Bluetile - ArchWiki

# Bluetile

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Reason: Dead project, no Arch-related content (Discuss in Talk:Bluetile#)

Bluetile is a tiling window manager designed to integrate with the GNOME desktop environment. Why choose Bluetile? Because none of the other tiling window managers were built with the thought in mind that time is the most limited resource among the majority of users. It is good if you can configure a software in every respect. It is better if you do not have to.

The Bluetile project is really just another xmonad configuration. A configuration that focuses on making the tiling paradigm easily accessible to users coming from traditional window managers.

You can create pretty much the same effect with a standard xmonad installation, but this project exists to provide an easy installation path with zero configuration and without having to read (as much) background information.

## Installation

1. Install the following packages from the official repositories: ghc cabal-install gtk2hs-buildtools[broken link: replaced by haskell-gtk2hs-buildtools] xmonad-contrib.

2. Update cabal:

    # cabal update

3. Install bluetile:

    # cabal install bluetile

Note: See Known issuessection if you get any compile errors.

## Running Bluetile

After you have installed Bluetile, test it:

    $ ~/.cabal/bin/bluetile

### At start-up

If you wish to have bluetile launch automatically after logging in, you must set the correct PATH evironment label and then add bluetile to your start-up applications.

1. Edit `~/.bashrc` and add the following line to the end:

    export PATH=~/.cabal/bin:$PATH

2. Next launch `gnome-session-properties`:

    $ gnome-session-properties

3. You will be presented with a list of your start-up applcations.

    Click: "Add"
    In the name field enter: Bluetile Window Manager
    In the command field enter: bluetile
    The comment field is optional.

Thats it, happy tiling!

### Another approach

You can also edit `~/.gnomerc` and set the `WINDOW_MANAGER` variable with:

    export WINDOW_MANAGER=/home/user/.cabal/bin/bluetile

With this, GNOME will automatically use Bluetile instead of Metacity.

Note: With this method there is no need to add bluetile to your `gnome-session-properties`.

## Known issues

### X11-1.4.6.1

If you see an error that looks like this:

    hsc2hs: Graphics/X11/Xlib/Extras.hsc: hGetContents: invalid argument (Invalid
    or incomplete multibyte or wide character)
    cabal: Error: some packages failed to install:
    X11-1.4.6.1 failed during the building phase. The exception was:
    ExitFailure 1

Follow this procedure to fix this problem:

    # pacman -S libticonv
    $ cd ~/.cabal/packages/hackage.haskell.org/X11/1.4.6.1/
    $ tar xzf X11-1.4.6.1.tar.gz && cd X11-1.4.6.1/Graphics/X11/Xlib
    $ <Extras.hsc iconv -f ISO-8859-1 -t UTF8 >fix
    $ mv fix Extras.hsc
    $ cd ../../../
    # cabal install

Once that is finished:

    # cabal install bluetile

## See also

http://bluetile.org/ - Project home page

http://www.haskell.org/haskellwiki/Bluetile - Wiki

Category:

- Tiling WMs

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