dwm is a tiling window manager. In short, a way to interact with your computer and organize windows, only using the keyboard. dwm is one of the lightest, most simple and most stupid tiling window manager (but there are many others).
In this post I will cover the things I love and the things I hate about dwm (and also about minimalism in general).
Let's start with what I like about dwm. Note that a lot of the advantages I will list aren't explicitely about dwm, but common to many minimalist tools.
You don't actually have to use a tiling window manager to have low memory and low CPU usage, but tiling window are always very lightweight (personally have less than 200MB of used memory when booting my computer with it)
For me, it's like a game to try to make my memory usage as low as possible, because that's an excellent way to learn a lot of things about your system, it's a kind of amazing rabbit hole of learning.
Configuring and installing dwm teach you many things about your system. For example, before using dwm, I didn't know what a window manager, a display manager, Xorg, Wayland or the tty were.
And when you try to find miniamlist tools, you always get in a kind of time travel to the past of computing and internet.
Something else I really like about dwm specifically, compared to other tiling window managers, is that I really feel like being the one in control. When you want to add new features, or change configuration settings, you are editing the source code itself! That way, things are demystified, your computer isn't working by magic anymore, it's working by logic and math, and you can understand it.
dwm and the terminal are keyboard-focused and that's very comfy! Unlike when using your mouse, when you have to move your hand a lot, when using your keyboard, your hands are at rest.
Also, I think there is a kind of "muscle memory" effect when using keyboard for everything (effect I never felt when using the mouse). For instance, when you type your login password, you done that so many times you don't even think when doing it, and you type it super quickly.
Using the keyboard for everything is kinda like repeating this muscle memory effect, but on all your computer. I don't know if I really go faster than an average windows user, but one thing for sure, it's much more comfy.
This isn't related to tiling window managers specifically. But customization on those are more frequent than on classic desktop environements.
If you don't know what r/unixporn is already. Really go check it out. There are some amazing designs I love out there. And I find them very addictive :P
I will probably make a future post about my dwm configuration specifically.
I'm not a "dwm fanatic", there are some things I really don't like about it.
There is actually one big thing I hate about dwm. That's the community and the developers.
The suckless developers have shown themselves being actual neo-nazis. I won't list all the references to Nazi Germany they did on forums and chats here, because that's really not the point of this post.
Then, there's also a certain part of the community that follows the same trend as the devs. But they also tend to be very elitist and unwelcoming toward new linux users. I've seen some Reddit users on r/suckless saying to beginners they should "just learn C", or that they simply shouldn't use dwm because it's "too complicated for them".
I hate this kind of mentality! If someone is wishing to learn something hard, that's a BLISS, and you, as an more experienced user, should be the first to help them.
I've heard some people complaining about how some users seemed to be obssessed by "bloat".
To me, that's really not an issue, I actually like that (for the reasons I cited before). To me, the real problem is when those same users don't want to share they experience with newbies or when they are unwelcoming.
In short, I like it because:
And I don't like it because:
That said, I don't think you shouldn't use a software, just because the people who made it are assholes.
Minimalist stuff like dwm and suckless could be amazing for curious beginners, but they are being corrupted by "elitists" linux users, and that's very sad.