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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#41

Post by johannes1234321 »

dbrgn wrote: post #30
bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

Most if not all tiling window managers allow you to do that by switching to a floating mode.

That i3 has a floating mode is good, however it's not a good floating mode for a floating-based workflow.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#42

Post by solarkraft »

noodlesUK wrote: post #8

I love i3 (though would switch to sway in a heartbeat if they sorted hidpi and xwayland together). Its only major flaw in my mind is that you will never be able to use someone else’s computer without feeling a seething frustration that it isn’t running i3 with your config...

> Though would switch to sway in a heartbeat if they sorted hidpi and xwayland together

Do you mean that XWayland doesn't support HiDPI yet? I'm told it's coming ... some day (in a few months).

Meanwhile even Chromium got Wayland support so the last laggards on my machine are the JetBrains IDEs.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#43

Post by continuational »

bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

In what way does it make you more productive?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#44

Post by ageofwant »

solarkraft wrote: post #28
ageofwant wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And sway does not do Nvidia.

While I think the decision is unfortunate this might help understanding it: https://drewdevault.com/2017/10/26/Fuck-you-nvidia.html

Oh I'm a born again disciple of the Church of 'Fuck you Nvidia', brother. But no miracle has changed my 1.5k card into a AMD, yet.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#45

Post by gkbrk »

ageofwant wrote: post #18
makepanic wrote: post #2

Sadly it's bound to X11. The alternative for me was to migrate to sway[1] to have a similar environment in wayland. [1] - https://github.com/swaywm/sway/

And sway does not do Nvidia.

Sway works with any GPU that implements the proper API on Linux. Nvidia has a bad case of NIH syndrome and does their own thing independent from other GPU manufacturers.

So it would be more accurate to say Nvidia does not do sway.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#46

Post by jchw »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #33
emptyparadise wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wayland has a bad case of security at the cost of usability. They've been adding protocols here and there but there are still obvious things missing. Last time I checked it wasn't even possible to create something like xdotool without relying on some nasty hacks.

And on top of that the “security” is useless because any software that runs as one's user account can simply do things such as ptrace the compositor or override the compositor in the PATH with a malicious one or LD_PRELOAD the compositor. As soon as malicious software run as one's own user, then that is that and it can do anything that the user can do. The argument raised against this is that it should be used in con…

You are forgetting that you actually can sandbox and contain apps. Under X11, doing that and then giving the app access to the display is dangerous. Under Wayland it is not. This matters for Flatpak, Snap, firejail, etc.

I have seen multiple such arguments that you can “sandbox” X11 access, with no proof or really bad compromises; I don’t believe it.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#47

Post by jordanbeiber »

bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

For me (and most, I guess) it’s about flow!

Switched to i3 on a nixos box a few months ago - never leaving the tiling vm, or nixos for that matter.

I suddenly use workspaces which I never used to and I have coms in one space (mail/slack/teams), terms with vim etc in one, and web browser in a third.

Never looking around for windows and draging stuff around is magical for the workflow.

With fzf and a launcher & window switcher my workflow have never been more streamlined.

Nixos helps as well, but that’s a different topic. :)

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#48

Post by jwr »

i3 is great and makes Linux usable for me. Some people have asked here why people prefer tiling window managers. I don't — I'd much rather be able to position windows as I want them on the screen. But for some inexplicable reason the world has decided that computers can't be tasked with REMEMBERING where our windows were. This is particularly egregious on Linux, where every time you open an app (or the app opens a window), the first thing you have to do is resize the window.

Given this failure (I still have no idea why we think our computers can't handle remembering where windows should be), it's better to have a tiling window manager, because at least one doesn't have to hunt for the window borders (which, in another failure of common sense, are becoming thinner and smaller every year) and resize the windows.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#49

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

makepanic wrote: post #2

Sadly it's bound to X11. The alternative for me was to migrate to sway[1] to have a similar environment in wayland. [1] - https://github.com/swaywm/sway/

I boot straight into the console and then have a setup where I either run startx or start_sway.

I love i3 and it was my first experience with tiling WM years ago. It is absolutely a radical break for me from all other WM's since tiling allows me to work in deep focus many desktops, 1 desktop per activity/task and my focus always on one thing not many.

Also wanting not to miss out on the future I moved to sway in parallel. I am literally in sway 90% of the time. The only difference is if I have to use video / webRTC screensharing or similar (usually in the browser), in which case sway will not work. This is why I maintain a dual system of both i3/sway.

Also I trust i3 to be more stable for when I am standing in front of a crowd or have to connect my system to a variety of different external beamers, monitors etc.

It sounds nuts to "maintain" 2 WM's but my configuration and workflow never deviates no matter which system I use even across upgrades of i3/sway.

When I plug in a new freshly installed machine I just fetch my dotfiles and have both i3/sway in exactly the same way as I'm used to ... It's incredibly easy keeping both around if one has to (or wants to). Bonus of sway is also that it has gaps support (which is cool on bigger screens, less important on laptops).

edit: both sway / i3 gave me no problems at all running them under restrictive environments such as LD_PRELOAD=libhardened_malloc.so (from GrapheneOS) and also work with under firejail without problems. I'll stop since it's anyway clear I am a big fan of both :)

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#50

Post by sdevonoes »

theelous3 wrote: post #12

I'll never understand why every dev doesn't use tiling wms. Such a free productivity and happiness win.

Because it doesn't really boost my productivity. I try to keep the number of windows opened to the minimum: Having more than 4 windows opened is counterproductive (at least for me) since it implies 4 different context I must switch between. I can handle 4 different windows opened easily without any tiling wms.

The windows I have opened are: - the terminal (at most 4 tabs as well... but here my terminal allows me to easily switch to any numbered tab I want) - the IDE (sometimes). In most cases, my IDE can be run on my terminal (e.g., Vim) - a web browser (again, I try to keep the number of tabs to a minimum... but here it's harder to do so) - anything else (usually nothing)

Another reason to not use a tiling wms: yet another dependency I don't have to take care (as in: configuring and updating it).

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