January 28, 2026
Pane wars in Terminal Town
Show HN: Dwm.tmux – a dwm-inspired window manager for tmux
Turns your terminal into tidy tiles—fans cheer, skeptics shrug
TLDR: dwm.tmux makes Tmux arrange your terminal into a big main pane with a stack, DWM-style. Commenters split between loving the uniform shortcuts and nifty tricks, and asking what it adds over plain Tmux—cue jokes about “floating panes” and applause for the screenshot’s retro editor cameo.
The terminal crowd just found its latest hill to die on: dwm.tmux, a tiny tool that makes your command-line windows snap into a neat “big main on the left, stack on the right” layout—just like a minimalist desktop tiler. The repo promises quick keys, a pop-up “floating” pane, and a dash of order in the chaos.
Cue the split-screen drama. Skeptics like 0xcb0 rolled in asking, essentially, “What’s new here?” with a side-eye about whether this brings true floating panes or just repackages Tmux’s defaults. Another voice, zhouzhao, liked the goodies but wanted truth-in-advertising vibes: call it a “DWM-inspired tmux config,” not a revolution—then cheekily added, “Consider that function stolen ;)”.
Meanwhile, the hype squad showed up. zeech saluted the approach as “very cool,” noting they built something similar years ago with other tools. qmacro sealed the deal with a fan-favorite meme: the screenshot’s main pane was running ed, the oldest of old-school editors—“gratuitous but wonderful,” and absolutely screenshot-bait. And kalterdev dropped the hot sauce: “tmux keyboard control is nasty,” arguing that consistent shortcuts alone make this worth a spin.
Bottom line: It’s a small tweak with big feelings—half “finally, sanity,” half “already had this,” all delivered with jokes, nostalgia, and a sprinkle of snark.
Key Points
- •dwm.tmux provides a dwm-inspired Main-and-Stack tiling layout inside tmux windows.
- •It requires tmux version greater than 3.2 and installs via a Makefile with configurable PREFIX.
- •Setup involves sourcing dwm.tmux in the user’s .tmux.conf and ensuring $PREFIX/bin is in PATH.
- •The tool defines aliases and default keybindings for pane creation, movement, rotation, zoom, floating, and window management.
- •Customization is supported via environment variables (mfact, killlast) and custom keybindings in .tmux.conf.