> I really want to love tools like i3 or awesome, but I always go back to Gnome because it juts gets stuff done. I liked Gnome 2, I like 3
My approach is to use the window manager best suited for the task, but all at the same time.
That means for my highly structured multi-desktop, multi-git-workspace programming tasks I use i3, which is ideal for those.
However for my less structured tasks like writing or consuming documentation, email, and personal web browsing, I use a more conventional, less constrained desktop environment (i.e gnome), which is more ideally suited for those tasks.
If I'm willing to abuse the term window manager a little further, Vim running inside i3 serves as a third window management environment I run in parallel, optimized specifically for code editing.
The trick is that I use i3 in its own separate Linux desktop window (In my case running on a remote machine, but you could just as well do this running in a local VM). this allows me to have both environment successful on the same screen at the same time.
This also has the added benefit of making it very easy to find my code editing window among the tons of other windows I have open.
