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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#261

Post by pmoriarty »

profsnuggles wrote: post #95
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 vertica…

"The only thing you can't do is have windows overlap so you can only see part of their contents."

With i3 you can do exactly this by telling i3 to float a window. Windows can be floated automatically (by matching titles or other X properties) or manually through a keyboard shortcut.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#262

Post by b0rsuk »

I used to like KDE and dislike Gnome, but by the time I switched to i3 I realized I don't care about traditional window managers. I used a lot of console anyway. Why wait for windows and icons to appear? I want animations and decorations to get out of the way. If I'm playing, it's usually fullscreen. When I'm working, I want to use as much screen as possible. i3 sounded radical at first, but when was the last time an animation or decoration helped you? I mean there are some rare cases, but it needs to be helpful for me to leave it enabled.

I now honestly believe mouse interfaces are overrated. They have their place in games and graphical applications. Anything that does NOT require precision is better done with a keyboard. The exception is websites. Mouse is used because it has very low learning curve and you can just click on stuff that interests you without thinking how to reach it.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#263

Post by cycomanic »

gspr wrote: post #172
solarkraft wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Though would switch to sway in a heartbeat if they sorted hidpi and xwayland together Do you mean that XWayland doesn't support HiDPI yet? I'm told it's coming ... some day (in a few months). Meanwhile even Chromium got Wayland support so the last laggards on my machine are the JetBrains IDEs.

> Do you mean that XWayland doesn't support HiDPI yet? Correct. Emacs is my last regularly-in-use X program under Sway, and my god does it look horrid on a large HiDPI screen :-( > I'm told it's coming ... some day (in a few months). I remember reading that it's complicated and extremely un-sexy (because it's essential X work).

Interesting I'm not having any issues with emacs on my 4k monitor. Similar chromium, which still runs on xwayland, I recall that things fixed themselves a while ago. I'm on opensuse tumbleweed, not sure it's because of this. A quick browse got me a a sway arch-package with hidpi xwayland here: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/sway-hidpi-git/

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#264

Post by adkadskhj »

siraben wrote: post #221

I've used i3 for several years[0], and it's one of my favorite window managers out there. I had a couple of failed attempts on Debian/Ubuntu but NixOS made it so easy to switch to i3 and use XFCE as the desktop environment, which is great when you want to use i3 but not worry about setting sleep settings/keybindings for volume and display, etc., so I recommend i3+xfce for anyone wanting to give i3 a try without inves…

Hah, i've been debating switching to Sway for that mixed HiDPI reason. I've got a three monitor setup where 1 is 4k and the other two are 1080p. X11 has been annoying, with a handful of small compromises and gotchas, unusable without xrandr.

> let me know of any questions regarding program compatibility under Wayland.

What types of programs might not work in Sway?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#265

Post by burnte »

krebs_liebhaber wrote: post #214
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…

I dont like Microsoft operating systems and wanted to try something different. I installed Linux. The installation process was very painful. Getting it to cooperate with the hardware was worse, and of course there is no real support. I finally got it halfway working. At that point, I found it was hard to learn, harder to get used to, and hardest to do anything useful since none of the programs were familiar. Two days…

I can't tell if this is poor satire or trolling, because I REALLY don't want to believe there's someone on HN that actually thinks any of that is even REMOTELY true.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#266

Post by pmoriarty »

3np wrote: post #94
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, a…

"The only time it doesn't fit great is with e.g. GIMP that has several small windows for toolboxes and stuff"

You could try running GIMP in single-window mode (via GIMP's menu option: Windows -> Single-Window Mode).

It doesn't get rid of every little window GIMP has, as it'll still pop up windows for saving files, for example, but it's much better than multi-window mode, if you don't want to bother with lots of little windows.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#267

Post by edejong »

b0rsuk wrote: post #262

I used to like KDE and dislike Gnome, but by the time I switched to i3 I realized I don't care about traditional window managers. I used a lot of console anyway. Why wait for windows and icons to appear? I want animations and decorations to get out of the way. If I'm playing, it's usually fullscreen. When I'm working, I want to use as much screen as possible. i3 sounded radical at first, but when was the last time an…

Well, I browse a lot of the web using my keyboard using either Vimium or Tridactyl. Together with i3, it feels like a totally different and pleasant experience.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#268

Post by cycomanic »

3np wrote: post #94
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, a…

Yes GIMP is the one application, that really works poorly under tiling window managers. I've had a setup previously that would automatically layout the different windows (I think that was when I was still using awesomewm), but that also worked poorly. Has anyone found a way to work well with GIMP in a tiling WM?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#269

Post by adkadskhj »

napsterbr wrote: post #201
hibbelig wrote: post #189

I used to love tiling, but now I use lots of applications that are heavy-weight and graphical, and it seems more fitting to arrange the windows in such a way that strategic corners "peek out" behind the front-most application. For example, I run my IDE in full screen and the console/log is in the bottom part of the window. My browser partially covers the IDE by occupying the right 75% of the screen. Then I can follow…

> Thoughts? Looks like a side monitor will work wonders for you. I have a setup with 3 monitors: My main 4k monitor is used for coding only. I can have 5 open buffers, side by side, with close to 120 lines being displayed in each one of them. I have a side monitor open with a terminal which shows me the logs of the running application, plus I can easily type any additional command there. On the other monitor I have t…

It's funny, i have three monitors and i still do what the GP mentioned. My side monitor is almost entirely a bunch of large-designed (aka big gutters/etc) GUI focused applications. Slack, etc. And i arrange the "peek outs" (as GP called them) by what makes sense to see about that window all the time.

It works out really, really well and i'm super interested in finding a way to make that work with i3.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#270

Post by shakezula »

edejong wrote: post #267
b0rsuk wrote: post #262

I used to like KDE and dislike Gnome, but by the time I switched to i3 I realized I don't care about traditional window managers. I used a lot of console anyway. Why wait for windows and icons to appear? I want animations and decorations to get out of the way. If I'm playing, it's usually fullscreen. When I'm working, I want to use as much screen as possible. i3 sounded radical at first, but when was the last time an…

Well, I browse a lot of the web using my keyboard using either Vimium or Tridactyl. Together with i3, it feels like a totally different and pleasant experience.

Agreed, between vimium, Vim, and a window manager, I almost never have to actually touch my mouse. Keeps me in the zone a lot more.
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