A Minimal Linux Display Manager

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Tags:linux guide
237 words, 2 minute(s) to read.

There is this itch that tiling window manager users feel. Whether it is caused by surfing the world of r/unix or the want for change, it might be useful to have a way to easily switch between window managers. This article shows how to achieve this using already installed applications on your system.

A BASH on the head.

On most sane Linux distributions, BASH is provided as a default shell script interpreter, I will be using that. When I said minimal, I meant minimal. With barely 38 lines, I know no other contestant. For a bonus, I will also use sx & ssh-agent.

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#!/bin/bash

DwmOption="DWM"
EXWMOption="EXWM"
MATEOption="MATE"
EnlightenmentOption="Enlightenment"
ConsoleOption="Console"
menu=("$DwmOption" "$EXWMOption" "$MATEOption" "$EnlightenmentOption" "$ConsoleOption")

echo "Which WM would you like to run?"
select opt in "${menu[@]}"
do
	case $opt in 
		$DwmOption)
			exec ssh-agent sx sh ~/.config/X11/dwm-xinit 
			break
			;;
		$EXWMOption)
			exec ssh-agent sx sh ~/.config/X11/exwm
			break
			;;
		$MATEOption)
			exec ssh-agent sx mate-session
			break
			;;
		$EnlightenmentOption)
			exec ssh-agent sx sh ~/.config/X11/enlightenment
			break
			;;
		$ConsoleOption)
			exec zsh
			break
			;;
		*) echo "invalid option $REPLY"
	esac
done

That’s it! For adding extra entries:

Enjoy!