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Switching to the i3 window manager

vincent.bernat.ch

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Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#21

Post by 12ian34 »

When starting out with Arch Linux 5 years ago, choosing a desktop environment and/or window manager was one of the key decisions. i3's excellent documentation and principles[0] really sold it for me.

The base config is full of sensible defaults and the learning curve for shortcuts was relatively short for me. I use it alone as my WM with picom as compositor (which is unnecessary) and no DE. I've never looked back and whilst there are some alternatives in win/OSX, I miss it so much when I have to use a Mac or boot into Windows... having to constantly move, resize and fiddle with app windows is such a pain I'm glad I don't have to worry about with i3.

Bonus tip: I recently switched from i3status to i3status-rs[1] which provides an excellent status bar for i3 (developed with Rust, which I hear is apparently a major selling point for many). I'd strongly recommend this.

Linux is my daily desktop+laptop driver for work and personal life, and i3 is the main reason for this. To me, DEs are full of bloat. I would stress, though, that it's not for everyone at all.

[0]: https://i3wm.org/

[1]: https://github.com/greshake/i3status-rust

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#23

Post by checkyoursudo »

I like to change things up. I try different DEs. I always come back to i3. The minimalism and distinct lack of ... stuff ... I just can't use full blown desktops anymore.

The write-up seems like a decent introduction. It mentions that you can use alternatives to the i3bar, but you can also use alternate status programs. I like i3PyStatus as an alternative to i3Status. PyStatus lets you write custom modules to output pretty much anything you want to the status bar (whichever status bar you want too, probably, though I just use i3bar).

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#24

Post by cdogl »

Big fan of I3. This may sound superficial, but I've moved away from tiling window managers because everything just looks so ugly. There's something to be said for having a window at ~75% full size with drop shadow around it and a bit of your desktop background showing. It's easier on the eyes. I say this with a heavy hand on heart because I was an enthusiastic user and advocate for xmonad and I3 for several years.

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#25

Post by carpenecopinum »

I really appreciate the detail on the "Remaining bits" part. I like the minimalism/simplicity of i3 and the philosophy of doing a few things well, rather than everything a bit, but it also makes it hard sometimes to know what pieces of the puzzle one's still missing. Especially since it's a puzzle with no unique solution, so I find it really valuable to learn of an additional perspective.

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#27

Post by remedan »

cdogl wrote: post #24

Big fan of I3. This may sound superficial, but I've moved away from tiling window managers because everything just looks so ugly. There's something to be said for having a window at ~75% full size with drop shadow around it and a bit of your desktop background showing. It's easier on the eyes. I say this with a heavy hand on heart because I was an enthusiastic user and advocate for xmonad and I3 for several years.

I encourage you to browse /r/unixporn [0]. I my opinion, a nicely configured tiling wm can look just as good as a stacking wm. And people on the subreddit are happy to share configs, so you don't have to spend more effort than some copying and pasting.

[0] https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#28

Post by captn3m0 »

eurasiantiger wrote: post #3
eloeffler wrote: post #2

A very nice addition to i3 is pass, the paswordmanager which comes with passmenu that lets you read and autotype passwords with dmenu.

I never, ever use these autotyping features; they are a security risk. Is my paranoia justified?

I use both browserpass, and pass and consider the pass+dmenu model to be more secure. I keep auto-fill disabled on the browserpass extension, and recommend doing the same for any password manager.

Mainly because bugs in browser extensions have led to easily exploitable bugs where the extension could be tricked into thinking it was filling the password for google.com, while the page wasn't actually google.com (dubbed Auto-fill sweep attacks on pg25 at https://aaltodoc.aalto.fi/bitstream/handle/123456789/27984/m...)

Re: Switching to the i3 window manager

#29

Post by 10GBps »

> it can feel quite overwhelming as you need to visualize the tree in your head

And that's why I don't use a tiling window manager. I prefer to use my brain for actual work, not futzing around with configuration and OS BS. I mean if it takes 3000 lines of code to make your friggin window manager work then you're doing it wrong.

I happen to like overlapping windows, it's just natural and free-flowing. I don't mind wasting a little space when I have a 6400x1200 desktop.

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