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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#271

Post by vmchale »

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…

Yup, I envy the M1 but I'm on XMonad (lol) and I really wouldn't want to go back to a non-tiling window manager.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#272

Post by nicolapcweek94 »

p2t2p wrote: post #224
nicolapcweek94 wrote: post #213

I never really understood TWMs. They look incredibly pretty after heavy configuration, and I get the appeal of that, but for daily use my workflow - on two 27' 4k monitor - is to keep a window maximized on each and alt-tab through them when I need something else, which will replace one of the two maximized windows with its own. Occasionally I "tile" two windows side by side for comparisons etc, but that is disappeari…

Right now I have two columns. Wide, left with Idea and right with 3 terminals vertically. I can switch to any terminal with single key press, without needing to look for it among other windows when alt-tabbin. I also have multiple tags and on other tag I have a similar arrangement for another project that I keep an eye on. On second monitor I have 3 fullscreen apps on separate tags - zoom, slack and spotify and each…

This sounds similar to what I do with Emacs, having it fullscreen with a code buffer mostly full window with occasional split columns on the right for terminals, magit etc - also controlled by keyboard, obviously. Though I see how having a separate shortcut for telegram, spotify, vivaldi etc would be useful if I wasn't already using them within Emacs!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#273

Post by adkadskhj »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #205
__s wrote: post #177

See also https://swaywm.org which seeks to implement i3 for wayland > Sway is a tiling Wayland compositor and a drop-in replacement for the i3 window manager for X11. It works with your existing i3 configuration and supports most of i3's features, plus a few extras.

The only thing I have against sway isn't actually a knock against it or wayland, but nvidia's drivers not supporting it. I simply can't leave my fancy gpu's power untapped, simply to use wayland.

Well. That takes me out for the same reason. Appreciate the info!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#274

Post by dmitriid »

stfwn wrote: post #160
pacifika wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What are you using as replacements for keyboard maestro and hazel?

These are exactly the type of silly applications that are needed on macOS because the OS too locked down, or at least not made for people who like to do this type of stuff. On Linux, almost all native applications keep their data in regular, non-proprietary files on the file system. This means your data always exists separate from the applications and you can do with it what you want. If you want to run a script ever…

> If you want to run a script

I emphatically don't want to run any scripts. I have enough programming at my day job. The last thing I want is spend all of my free time programming and debugging scripts.

Give me a nice GUI with a few clicks any time.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#275

Post by cycomanic »

Crespyl wrote: post #144
Normal_gaussian wrote: post #60

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wrt borders and title bar - most tiling managers support these (at configurable size), its just most users turn them off as the user is keyboard focused.

Being heavily keyboard-first (or only) is one of the reasons I've tended to bounce off of tiling wms I've tried in the past, despite liking the concept generally. I tend to alternate between wanting to do everything from the keyboard and wanting to use my mouse heavily. I've never liked having to switch my hand between keyboard and mouse when I'm in the middle of something, so I usually have customizations for both i…

You might want to try sway which while being a tiling WM has mouse support to allow dragging windows around etc.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#276

Post by vmchale »

toxik wrote: post #166
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…

The mail client is worse than Windows IMO. But a tiling window manager and terminal is worth it for now.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#277

Post by danans »

I have one i3 desktop per git workspace. All terminals and artifacts associated with that git workspace stay on the associated desktop.

The only exception are windows that need the entire screen, which get their own adjacent desktops. But for these I use the same desktop number always so it's easy to find.

This way I spend almost no time searching for stuff in i3. Switching between desktops is like doing a full screen grouped alt-tab. So much faster. In fact I do this even in non i3 desktop environments, but i3 makes it a lot easier.

However, I don't do things like email or document reading in i3, since I find that the less constrained traditional window environment is better for that.

The other great thing about i3 is that it's is fast over remote desktop sessions, because the ui itself is so minimal.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#278

Post by vmchale »

j7ake wrote: post #151
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…

Nice story thanks for sharing! Is it easy to reconfigure keyboard shortcuts like cmd+C for Mac but ctrl+C on Linux? I have spent way too much time trying to do it on Ubuntu and it has made it hard for me to make the switch.

I use XMonad and it has some ability to reconfigure such things. Not sure what the general solution is.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#279

Post by abetlen »

My brand new laptop was stolen while I was in school and I had to finish the year with a used 10-inch netbook I borrowed from a friend. Because of the tiny display and underpowered processor I had to get creative, I installed Arch plus i3 and it worked like a charm. In fact, I noticed my productivity actually went up. Eventually I got a new laptop, I switched off Arch to Ubuntu but I've been using i3 ever since.

If you're an i3 user here are a couple cool things to check out:

- scratchpad [1]: Little known i3 feature. Let's you put individual windows in a scratch workspace and then pull them up quickly over your regular workspaces. Really useful docs and things like that, I keep my time tracker in a scratch workspace.

- rofi [2]: This is a dmenu replacement with a nicer interface that lets you combine lists of commands in a single search window. I have it configured so I can search through my open windows by title or run any program from the same interface.

[1]: https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_scratchpad

[2]: https://github.com/davatorium/rofi

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#280

Post by pimeys »

francis-io wrote: post #165
pimeys wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

If you don't use the computer in a while, like my office workstation when needing to stay home, `pacman -Syyu` packet upgrade might be painful after six months.

Otherwise it's the distro I'm having the least amount of problems. Specifically don't miss the PPA's from Ubuntu. With dist upgrades they are quite painful.

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