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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#321

Post by chrismorgan »

dimitrios1 wrote: post #186
chrismorgan wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A couple of possibilities for Zoom: • You could make Zoom windows float by default in your i3 config. I seem to recall there was some app I did that with on my old laptop where I used i3. • Judging by Windows behaviour (which may or may not be the same), it’s Zoom’s fullscreen mode that’s the real problem, most readily triggered by screen sharing. Settings → Share Screen → Window size when screen sharing lets you cha…

Can also just use Zoom web client. But my guess is if you are in the position where you can use something like i3 for your daily driver, you are in the position to use something better than Zoom.

I’m curious what you have in mind as better than Zoom.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#322

Post by klibertp »

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…

Linux CD, author being current "high-school senior" (from the profile), and "my lawyer said"...

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#323

Post by brobdingnagians »

jjuel wrote: post #298
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 turned out to be a gateway window manager. Tried out all sorts of different tiling managers, and finally stuck on DWM.

Yeah, I didn't realize how much I'd like DWM. Once in awhile I'll try awesome or i3, but DWM seems to hit the sweet spot.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#324

Post by blibble »

Blikkentrekker wrote: post #282
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…

Aren't tiling window managers the traditional ones? The ability for one window to float over another was a later innovation and is of course more difficult to implement. The earliest versions of Windows were also tiling only, which is thus the traditional way.

Windows 1.0 was a tiling window manager!

https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/4_wxRAsOvukqwxpkQ-2SAZTx4ro=/2...

2.0 added floating windows

https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/qXTZ7Mk9cLKSc3wpEP2wK14oT8I=/1...

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#325

Post by boudin »

stfwn wrote: post #185
j7ake wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

In macOS it is not entirely clear to me what category of things the cmd key is for. On one hand it's used for keyboard shortcuts related to window management and the system, but on the other hand it's also used to issue commands to the application itself. In i3 you assign a $mod key, which then always and exclusively used for 'system and window management'. Opening, closing, moving and resizing windows, switching wor…

I'm with you, I find the meta key on mac messy. I personally change ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v to ctrl+c and ctrl+v in my terminal emulator so that it's consistent accross the board. This way it's clear: * meta key: my windows manager shortcuts * ctrl: app specific shortcuts

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#326

Post by bee_rider »

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…

I haven't had that experience. I have had the slightly annoying experience of mapping keys using tools for X, and then realizing some time later that when in the console those mappings vanish. Of course, there are tools for remapping keys in the console, but they are a little less user friendly.

In the end, I got a keyboard that incidentally had functionality to remap keys built in (I wanted the keyboard already anyway, but the remapping feature was a nice bonus). This ended up routing around the problem entirely, and seems like a generally better solution. Now my remaps survive all the way to Windows, for my rare trips over there.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#327

Post by Steltek »

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'm jealous of you and others in this thread that shared this path. I've unfortunately been dragged in the other direction: I was a happy i3/Linux user and now I'm coping with a multi-monitor Mac setup which stubbornly refuses to support workflows which I find to be very fast and efficient.

There are some tools (all $$) for Mac which attempt to replicate a tiling WM but Apple's support for it is extremely poor, affecting the quality of the tools.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#328

Post by llimllib »

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.

No, in the general case it is infuriatingly impossible

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#330

Post by Steltek »

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 is nice but has odd and unfortunate edge cases. The use of the Accessibility APIs limits what it can do. For example, keybinds stop working if the focus is on an empty screen with no windows. Occassionaly it "loses" a window and you can't cycle to it any more, even if you focus it manually. I also don't think it can throw windows to other workspaces but maybe that's changed?

For very simple i3-like configurations (single workspace+monitor, always fullscreen or side-by-side), it's not bad. It's limited by poor support from Apple.

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