tilde/articles/a-minimal-linux-display-manager.md

A Minimal Linux Display Manager

There is this itch that tiling window manager users feel. Whether it is caused by surfing the world of reddit 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.

#!/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:

• create a new 'Option' variable,
• then add it to the menu array,
• adding the extra option to the 'cases' clause appropriately.

Enjoy!

;Tags: LINUX GUIDE