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i3 4.18

i3wm.org

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Re: i3 4.18

#111

Post by sibane »

tigrezno wrote: post #29

Still no gaps support on main branch. Devs don't care about what their users want/need. Happy bspwm user here.

There are some vague efforts to bring gaps into i3. However, while it seems like the maintainers aren't opposed to having the functionality in base i3, they are choosing not to simply merge it in because of quality concerns. At the moment, gaps is a somewhat hacky patch on top of i3 with a few drawbacks. They probably won't add gaps until they find an elegant way of implementing them as a core feature.

https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724

Re: i3 4.18

#112

Post by jolmg »

ppseafield wrote: post #69
yyhhsj0521 wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems that the intention was to emulate Vim [0], maybe the author was not familiar with it and made a mistake? [0] https://github.com/i3/i3/commit/6d0071db197031845b5f77febc22...

IIRC it was deliberate so that users wouldn't have to move off the home row. The User's Guide states this is the reasoning behind it. > To move the focus between the two terminals, you can use the direction keys which you may know from the editor vi. However, in i3, your homerow is used for these keys (in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, $mod+j is l…

> in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility with most keyboard layouts

I wonder where they got that idea. The keys are "hjkl" simply because they were inscribed with arrows in the machine Bill Joy used when creating vi[1][2]. From [1]:

> Joy used a Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal... the keys h,j,k,l served double duty as cursor movement keys and were inscribed with arrows, which is why vi uses them in that way.

The StackExchange question has a picture of the keys.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vi#Creation

[2] https://vi.stackexchange.com/a/9315/14283

Re: i3 4.18

#113

Post by Naac »

mttyng wrote: post #104
Naac wrote: post #77

For anyone here who loves i3, but has always had trouble getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ), check out the Regolith project[0] It's a curation of several tools combined with i3 that gives a pretty fantastic gnome/i3 experience. Similar to spacemacs and emacs. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/

This looks cool. I didn’t immediately see anything mentioned, but can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?

>> can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen?

Yes.

>> Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM?

I'm not sure what you mean. The Ubuntu package provided lets you select this desktop from the login screen ( as opposed to i3, Plasma, or Gnome ). This is essentially a new Desktop Environment, made up of gnome and i3.

>> Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?

Unfortunately yes. I've tried looking at packaging this for Arch Linux, but it looks like quite a bit of dependencies are forked ( i3blocks is now i3xrocks ). Not everything is pushed upstream. Getting this to work on non-ubuntu based distributions looks tricky if you're not familiar with packaging already.

Re: i3 4.18

#114

Post by secure »

tigrezno wrote: post #29

Still no gaps support on main branch. Devs don't care about what their users want/need. Happy bspwm user here.

The tracking issue for that feature is https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724

Merging gap support isn’t that easy, and our spare time is not unlimited. Serious offers to help very welcome.

Re: i3 4.18

#116

Post by capableweb »

qzx_pierri wrote: post #44
capableweb wrote: post #34

So I'm a long time awesomewm user (5+ years) and when I started shopping around for a wm I tried both awesome and i3 (and another I don't recall the name). Awesome was easier to get started with and all the Lua code is easy to understand and use. However, could someone who used both elaborate on the differences? Would I gain anything from trying to migrate to i3 instead? At my point of view, only the community size i…

Why change if Awesome works for you?

Just because it works doesn't mean there isn't better things out there. Wouldn't change if the benefits are not greater, obviously, but I find it healthy to always reconsider past choices every now and then.

Re: i3 4.18

#117

Post by doubleunplussed »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #76
kimjongtrill wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

For me the built in shortcuts to snap things to the left, right, and push to second monitor are all I really need and I get both tiling and non-tiling with windows/OS X/gnome... never understood why people go i3 when the shortcuts are built in to what you likely are already using. To each their own though, if i3 works better for y’all I think that is great too.

The built-in snapping only works for two windows per screen though. If you want 3 or more, you're stuck with the mouse.

There's the gtile gnome shell extension. I have shortcuts defined to snap windows to predetermined regions of the screen, which can be defined on an arbitrary grid.

That plus gnome's builtin shortcuts to move windows to different monitors and different desktops, and setting alt-tab to "switch windows directly" gives me pretty much everything I need.

Windows don't start tiled, but this doesn't feel like a big drawback. When matplotlib pops up five plot windows I'd rather they stay the aspect ratio they were intended, anyway. But I'll snap my text editors, terminals, and file browser windows to half/quarter of the screen.

It's pretty great, and I get to stay within GNOME which is the 'happy path' for linux desktop use IMHO.

Re: i3 4.18

#118

Post by secure »

jolmg wrote: post #112
ppseafield wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

IIRC it was deliberate so that users wouldn't have to move off the home row. The User's Guide states this is the reasoning behind it. > To move the focus between the two terminals, you can use the direction keys which you may know from the editor vi. However, in i3, your homerow is used for these keys (in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility with most keyboard layouts). Therefore, $mod+j is l…

> in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility with most keyboard layouts I wonder where they got that idea. The keys are "hjkl" simply because they were inscribed with arrows in the machine Bill Joy used when creating vi[1][2]. From [1]: > Joy used a Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal... the keys h,j,k,l served double duty as cursor movement keys and were inscribed with arrows, which is why vi uses the…

I remember reading about that, but it must have been after I wrote that part of the userguide 11 years ago: https://github.com/i3/i3/commit/1fcad44f66926e679f4af6e4f4d6... :)

Can you send a PR for https://github.com/i3/i3/blob/30e886b0319ee948863a36a65e5b72... with your correction please?

Re: i3 4.18

#119

Post by jolmg »

secure wrote: post #118
jolmg wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> in vi, the keys are shifted to the left by one for compatibility with most keyboard layouts I wonder where they got that idea. The keys are "hjkl" simply because they were inscribed with arrows in the machine Bill Joy used when creating vi[1][2]. From [1]: > Joy used a Lear Siegler ADM-3A terminal... the keys h,j,k,l served double duty as cursor movement keys and were inscribed with arrows, which is why vi uses the…

I remember reading about that, but it must have been after I wrote that part of the userguide 11 years ago: https://github.com/i3/i3/commit/1fcad44f66926e679f4af6e4f4d6... :) Can you send a PR for https://github.com/i3/i3/blob/30e886b0319ee948863a36a65e5b72... with your correction please?

I'm not sure what you want the correction to be. Just delete the note in parentheses? Or change the default to "hjkl"?

Re: i3 4.18

#120

Post by boomlinde »

webmobdev wrote: post #30

I guess tiling window managers should be considered more of a specialized niche tool, and in that it is commendable that i3 does such a good job of it. I do really admire it for being so light-weight on resources compared to a lot of the other more popular WMs. I say a niche tool because I've never really understood why someone would prefer a Window Manager that places a lot of constraints than one that lets you cont…

> I say a niche tool because I've never really understood why someone would prefer a Window Manager that places a lot of constraints than one that lets you controls / customize the windows as you please and is thus "freer".

For maybe 90% of what I do, I have no need for in-depth control or customization of windows. When I work I use a browser, an email client, a couple of more or less permanent terminals and a bunch of transient terminal windows for short jobs. Sometimes I want a window to be slightly wider, I want to group some windows in a separate workspace or I want to temporarily focus on one window in full screen, but that's it. Most tiling window managers will have keyboard commands for achieving that level of control very easily while kicking every other aspect of window management out of my life.

There are cases where I think floating windows are more useful. Some software uses a lot of small windows to be able to maintain a customizable workspace for a good reason. For that, most tiling window managers will allow some windows to be floating.

> That even control freaks like Apple, who like to think only they know what's best for their consumers, doesn't use a tiling only WM in their OS is telling.

What is it telling of? I have no idea what motivated their choice of window management paradigm, but I guess it's easier, considering a large demographic with different backgrounds, to grasp floating windows intuitively. They afford flexibility for a wide range of applications with a minimal language of control gestures, but it's one-size-fits-all. I've been using computers all my life, though, and will probably continue doing it for long more, so I don't particularly need something to be intuitive from the get-go if it improves my workflow in the long term.

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