wmii

I've evaluating wmmi, an even more minimalistic window manager and suckless.org does a fine job of explaining why. I like that it only has 10,000 lines of code. Let me show you my favorite feature so far:

bash-3.2# dmesg | grep cpu | grep Intel
cpu0: Intel Pentium 4 (686-class), 1794.24 MHz, id 0xf12
cpu0: "Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 CPU 1.80GHz"
bash-3.2# pwd
/usr/pkgsrc/wm/wmii
bash-3.2# date && make && date                       
Mon May 28 06:25:53 EDT 2007
=> Required installed package digest>=20010302: digest-20060826 found
===> Checking for vulnerabilities in wmii-3.1
=> Checksum SHA1 OK for wmii-3.1.tar.gz
=> Checksum RMD160 OK for wmii-3.1.tar.gz
===> Installing dependencies for wmii-3.1
==========================================================================
The following variables will affect the build process of this package,
wmii-3.1.  Their current value is shown below:

        * PKG_SYSCONFBASE = /usr/pkg/etc

You may want to abort the process now with CTRL-C and change their value
before continuing.  Be sure to run `/usr/bin/make clean' after
the changes.
==========================================================================
=> Required installed package digest>=20010302: digest-20060826 found
=> Required installed package x11-links>=0.25: x11-links-0.30 found
===> Overriding tools for wmii-3.1
===> Extracting for wmii-3.1
===> Patching for wmii-3.1
=> Applying pkgsrc patches for wmii-3.1
===> Creating toolchain wrappers for wmii-3.1
===> Building for wmii-3.1
wmii build options:
LIBS     = -lc -lX11
CFLAGS   = -O2 -I/usr/pkg/include -DVERSION="3.1"
LDFLAGS  = -L/usr/pkg/lib -Wl,-R/usr/pkg/lib -L/usr/X11R6/lib -Wl,-R/usr/X11R6/l
ib -lc -lX11
CC       = cc
CC emallocz.c
CC strlcat.c
CC strlcpy.c
CC strtonum.c
CC tokenize.c
CC trim.c
CC vector.c
AR libcext.a
built libcext
CC color.c
CC font.c
CC draw.c
CC geometry.c
AR liblitz.a
built liblitz
CC client.c
CC convert.c
CC message.c
CC server.c
CC socket.c
CC transport.c
AR libixp.a
built libixp
CC wmiimenu.c
LD wmiimenu
CC wmiipsel.c
LD wmiipsel
CC wmiir.c
LD wmiir
CC wmiisetsid.c
LD wmiisetsid
CC wmiiwarp.c
LD wmiiwarp
built wmii commands
CC area.c
CC bar.c
CC client.c
CC column.c
CC event.c
CC frame.c
CC fs.c
CC key.c
CC mouse.c
CC rule.c
CC view.c
CC wm.c
LD wmiiwm
built core window manager
=> Unwrapping files-to-be-installed.
Mon May 28 06:26:17 EDT 2007
bash-3.2# 

I.e. it builds in less than one minute.

Using wmii (don't panic)

Menu:  Alt-p, xterm, Esc
Move:  Alt-shift-l
Tag:   Mod-shift-2 send current window to workspace 2
Quit:  Alt-a

I typically do the following:

startx
Alt-p, xterm
Alt-p, xterm
Mod-shift-l split them vertically
Alt-p, firefox
Mod-shift-2 send firefox to workspace 2

See the documentation for more information.