What is subtle?¶

subtle is a manual tiling window manager with a rather uncommon approach of tiling: Instead of relying on predefined layouts, subtle divides the screen into a grid with customizeable slots (called gravities). For better understanding, the default config uses a 3x3 grid and maps each gravity to one key of the numpad. With those keys, windows can be moved directly to the desired gravity - the same can be done with tagging rules in the config.

Another unique concept is the strict tagging: Unlike other tiling window managers, subtle doesn't allow weak tagging and always maps windows to virtual desktops (called views) with matching tags, regardless of the current active view.

Features¶

• Builtin system tray
• Extendable builtin panel (see sublets)
• Customizeable key/mouse actions (see grabs)
• Focus on scripting (Ruby - see rdoc and subtlext)
• Commandline client (see subtler)
• Extended window tagging
• Compliance (EWMH / ICCCM / MWM / XDG Base Directory)
• Multihead support (Xinerama / XRandR)

Where to start?¶

Contribute¶

In case you want to help but don't know how, please help with some documentation and improve the wiki or make a donation. Patches, suggestions and open discussions are always welcome.

License¶

This code can be distributed under the terms of the GNU GPLv2. See the file COPYING for details.

Read more¶

Freshmeat, Sourceforge, Archlinux Forum, Gentoo Forum, Debian Forum