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A Tiling Desktop Environment

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Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#11

Post by infiniteseeker »

newman8r wrote: post #4
gh02t wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I primarily just use i3, but I used to be a KDE guy. I used it for a while again just recently and I have to say, it's gotten really good. They've made it clean and tidy, while still being powerful and customizable.

I'm a recent i3 convert (been using it full time for the better part of a year now). It's one of those little changes that really brought me a lot of satisfaction. This is on my primary desktop (with a 4k display). I recommend it to anyone who's in a rut with their workflow (learn about all the mods, i3-gaps, etc.) - it takes about a day to properly customize and get used to, time well spent.

I have had a tough time getting my 4k ext display to properly scale with i3. I tried arandr but the fonts are too small. With scaling , Emacs, Firefox and alacritty seem to be ok but things seem sluggish on my x230. How did you do it ?

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#12

Post by trufflepig »

abathologist wrote: post #9

I installed the [i3 edition of Manjaro]( https://manjaro.org/download/i3/ ) last weekend. I was up and running with a beautiful environment providing most of the listed utilities in an hour or so. I have been incredibly happy with the setup. The edition could still use some more love (e.g., I had to set up auto-mounting and HiDPI compatible configs myself), but it is remarkably cohesive and (relatively) easy to get g…

How does Manjaro compare to Ubuntu for the “new user seamless install of everything” and “easy update for new users”

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#13

Post by mises »

abathologist wrote: post #9

I installed the [i3 edition of Manjaro]( https://manjaro.org/download/i3/ ) last weekend. I was up and running with a beautiful environment providing most of the listed utilities in an hour or so. I have been incredibly happy with the setup. The edition could still use some more love (e.g., I had to set up auto-mounting and HiDPI compatible configs myself), but it is remarkably cohesive and (relatively) easy to get g…

I was a manjaro i3 user for months on my old laptop, but got a new one with an optimus setup (nvidia card with intel igpu). Yeah, I know, "nvidia bad for oss etc.", but that's what was sold. And cuda is still the gold standard for compute. I had to switch because I couldn't get gpu switching working on my manjaro; nvidia card was stuck in D3 state. Very sad, though I'm now on i3 arch and happy.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#14

Post by mises »

trufflepig wrote: post #12
abathologist wrote: post #9

I installed the [i3 edition of Manjaro]( https://manjaro.org/download/i3/ ) last weekend. I was up and running with a beautiful environment providing most of the listed utilities in an hour or so. I have been incredibly happy with the setup. The edition could still use some more love (e.g., I had to set up auto-mounting and HiDPI compatible configs myself), but it is remarkably cohesive and (relatively) easy to get g…

How does Manjaro compare to Ubuntu for the “new user seamless install of everything” and “easy update for new users”

Depends on the WM you're using. I think (?) there are gui frontends to pacman? Never bothered to use them. But gnome is available on it, same as ubuntu. Of course, it's almost certainly a little less friendly, but probably not much.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#15

Post by sam0x17 »

I so agree with this, though I have a slightly different take. As someone who can't part with my GUIs, I'm nevertheless super jealous of all the i3 folks.

As such, what I want is basically i3 in a gnome window. That for me would be the best of both worlds. I can do all my fancy i3 stuff but still have a crisp, efficient UI to get settings/stuff done when it's about ease of use, not speed.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#16

Post by tambourine_man »

wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

My take is that Apple kind of invented the overlapping windows paradigm, the Xerox Alto didn’t have that concept, IIRC.

Also, dragging something from the desktop and dropping on a floating window was a major breakthrough, which is kind of incompatible with a split screen model.

Personally, on small screens like the original Mac, I think the floating/overlapping WM worked perfectly. On a 30” however, it’s a bit silly.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#17

Post by mises »

infiniteseeker wrote: post #11
newman8r wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a recent i3 convert (been using it full time for the better part of a year now). It's one of those little changes that really brought me a lot of satisfaction. This is on my primary desktop (with a 4k display). I recommend it to anyone who's in a rut with their workflow (learn about all the mods, i3-gaps, etc.) - it takes about a day to properly customize and get used to, time well spent.

I have had a tough time getting my 4k ext display to properly scale with i3. I tried arandr but the fonts are too small. With scaling , Emacs, Firefox and alacritty seem to be ok but things seem sluggish on my x230. How did you do it ?

Depends on the application for me. .Xresources is where you need the biggest tweak, but email me if you want more specific help.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#18

Post by mises »

gh02t wrote: post #3
throwaway8879 wrote: post #2

My primary dev machine has been running KDE and i3wm for a while. I feel like I get a complete GUI experience while having all the benefits of a tiling window manager. The author likes Gnome because of it's UI looking like Mac OS, and that's understandable. KDE did look different when I first switched from Macs. But at this point, the only things running in my dev machine is a whole lot of terminals and maybe 1-3 bro…

I primarily just use i3, but I used to be a KDE guy. I used it for a while again just recently and I have to say, it's gotten really good. They've made it clean and tidy, while still being powerful and customizable.

The thing that originally got me to switch to i3 was using a serious potato for a few months. 2012 core i3 processor and 8g ram (upgraded) kind of potato. Plenty usable with i3, but had trouble with windows or heavier full desktop environments; i3 was great and snappy and I was able to use the computer just fine.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#19

Post by opencl »

wyclif wrote: post #7

I've never understood why macOS has never included the functionality of, say, Divvy or chunkwm. I'd like to easily be able to tile my desktop via a keyboard command. Also, I've never quite understood what macOS people have against snapping the edges of windows to each other or the edge of the screen. Sometimes I want to divide the workspace into 3 or 4 windows and maximise my use of screen real estate. It's trivial t…

Even Windows has had a basic level of built-in window tiling functionality for a decade now. You can resize windows to half or a quarter of the screen either with keyboard shortcuts or dragging the window to a side or corner. It works pretty well.

Re: A Tiling Desktop Environment

#20

Post by mises »

sam0x17 wrote: post #15

I so agree with this, though I have a slightly different take. As someone who can't part with my GUIs, I'm nevertheless super jealous of all the i3 folks. As such, what I want is basically i3 in a gnome window. That for me would be the best of both worlds. I can do all my fancy i3 stuff but still have a crisp, efficient UI to get settings/stuff done when it's about ease of use, not speed.

You can add a nice bar to i3, and probably do even more customization. I'm guessing it wouldn't be to difficult to fork. It's a learning curve, but not too difficult to get over (I'd analogize it to vim). It's nice and easy to use, you just have to know how.
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