Exwm: Emacs X Window Manager

aradox66 · 2025-04-13T20:48:17 1744577297

I had a fun fling with EXWM, but having your window manager sharing its single-thread with emacs just doesn't really make any sense.

aradox66 · 2025-04-13T20:52:14 1744577534

If it seems interesting to you or you're experimenting with keyboard-driven tiling WMs, though, I would highly recommend this particular fling.

dargscisyhp · 2025-04-13T22:19:14 1744582754

Been using it for a couple of years, and in practice it does not cause me much trouble, at least not for me.

bitwize · 2025-04-13T21:13:58 1744578838

The commonly accepted solution, if this is an issue for you, is to run two instances of Emacs: one to edit in, and one to run EXWM. The days of "Eight Megs And Constantly Swapping" are well behind us; one can easily afford to run two (or many more) emacsen. And it can't be that much more bloated than, say, kwin...

hermitsings · 2025-04-13T20:53:33 1744577613

I created this custom keymap that goes well with EXWM: https://codeberg.org/hermitsings/Kmonad_ISO_keymap_for_minim...

This is to reduce lateral wrist movement (to protect from Carpal Tunnel) and general finger movement. Just posting here if folks wanna check it out.

BobbyTables2 · 2025-04-13T23:38:33 1744587513

I’m surprised there aren’t Emacs packages for the X server itself and a bootloader…

jmclnx · 2025-04-13T21:04:15 1744578255

I played with this decades ago (maybe another Emacs based WM?). It was fun for a while but I moved on. I thought it was abandoned.

I will need to give it another go and glad to see it back among the living :)

rahen · 2025-04-14T00:13:23 1744589603

Obligatory System Crafter videos:

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f7xB2fFk1tQ

- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9gfKrrTtyOk

SuperNinKenDo · 2025-04-14T00:39:07 1744591147

Really enjoyed my time using EXWM. Had to move to Wayland for a number of reasons, and really miss it. KDE Plasma has been fantastic, but I do miss the integrated scripting environment. Ironically I now use a heavily frames-based Emacs set up, and eschew most of Emacs internal window management capabilities.

smitty1e · 2025-04-13T23:54:15 1744588455

Packaged as a Spacemacs layer => https://www.spacemacs.org/layers/LAYERS.html#exwm

spudlyo · 2025-04-13T20:01:46 1744574506

Pfft, I'll be impressed when Emacs runs as pid 1, has an inittab.el, mounts filesystems, sets up swap, starts daemons, launches X, reaps zombines, and deals with shutdown. I'm sort of surprised nobody's done that yet.

rahen · 2025-04-14T00:09:59 1744589399

Try Guix System. The entire system, including PID 1, is configured in Scheme (Guile) and has a very nice Emacs-like hackability.

_emacsomancer_ · 2025-04-13T20:11:28 1744575088

almost: https://github.com/a-schaefers/systemE

Y_Y · 2025-04-13T20:33:11 1744576391

That's old news: https://web.archive.org/web/20190118221826/https://www.infor...

Fwiw I use EXWM in Guix and only interact with the computer through emacs (though I do need to use terminal and eshell).

spudlyo · 2025-04-13T20:50:45 1744577445

Handling SIGCHLD and doing the right thing is table-stakes for a functioning init, IMHO. This isn't that.

codr7 · 2025-04-13T21:22:20 1744579340

Sounds like SystemD to me, all it's missing is a good editor.

djaouen · 2025-04-13T21:00:00 1744578000

I hesitated to post here (because it seems like I have been flagged as only posting on troll topics), but decided to anyway because I don't want anyone else to know about this overpowered setup!

Alive-in-2025 · 2025-04-14T00:33:36 1744590816

What does this mean, especially in reference to this story

djaouen · 2025-04-14T01:34:38 1744594478

Basically, whenever I post to a thread, that thread gets buried by HN's algorithm. Thus, the intention of me posting means that I can keep Guix and EXWM under wraps and all to myself. Edit: Forgot to add: MUAHAHAHAHAHA

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