awesome

awesome works fine in crouton (added a bash script for this: get-crouton-awesome.sh):

• Install X11: sudo sh -e ./crouton -t x11

• Enter the chroot: sudo enter-chroot -n chrootname (name is perhaps precise)

• Install awesome: sudo apt-get install awesome

• Add exec awesome to ~/.xinitrc: echo "exec awesome" > ~/.xinitrc

• Create configuration directory mkdir -p ~/.config/awesome

• Copy default configuration from /etc/xdg/awesome: cp -r /etc/xdg/awesome/* ~/.config/awesome/

• Launch awesome directly from the crosh shell: sudo enter-chroot xinit (for convenience, add an alias: alias startawesome='sudo enter-chroot xinit' in the ~/.bashrc)

• On Chromebooks, the search key (right below tab) is actually the 'Mod4' key. awesome works with it right out of the box! [Regarding the note below - I just reinstalled crouton/awesome as of 11/2016, still the search key is Mod4 ... I guess it might be the different version of image, which gives the different behavior below.]

  • UPDATE Jul 2016: this appears to no longer be the case. To make the search key work create an xmodmap file and add it to your ~/.xinitrc:

    echo 'keycode 133 = Super_R NoSymbol Super_R' > ~/.config/mod4.xmodmap
    echo 'xmodmap ~/.config/mod4.xmodmap' >> ~/.xinitrc
    

Testing in Ubuntu Xenial:

As of 2017/3/30, following the instruction for 'awesome' installation, there are errors to start awesome. It seems errors in the default awesome startup rc file, mainly relating to the widget/wibox etc. Probably someone needs to tweak the setting to solve these issues in Xenial.