# DWM - useless gaps are useless!
Many people in Linux community spend too much time *"ricing"* their desktops. Here are few points I came to after using minimal window managers for 2 years:
 - Screen real estate **matters**
 - Gaps are **useless** (unless you care about your wallpaper)
 - Wallpapers draw too much of your **attention**
 - You **don't need** to constantly see your CPU temperature, battery percentage etc.
 - **Less** windows is **better**

And from that I can derive an advice on how to stay functional, productive and efficient with minimal window managers:
 - **Get rid** of gaps
 - **Stop** caring about your wallpaper
 - **Don't** put many windows on your screen at once. You probably only need one. Two is ok, sometimes three. More windows = less focus
 - Try **removing** window borders (or using `1px black` border). You won't be able to see which window is focused this way, and that will naturally encourage you to keep less windows on the screen
 - **Decrease** the number of available workspaces / tags
 - **Hide** your status bar when you don't need it

Following these steps leads you to super-productive no-distraction fullscreen experience. You still get all the advantages of your window manager though.

**Try it!** (you can always switch back)


# Evolution of my desktop
Here's my journey to my current WM philosophy - represented in random screenshots with a couple of comments.

If you want to replicate a setup on the screenshot - lookup it's date and checkout the corresponding commit of my [dwm build](https://git.eug-vs.xyz/suckless/dwm/).

## i3
I've been happy user of `i3` with a lot of "ricing" for a long time. I liked transparent windows, blur and shadows:

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2020-12-08_01-49-30.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-01-06_18-57-32.jpg)


## DWM
But then I decided to switch to suckless `dwm`. The functional approach was so much better then manual window management in i3 - as a perfectionist I always spent extra time arranging windows "in a cool way". DWM solved this problem entirely, but I still couldn't live without beautiful wallpaper and gaps.

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-03-10_21-14-09.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-03-27_01-26-27.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-04-26_00-06-32.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-06-04_08-52-16.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-06-25_16-19-05.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-06-28_19-12-39.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-07-15_14-20-16.jpg)


## Fuck gaps!
After ~4 months of `dwm` (and ~year of using minimal window managers) I realized - gaps are just taking too much of my screen real estate! Let's try removing them entirely:

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-07-22_09-50-48.jpg)

As a bonus you stop caring about your nice wallpaper because you only see it once - when you first boot your machine. You can also get rid of your composite manager now. Finally, get rid of that bright orange:

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-08-14_02-29-30.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-10-07_13-11-59.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-10-17_16-17-55.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-11-06_15-24-35.jpg)

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2021-12-05_21-38-36.jpg)

That setup was untouched for 4 months! Finally rollback some patches to get that beautiful default status bar (that color though!):

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2022-03-21_20-01-58.jpg)


## Current state
That lived for 3 more months and now I use gray as the accent color and all my borders are black! Also I decreased the number of available tags.

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2022-04-02_14-59-33.jpg)

Most of the time I hide status-bar anyway.

![screenshot](/public/desktop-screenshots/2022-04-01_18-44-17.jpg)