Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 454 posts

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#91

Post by eeskildsen »

One of my favorite things about i3 is that it doesn't force itself on you when it's not needed. You can keep it "in the background" in tabbed mode, effectively using it like a non-tiling WM, as long as you want. Just let your windows pile up and switch between them with fuzzy search (rofi/Switcheroo). Then, once usage patterns emerge, you can tile to take advantage of spatial memory.

Example:

- Start i3 in tabbed mode

- Open a window for coding

- Open a browser to search for some coding question. It opens in a new i3 tab, filling the screen like it would in a non-tiling WM

- Open a terminal to try the sample code (new i3 tab)

- Google the error message you get (new i3 tab)

- Use rofi to search for "code" and press Enter. Your coding window tab is activated and the coding window fills the screen

- Realizing the sample code you found would be useful here, along with the test terminal, tile those windows alongside your coding window. Now you can quickly refer to them and switch between them with spatial keybindings

- Switch back to the error message browser using rofi to check something. It's not part of your core workflow right now, so don't worry about tiling it

That's probably obvious to anyone who's used a tiling WM for any length of time, but tiling was daunting to me until it clicked. I spent too much time thinking about optimal window arrangements. Thinking of tiling as an optional finishing touch rather than a focal point made it much more useful/practical.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#94

Post by 3np »

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.

I do think it comes down to personal preferences a lot. I've been tiling-only (save for a couple of secondary things) for over a decade and it's by far the most productive to me. Always having 100% screen used, no windows overlapping (apart from things like file dialogs, alerts and my "quake console"), and never having to touch the mouse for navigating/repositioning is great.

It works great both on a single laptop, and with 3 external monitors (of which one generally has a single workspace hardcoded). I fully utilize all 9/10 workspaces most days.

The only time it doesn't fit great is with e.g. GIMP that has several small windows for toolboxes and stuff - one can still target particular windows to be floating (either keybind at runtime or with static config targeting window names/classes/whatnot).

There's no way I'm switching away from Xmonad for my main workstation - but you do you!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#95

Post by profsnuggles »

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.

You may be talking about auto-tilers like xmonad. Those are the devil (joking, sorta). My favorite tiling window managers in order of preference would probably be exwm (emacs wm) -> stumpwm -> ratpoison -> i3.

These are manual tiling wms. So in exwm I can chose how to position and resize my windows any way I want. For example I can hit C-x 3 to split my screen in half vertically then C-x 2 to split one of the vertical splits horizontally. Now I have

  +----------+-----------+
  |          |           |
  |          |           |
  |          +-----------+
  |          |           |
  |          |           |
  +----------+-----------+
I can resize the vertical and horizontal splits, add or remove splits and cycle between the splits and the windows they display with regular emacs commands. The only thing you can't do is have windows overlap so you can only see part of their contents. i3 comes last in my preferences because it adds a bit more friction to this with it's concept of containers.

It seems to me like that covers 99% of use cases. I don't see very much value in being able to only see some of a window when it is being overlapped. Especially when if I need to see only a few lines of a window it would only be a few keystrokes away. Maybe C-o 2 C-x 3 C-x - C-x b window title which looks crazy but if you are a heavy emacs user with ace-window and ivy mode it's very natural.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#96

Post by dagw »

theelous3 wrote: post #12

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

Despite trying many times and many different tiling wms, it doesn't solve any problem I'm having. Basically every window manager (and Windows) lets me easily put two windows side by side in different ways and have multi desktops. Beyond that my editors, IDEs, and terminals support both tiling and tabs "internally". Between all of that all my tiling needs are more than met.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#97

Post by doctorbaum »

stfwn wrote: post #66

I used to be all in on Apple. On macOS I had a little program called Magnet to snap windows to sides and corners, and on my iPad (with external keyboard) I SSH’d into a VPS to write and run code there. I used Alfred and had all kinds of workflows in there. I thought it was great. But then during my AI studies I wanted some beefier hardware, which was just not affordable for me within Apple’s ecosystem, plus they only…

What distribution?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#98

Post by boudin »

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 it's the opposite. I find floating window manager like Windows, MacOS, Gnome, Kde really inefficient at managing screen space. Even more now that we have big screens. Tilling window managers for me brings a few things: * Almost never require to resize or position a window, the window manager optimise the layout for you. It removes the constant needs of organizing window * Combine with workspaces and multiple monitors makes working with a lot of windows so much easier * Finally, and this is the most important win for me, it is easy to manage everything with a keyboard. Even the few times I need to resize windows, it's such a pleasure to resize all the windows of the current workspace in one go with a simple keyboard shortcut.

It takes a bit of time to get used to it, especially since most tilling window manager I've used require a bit of customisation to bet to my taste but once I've been used to it, going back to clicking on menus, moving things around with a mouse or a touchpad is just not possible. I find this so inefficient, exhausting and, first and foremost, something that should be avoidable.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#99

Post by gal_anonym »

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.)

You should take a look at PaperWM for Gnome. It combines functionality if i3 with Gnome aestetics. But it also makes tiling simpler, open windows are only side by side, but with several workspaces. It also uses "Win" key for everything so it is very convenient, and do not collide with other Linux mappings.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#100

Post by read_if_gay_ »

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.)

You can configure borders and install a status bar with more powerful theming features such as polybar, which will make i3 quite pretty in a minimalist way, but it will never be anything fancy if that's what you're looking for.
Post reply on HN