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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#81

Post by gradstudent »

tazeg95 wrote: post #61

I switched to i3 from gnome. Now I don't waste time to resize, move, close, reduce windows with the mouse. Just learn a few keyboard shortcuts to do this, that you can set as you want. Moreover I was frustated about applets in the status bar, so I did it myself and it's easy with some bash and pyton : https://en.jeffprod.com/blog/2020/create-your-own-i3-sway-st...

Do your keyboard media keys work?

One of the biggest gripes I had with i3 is things like volume, brightness, mute and so on. It's possible to configure everything to work again of course, but very painful. Other system related things that exist in gnome (wifi, bluetooth, sound, microphone) are also a pain to do without. Again, lots of tinkering needed to get things working anew.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#83

Post by nix23 »

alpaca128 wrote: post #70
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.

Have you tried static tiling window managers? For some reason those are much less popular even though I find them more pratical. Where dynamic WMs constantly rearrange all the windows with every change according to some fixed layout, the static ones work basically like Vim's windows and buffers. Meaning windows are stacked above each other by default with only the first one showing, but with some shortcuts you can sp…

>that the user needs all windows on the screen all the time,

Just press Super+w and all the window's (the new ones too) are arranged in a tab format.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#84

Post by adventure_r »

alpaca128 wrote: post #70
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.

Have you tried static tiling window managers? For some reason those are much less popular even though I find them more pratical. Where dynamic WMs constantly rearrange all the windows with every change according to some fixed layout, the static ones work basically like Vim's windows and buffers. Meaning windows are stacked above each other by default with only the first one showing, but with some shortcuts you can sp…

Could you recommend any static WM?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#85

Post by miguelmota »

i3 is a great gateway drug into the tiling window manager world since it works well out of the box. I migrated from i3 to bspwm which is more configurable and prefer the fibonacci style partitioning. Bspwm also decouples window configuration from the hotkey daemon basically following the unix philosophy better. The ultimate trio for me is bspwm + sxhkd + polybar.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#86

Post by mtrycz2 »

lhoff wrote: post #35

Hint for Windows users that also want to have something like that: That closest you can probably get to that is with Powertoys FancyZones. Its not exactly a tiling windows manager but its close enough. https://github.com/microsoft/PowerToys/wiki/FancyZones-Overv...

On Windows10 you get multiple desktops (all monitors are bound tho), and you can snap windows to left or right half of the screen (this is resizable), or alternatively to the four corners.

It's no i3, but it covers a lot of usecases when I'm not on my linux box.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#87

Post by darkteflon »

julius wrote: post #55
mrweasel wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I feel the same way. There are projects like EvilWM, which is still rather nice, that has the 1px border and looks alot like a tiling window manager. As I get old, I started to look more toward simple Windows managers, like OpenBox. I really do like having the buttons, and a window border I can actually hit with my pointer. Personally I think it would be fun if someone cloned Windows 3.11 and added a few ekstra keybo…

Hitting borders with a pointer is horrible. No matter the border size. A few years ago I learned that most Linux WMs allow you to use ALT+RightMouse to resize your window from anywhere (sometimes WIN+RightMouse, usually configurable).

Having just moved from Ubuntu to MacOS, I really miss this. This, and Super + click anywhere to drag.

BetterTouchTool seems to allow the use of Super by itself to drag on mouse move, but in practice Super + click is way less prone to error.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#89

Post by Arnavion »

DyslexicAtheist wrote: post #49
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 para…

>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.

Screensharing under sway works fine with firefox and chromium through xdpw.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#90

Post by diffeomorphism »

veddox wrote: post #57

I love the concept of tiling WMs, and wish mainstream WMs would adopt more of their features. But quite frankly, I just find all the tiling WMs I know just horribly ugly... (And I'm not quite sure why, but that is actually one of the biggest reasons why I don't use them anymore.)

What do you even see of a tiling wm? They don't have window decorations, you can use any panel, so the "look" is a blank screen.
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