Awesome Window Manager

I've been exploring a few different window managers, and a friend of mine suggested Awesome, originally based on a rewrite of DWM. I found it to be very easy to configure, and the keyboard-oriented setup I've configured is efficient for my use. It even supports Japanese characters (unlike the older WMs) with the proper font (Kochi Gothic looks great).

Another useful feature is its widget system, where you define widgets in the .awesomerc, then pass data to the awesome-client program. Awk is amazingly useful here:

#!/bin/sh
# this script is for awesome 2.2


while true; do
sensors -u | awk '/[^s]+ Temp:/ { accum = accum $1 ": " $3 "C " }; END { print "1 widget_tell sense " accum }' | awesome-client
sleep 10
done

This widget's a simple CPU temperature monitor.