --quiet --quick)
git push --quiet origin
fi
2)
Some tweaks for rc.lua:
-- Brightness
awful.key({ }, "XF86MonBrightnessUp", function () brightness_up() end),
awful.key({ }, "XF86MonBrightnessDown", function () brightness_down() end),
-- Volume
awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioMute", function () volume_mute() end),
awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioRaiseVolume", function () volume_up() end),
awful.key({ }, "XF86AudioLowerVolume", function () volume_down() end),
-- XF86TouchpadToggle
awful.key({ }, "XF86TouchpadToggle", function ()
awful.util.spawn_with_shell("synclient TouchpadOff=$(synclient -l | grep -c
'TouchpadOff.*=.*0')", false) end)
As you see a custom Lua function is executed on key press. The
brightness and volume functions were taken somewhere from the wiki,
don't know exactly where I found them. Let me know if you can't find
the code, then I'll drop it into a pastebin.
http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/User_Contributed_Widgets
They're not as pretty as the gnome ones, but they definitely get the
job done.
3) not solved yet, but here's some snippet that I will look into
implementing: http://bpaste.net/show/156804/
4) I created a widget found on the wiki and it starts pavucontrol
on click.
http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/User_Contributed_Widgets
(I don't remember where exactly)
5) I replaced network-manager with wicd and it worked. Probably a
bit drastic, but I needed a working system as quickly as possible so
I didn't dive into fixing network-manager.
6) I source my ~/.profile from within my ~/.xsession:
# read in user-defined environment variables
. ~/.profile
exec awesome
7) I use the run_once() function found on the wiki:
http://awesome.naquadah.org/wiki/Autostart
function run_once(prg,arg_string,pname,screen)
if not prg then
do return nil end
end
if not pname then
pname = prg
end
if not arg_string then
awful.util.spawn_with_shell("pgrep -f -u $USER -x '" .. pname .. "' || ("
.. prg .. ")",screen)
else
awful.util.spawn_with_shell("pgrep -f -u $USER -x '" .. pname .. " "..
arg_string .."' || (" .. prg .. " " .. arg_string .. ")",screen)
end
end
run_once("synclient", "TouchpadOff=1")
run_once("setxkbmap", "-option ctrl:swapcaps")
run_once("xmodmap", "~/.xmodmaprc")
run_once("xbacklight", "-time 500 -steps 10 -set 60")
…
Run “gnome-session-properties” to find out which other services you
might need.
Maybe I forgot a few things, but that basically gave me a usable
system.
> > Sorry that I can't help fixing your Gnome setup. Just wanted to let
> > you know that you're not along struggling with those Gnome issues
> > and suggest a possible solution (which will of course create other
> > problems, but that's the fun, isn't it? ;).
>
>
> Sure, no problem. I've actually thought about moving to another tiling
> window manager because of this but I'm giving it another shot.
It's not an issue with the window manager. It's a problem with the
desktop environment and solely changing the window manager might not
be much of a help. Nevertheless, I encourage you to experiment with
other window managers as well. That's the best way to find out which
one suits you best.
> I think Awesome is great, and I've become quite comfortable with
> it, and the configurations involved, and I'd be really glad if I
> could get it running on my machine again.
If you have any issues it's probably a good idea to start a new
thread for each item and include a descriptive subject line.
Good luck!
Marco
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