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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#161

Post by Kaze404 »

411111111111111 wrote: post #132
zamalek wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Please don't throw out statements like "linux is better". It is better for you, me, and some others in this thread. But if you make a statement like that you'll get Apple Enthusiasts to try it out just to prove you wrong. And they will find reasons, because both osx and windows both have areas where they're superior.

Isn't the subjectivity heavily implied in that context? If people take it on face value and try to prove them wrong, it's on them.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#162

Post by grep_name »

arghwhat wrote: post #64
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 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. It's a waste of limited screen real estate, and means you don't get to see as much of what you're working on as you could. Suboptimal.

I use a tiling window manager at home, but when I'm at work I have to use a windows machine. I often use vim to do stuff and when I do I usually keep it to 80x24 or 80x48 (my preference is 80x24 unless what I'm working on has a lot of long function definitions). If I'm working out of a single vim window (which I've built my vimrc around to some extent), I don't need to see a lot of info at the same time, so I can put that window at exactly the part of the (enormous these days) screen which is most amenable to my neck angle, and don't have to jump around the screen much with my eyes, which helps me zone in. I'll only go full screen if I have to analyze a huge CSV dump or something, where the lines are not kept to a sensible length, or occasionally when I use vimdiff (but even then I have my defaults set so that I don't need more than 120 width to use a 2 way diff effectively). Spreading my info needlessly across the real estate feels less optimal to me I guess

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#163

Post by veddox »

marcus_holmes wrote: post #126
sto_hristo wrote: post #122

Used i3 fulltime for more than a year. It's great for building extremely lightweight environments that will run on any machine. The productivity side of it is slightly exaggerated (in terms of tiling vs stacking manager), and i didn't find myself saving so much time. One thing i've always missed from the stacking manager is the window overlap - i do that quite often, especially when reading something while doing stuf…

I use i3 and the productivity for coding-type tasks is great. Fiddling with my i3 config and i3bar is a favourite procrastination, and I can genuinely say it's changed the way I use my computer. But Zoom is a nightmare. It's clearly only designed to work with conventional windows. It opens new windows a lot, and each time it does that, i3 grabs the new window and puts it in whatever workspace my mouse is currently at…

Zoom on Linux is terrible anyway. On my system (quad-core Thinkpad with Ubuntu 20.04), Zoom consistently starts using 4*100% CPU during long calls.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#165

Post by francis-io »

pimeys wrote: post #79
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…

Almost like reading my story... I used to be all in on Apple, using their iMac G4 and later on the Intel iMacs at home, but needed a beefier machine. So when I started in a new job, instead of getting a macBook, I asked the company IT to build me a workstation (and been asking for it from the companies I worked for after that). Installed Arch Linux and i3 to it, and never looked back. Did run Linux and i3 in the macs…

This is kind of my story too. I stick with ubuntu LTS just for an added level of confidence things are compatible, but Arch might be a good idea to look into. The arch packages are a big plus. Do you find many compatibility issues?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#166

Post by toxik »

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…

i3 aside, the continuation to your story for me is, use Linux machine, be decently productive but nothing works quite the way it should.

Change your keyboard layout to one of your own? Eh maybe Xmodmaps, oh but then it gets reset every so often because $HISTORICAL_ARTIFACT. You have to change the actual xkb mapping, which is very much not a “happy path” in any DE.

The only graphical e-mail client that actually seems feature complete is Thunderbird, and for _years_ I have to race to disable the global search within 10 seconds of starting it. Otherwise the program just freezes up. I don’t even know what to use for calendar stuff.

I would really love it if Linux was viable for me as a desktop OS. It just isn’t, because of things like these.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#167

Post by clarkevans »

Viruptc wrote: post #17

https://regolith-linux.org for Ubuntu based on i3 is fantastic

For those that wish to have access with the control panel and other standard Gnome features under Ubuntu, Regolith is a godsend. It solves integration challenges in a smooth way without detracting from i3's strengths.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#168

Post by ibraheemdev »

flurdy wrote: post #139
SJetKaran wrote: post #136

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I moved from linux to mac for work stuff. Really miss the I3 functionality; yabai fills that gap mostly but not all the way.

There is also Amethyst for macos https://github.com/ianyh/Amethyst

Amethyst was inspired by XMonad, so it is probably the closest you are going to get to i3 on MacOS

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#169

Post by veddox »

3np wrote: post #110
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.

I'm on Ubuntu 20.04 with GNOME. Used to hate Gnome Shell, Unity was much better suited to my workflow (and wasted less screen real estate). But Canonical has actually made it usable over the last few years, so I'm generally quite happy with it. But it doesn't quite have the flexibility of a real twm.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#170

Post by pwdisswordfish0 »

bitigchi wrote: post #127
profsnuggles wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 vertica…

I think this is the most popular setup for tiling window managers, I use my terminal windows in this configuration as well (on a separate display). However, on my main display, I can't imagine going like this, most because: - macOS "Zoom" functionality already takes care of the optimal content size. - For websites, above zoom functionality works fine, but I prefer to manually resize my browser, since nearly all websi…

> For websites, above zoom functionality works fine, but I prefer to manually resize my browser, since nearly all websites today have responsive design

If you've already reached this milestone of enlightenment and you're already using a tiling window manager elsewhere, I'd recommend you not make an exception for web browsing.

I don't even use a tiling window manager, just Gnome's rudimentary support for resizing a window and placing it to take up the left half of the screen or the right half, and I do easily 98+% of my browsing this way, with two half-width browser windows. (The rest involves temporarily maximizing a window because the website's layout is busted.) So browsing, too, is also very compatible with tiling.

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