A tiling window manager that gets out of the way.
ace is a minimal X11 window manager written in C++17. No compositor bloat, no windows to drag around — every new window is tiled automatically into a master and stack layout, with a footprint of about 5MB of RAM.
~/ace $
hover a window to focus it — focus follows the mouse in ace
Small on purpose
ace does one job: tile your windows. Everything else — the terminal, the launcher — is a program you already have.
~5MB
resident memory
C++17
language
Xlib
only dependency
GPLv3
license
Keybinds
The defaults. Every one of them can be changed with bind lines in ~/.config/ace/config, and Super + R reloads the file without a restart.
Super+J / K
Focus the next or previous window
Super+Shift+J / K
Swap the focused window with the next or previous one
Super+Return
Make the focused window the master
Super+H / L
Shrink or grow the master area
Super+Space
Open a terminal
Super+D
Open the application launcher
Super+F
Make fullscreen
Super+0–9
Switch workspace
Super+Shift+0–9
Move the focused window to a workspace
Super+Q
Close a window
Super+R
Reload the config
Super+Ctrl+Q
Quit ace
Install
ace needs a C++17 compiler and libX11. Pull the headers for your distro, then build.
$ sudo pacman -S libx11 xorg-server-xephyr
$ sudo apt install libx11-dev xserver-xephyr
$ git clone https://github.com/fuewwa/ace $ cd ace && sudo make clean install
$ echo 'exec /path/to/ace' >> ~/.xinitrc $ startx