One thing I noticed after switching from gnome (and osx) to i3 ~6 years ago is that I never felt the need for a second display since then. It's pretty satisfying to know that you're efficiently using every piece of your screen.
I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
111–120 of 454 posts
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#112Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 gre…
Sway, the i3 clone for wayland, actually allows to use the mouse to drag and drop a window or group of windows. This is something supported in other window managers. The best of both worlds?
I agree that the mouse can be great and effective. Plan9 / Acme editor is a great example. I also like the additional buttons when browsing, you know, prev/next.
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#113Probably 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'd wager that most people use a maximized window 95% of the time and only cascade windows the other 5% in order to drag things between them. That's the ideal scenario for tiling windows. You may work differently.
There are hybrid tiling window managers, like PopOS Shell. You can easily turn it on/off, including specific windows that you want to always cascade.
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#114Earlier quoted context omitted.
> 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... That's why I try my best to cope with the defaults and change when absolutely necessary. It spares a lot of frustration when you use another config since you can always go vanilla. Edit: quoting
But if they don't also do that, that doesn't help? (It just makes it slightly more likely that they do, or at least something similar.)
You can then revert back to the default config:
mv ~/.config/i3/config{,.old}
cp /etc/i3/config ~/.config/i3/configRe: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#115Probably 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 either need a window positioned for active usage, or don't need the window visible at all. A tiling WM not only enforces this (although it can switch to floating if needed), it handles positioning automatically so I don't need to fidget with positioning and sizing of multiple windows. It also minimizes useless fluff to make it easy to have even more windows operated in parallel. Windows, macOS, GNOME and others do…
> I don't understand people that work with small floating windows.
I don’t know for the floating part, I guess it is a personal thing.
But for the many small windows shown at the same time, it’s pretty useful when exploring and comparing texts, data, code, logs...
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#116Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I think gnome has those shortcuts.
TWMs let the first window fill the whole screen, with subsequent windows being opened next to that first one. Depending on the TWM there's a specific layout or you have to arrange the windows yourself. (i3 is the latter kind. Allowing for very flexible layouts, but more complicated than TWMs who follow a preset patter) TWMs are not built to minimise windows though. That's why there's also a heavy focus on using multiple workspaces. (i3s tab-mode is also useful where you'll have windows arranged similar to browser tabs)
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#117Probably 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 tiling WMs are highly configurable, so the idea is that you script them to your tastes and then they do the work for you.
I use a rather heavily customized version of dwm myself, and I have things like custom placement rule: I want my editor to be in a specific "workspace" (or tag, in dwm parlance), I have keybindings to focus my editor, my terminal or my web browser in one single keystroke regardless of where I am (I always cringe a bit when I watch colleagues feverishly alt-tabbing to find the window they're looking for), I have added custom "sticky" windows that appear in all workspaces etc...
It takes a while to set up at first but I think it's well worth it in the long run. When I have to use a normal desktop environment on a different computer everything feels clunky and more complicated than it should be.
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#118With emacs split screen, elscreen, winner mode, you have tiling windows without os modification.
Can I put Firefox windows in it? LibreOffice Calc? Minecraft?
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#119If you really dig tiling window managers but you're running on macOS, check out Amethyst. https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst
+1 to the Amethyst and the Xmonad style tiling with where the focus is on a main area and there are options to switch windows to main aread and cycle layouts.
Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager
#120I 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, y…
Exactly this. And why I nowadays only use open source software is that I know my experience stays the same for good. I use i3 because it works just like it worked 10 years ago. I don't need a new experience with every release, new graphics, new ways to use my computer. I just need a utilitarian desktop with my editor, browser and a terminal.