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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#101

Post by tazeg95 »

gradstudent wrote: post #81
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.

My keyboard volume keys up and down are working. But I did nothing about this in i3. I think this is related to the system. About my status bar when I click on the volume, I open "alsamixer" in a terminal. I also have, wifi, network, dropbox as tray icons. Wifi and Lan icons come from the package networkmanager.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#102

Post by sam_lowry_ »

reshie wrote: post #75
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.)

well some people make fancy borders and the like. a tiling window manager shouldn't look like anything really just your programs. its very utilitarian i like i3 but am still partial to dwm; i3 has a lot more out of the box and probably easier to configure for most until you want to add your own patches then dwm is a lot easier imo.

Depends on the distro. Grokking the Arch Linux workflow around PKGBUILD and using `makepkg -si` is pretty easy. Debian makes it a bit tricker, but still manageable.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#104

Post by byecomputer »

jordanbeiber wrote: post #47
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…

In my little world, I don't need more than perhaps a few windows at attention simultaneously, and working out how to space them when it does happen is pretty breezy. The physical metaphor of dragging stuff works for me, too, and—while the Vim folks might ridicule me—I think the computer mouse is actually quite excellent and fills in the gaps quicker than remembering keyboard shortcuts for some things. Also really great for when I'm drunk, because I'm not in the mood to play spy games with the desktop when I just want the window to go over there. I can afford the calories my arm burns in the drag-n-drop process.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#105

Post by alecmg »

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).

while on topic of window adjusting shortcuts

I got way too used to Win+arrow keys for moving and resizing windows, inluding in multiple monitor setups. Any Linux WM that replicates these shortcuts?

Using Win+arrow I can minimize, maximize, make window stick to left or right half of screen or any of corners and move between desktops.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#106

Post by jeromenerf »

gradstudent wrote: post #81
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.

You can run gnome settings daemon “behind” i3 with i3-gnome and regolith. It will handle the media keys, locking, auto mount etc.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#107

Post by octoberfranklin »

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…

This was more or less my path as well.

I will never, ever forgive Apple for removing two-dimensional virtual desktops (I think they called it "spaces"). Then just to spite all of us, a few releases later they made it impossible for TotalSpaces (a hack that gave us back this functionality) to do the kernel code-injection wizardry that they sold for the incredible bargain price of $12 or something like that. Because, you know, "security".

That was the end of my Apple decade.

Now I use sway, which is an astonishingly-faithful (like, down to the config files) wayland clone of i3.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#108

Post by manjana »

read_if_gay_ wrote: post #100
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.

You can also use Nerdfonts to set some beautiful icons for your desktops in the bar displaying desktops in i3wm.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#109

Post by zamalek »

doctorbaum wrote: post #97
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?

If you're asking for a recommendation: Ubuntu, Fedora or Elementary. Manjaro is good if you're okay with occasional instability (due to rolling releases).

My experience has been much the same switching from Windows after the past month. The Linux desktop is better.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#110

Post by 3np »

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.)

For some inspiration on beautiful setups, check out /r/unixporn. i3gaps is popular there - but IMO the gaps are a waste of screen real-estate and not worth it for the looks.

Also maybe check out Gnome Shell? Haven't tried it personally but tile-y and similar look and feel to modern GNOME/Unity, if that's what you're after.

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