Configuring bspwm for my setup

⏳ 4 min read

After about few months with i3, I stumbled upon i3gaps in my quest for some space between the tiling windows. If you haven't heard or used i3 like window manager, you might prefer using it first. Soon, I started seeing awesome configurations of herbstluftwm and bspwm. Out of these two I ended up picking bspwm because of it's simplicity and configurability.

Dirty Screen

Well, in this article, I will follow step by step procedure of setting up bspwm. My dotfiles

Outline

bspwm is another tiling window manager. It only responds to X events, and messages recevied on a dedicated socket. So we need another program to listen for our keybindings and forward appropriate commands to this socket. Luckily bspc is a program that writes messages to bspwm's socket. sxhkd (Simple X hotkey daemon) is an X daemon that can be made to execute commands as reaction to input events. Some configuration files have to be created from scratch and that is what makes this experience rewarding. Using i3 or similar wm for sometime is recommended before trying bspwm.

Packages to install

  • bspwm
  • sxhkd

Optional

  • rofi (application launcher)
  • i3lock (screen lock)
  • gnome-keyring & libsecret (If you want avoid retyping ssh & gpg passwords in one session)
  • compton (compositor)
  • feh (set wallpaper)
  • yabar (status bar)
  • poweline fonts (fancy symbols)

Steps

  • Edit bspwm startup shell script which should be located at .config/bspwm/bspwmrc to accomplish the following tasks.

    • Start sxhkd, compton, gnome-keyring, set wallpaper and any other startup app.
    • Run some bspc commands to define attributes and create workspaces. (man bspc or bspc docs).

  • Now as basic bspwm is setup, let us edit our .config/sxhkd/sxhkdrc configuration file to define our keybindings for

    • Switching focus, swapping nodes, resizing etc... (Some examples here, rest in the configuration file is commented!!).

      # Close under focus node
super + shift + q
        bspc node -c

super + Return
        termite -e /usr/bin/fish

# Resize
## expand the tiled space in the given direction
super + alt + {h,j,k,l}
        bspc node {@west -r -10,@south -r +10,@north -r -10,@east -r +10}

    • Application Launcher.

      # I use rofi, see the screenshots for its beauty
# Launcher
super + d
            rofi -show run -font "Monospace Bold 16" -m -1 -fullscreen -padding 300 -hide-scrollbar

    • Multimedia keys.

      # Functional key bindings
# I use mpd, so mpc can be used to switch music tracks
XF86Audio{Stop,Prev,Next,Play}
        mpc {stop,prev,next,toggle}

# xbacklight has to be installed
XF86MonBrightness{Up,Down}
        xbacklight {-inc 10,-dec 10}

# Using ALSA as it is present by default in most cases
XF86Audio{Raise,Lower}Volume
        amixer sset Master {5%+,5%-}

XF86AudioMute
        amixer sset Master toggle

  • Using a status bar helps, I use yabar and my config. Helper scripts are present in scripts directory.

  • Wondering when we will start nm-applet and other system tray items?? I don't! I switched to using nmtui.

Beautification

  • The key to beauty is font, colorscheme and a complimenting wallpaper. I use Fira Mono for Powerline, FontAwesome & gruvbox colorscheme. Use terminal.sexy to get some colorschemes that can be exported in suitable format for almost all terminal emulators.

  • Next up are out ugliest component i.e GTK Apps :P. Instead of editing configuration files directly, I highly recommend lxappearance, which has absolutely no dependencies! Use it set your GTK, Icon & Cursor theme. GTK themes are picked from ~/.themes & remaining from ~/.icons.

  • Use some cool theme and even now, if the buttons are ugly make sure that you have the required gtk-engine installed. For instance, I use Zukwito, so I need gtk-engine-murrine. Now, your gtk apps must be cool as in any other DE.

Screenshots

Dirty Screen

Multi Monitor Screenshot

Other Apps

  • A list of applications that I use

    Type: Application
    Window Manager: bspwm
    Broswer: firefox
    Terminal: termite
    Shell: fish
    Editor: vim
    Music Player: mpd/ncmpcpp
    Video Player: mpv
    Launcher: rofi
    IRC Client: weechat
    GTK Theme: zukwito
    Icon Theme: faenza

PS: Don't forget to push your dotfiles to github so that anyone else can use those.

2017-07-20 :: {linux}