I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager • Hacker News Board

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#391

Post by gnubison » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

adkadskhj wrote: post #258

eeskildsen wrote: post #91

One of my favorite things about i3 is that it doesn't force itself on you when it's not needed. You can keep it "in the background" in tabbed mode, effectively using it like a non-tiling WM, as long as you want. Just let your windows pile up and switch between them with fuzzy search (rofi/Switcheroo). Then, once usage patterns emerge, you can tile to take advantage of spatial memory. Example: - Start i3 in tabbed mod…

I completely agree about "spacial memory" - i use my non-i3 WM in the same way.. but i'm not a fan of tiling in most cases. Does i3 still have tools i might find useful? To further illustrate: I primarily have an open Terminal+Tmux for editing on my main monitor. On my side, i have spacial but overlapping windows. They stick out a bit, such that it's primarily four tabs - left,up,right,down. For example my Slack is o…

I haven't used i3 in a while, but you might be able to use stacking/tabbed containers to accomplish what you've outlined above. It doesn't have the advantage that you can see part of the window, though.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#392

Post by __jem » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:49 PM UTC

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…

Personally, I would just tile them vertically with the terminal taking up the bottom 10 or 5%, but you can also make certain windows floating with i3, which may be another solution.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#393

Post by Koshkin » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:53 PM UTC

Ar-Curunir wrote: post #242

nemo136 wrote: post #216

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For the keyboard layout, use a mechanical keyboard program it through qmk, loose 1 month adapting to it, and voila, problem solved.

Lol this is sarcasm, right?

No, just a typo.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#394

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:54 PM UTC

deadbunny wrote: post #389

dotancohen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But KDE allows all this _and_ allows windows to overlap. There are keyboard shortcuts for "take the left half of the screen" and "move focus to the window left of this one". How many windows does a typical i3 user have open anyway? For tiling terminal apps, I just use the tiling feature of KDE's Konsole, and used to use Terminator.

I'm a devops/sre type so, on my main (ultrawide) screen I have a browser 50% right, then 2 columns of terminals (usually vim) 50% left usually with 2 per column, often 3, sometimes stacks of the same under each other. This can be duplicated across workspaces as needed for different codebases. Often I'll find I need to make arbitrary layouts on the fly when debugging an issue or responding to an outage, I can do this…

As a VIM user I completely understand the sentiment of just having the machine do what you want it to do without having to engage the brain. Thank you for the recommendation.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#395

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:55 PM UTC

addicted wrote: post #385

dotancohen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But KDE allows all this _and_ allows windows to overlap. There are keyboard shortcuts for "take the left half of the screen" and "move focus to the window left of this one". How many windows does a typical i3 user have open anyway? For tiling terminal apps, I just use the tiling feature of KDE's Konsole, and used to use Terminator.

Quick count of how many I used to have open. 10 Workspaces. 2 GTD workspaces (Personal and Work...I know you shouldn’t separate them, but that’s how I liked it). That’s 10 Windows total. 3 main development workspaces, each with 2 terminals. 6 more. 2 Secondary development workspaces with 4 Windows each (for running search/git/tail, etc). 8 more. 2 browser workspaces with 3 browser Windows total. 1 other workspace for…

I see, thank you.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#396

Post by dotancohen » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:56 PM UTC

profsnuggles wrote: post #248

dotancohen wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But KDE allows all this _and_ allows windows to overlap. There are keyboard shortcuts for "take the left half of the screen" and "move focus to the window left of this one". How many windows does a typical i3 user have open anyway? For tiling terminal apps, I just use the tiling feature of KDE's Konsole, and used to use Terminator.

"How many windows does a typical i3 user have open anyway?" I have no idea I, just told you I use emacs as my window manager. Pretty sure that I don't come even close to any definition of typical. A few things though. Every window manager I listed can do floating windows if you want. (Maybe not ratpoison) In my opinion overlapping windows is an anti-feature but it's possible for people with differing opinions. It's a…

Thank you. My query was not only to you but also to the HN crowd in general, and a few people have answered back. It is interesting seeing the different use cases. Thank you.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#397

Post by cuddlybacon » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 10:58 PM UTC

I used i3 for about a year. Tiling wasn't for me. But what was for me where the docs.

The docs for i3 are great. The read well linearly as you are learning the ropes, but were also very searchable once you mostly knew what you were doing.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#398

Post by shirakawasuna » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 11:07 PM UTC

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?

I started on gentoo, went to arch, then to ubuntu LTS.

Both switches were for the same basic reason: packages broke just often enough that it wasn't worth the benefits of having a simple/clean system or bleeding edge libraries.

My switch to ubuntu was maybe 7-8 years ago, though, so I can't speak to whether this has changed. I just know that I used to need to spend 1-5 hours fixing an esoteric X.org problem (or similar) every few months on arch and that I don't need to do this on ubuntu.

I stay on ubuntu because of its critical mass of users. If there's a prebuilt package for something, it's probably a .deb that's compatible with ubuntu and debian. And PPAs are nice. I don't like where they're going with snap at all (I disabled snap and added flatpak support instead) and would probably switch if I thought another distro offered the same benefits.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#399

Post by SxC97 » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 11:27 PM UTC

SJetKaran wrote: post #136

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

Do you mind expanding a bit on that thought? What gaps aren’t filled with yabai?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#400

Post by vicken » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 11:32 PM UTC

Ever since installing Arch + i3 on my old Macbook Pro years ago, traditional window managers feel so inferior now. I've been on the hunt, since, to find anything as close to i3 for MacOS as possible.

I did come close however...there's a hidden gem called Yabai[0] (formerly chunkwm) by koekeishiya on GitHub. For anyone looking for as close to i3 functionality as possible in MacOS, Yabai is definitely it. I'm really surprised I don't see more people recommend it as the developer has done an excellent job trying to bring the i3 experience to Mac.

[0]: https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai