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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#171

Post by veddox »

nix23 wrote: post #68
veddox wrote: post #57

I love the concept of tiling WMs, and wish mainstream WMs would adopt more of their features. But quite frankly, I just find all the tiling WMs I know just horribly ugly... (And I'm not quite sure why, but that is actually one of the biggest reasons why I don't use them anymore.)

Ugly? What do you mean with that? Sway on openSuse is quiet nice composed.

Specifically I meant the pixel-blue window borders on i3, coupled with the extremely bare-bones status bar. (Does it even allow for systray icons? That would be rather important for me.)

Sway looks somewhat better, but I've been told it's still somewhat flaky.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#172

Post by gspr »

solarkraft wrote: post #42
noodlesUK wrote: post #8

I love i3 (though would switch to sway in a heartbeat if they sorted hidpi and xwayland together). Its only major flaw in my mind is that you will never be able to use someone else’s computer without feeling a seething frustration that it isn’t running i3 with your config...

> Though would switch to sway in a heartbeat if they sorted hidpi and xwayland together Do you mean that XWayland doesn't support HiDPI yet? I'm told it's coming ... some day (in a few months). Meanwhile even Chromium got Wayland support so the last laggards on my machine are the JetBrains IDEs.

> Do you mean that XWayland doesn't support HiDPI yet?

Correct. Emacs is my last regularly-in-use X program under Sway, and my god does it look horrid on a large HiDPI screen :-(

> I'm told it's coming ... some day (in a few months).

I remember reading that it's complicated and extremely un-sexy (because it's essential X work).

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#173

Post by gorgoiler »

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.

Get your keyboard setup as close as you can with whatever tools seem comfortable (eg gnome settings) and then dump the layout to an XKB file.

Now you can make the tweaks you need, and load them automatically next time with a call to xkb in your .xsession.

Linux and GNU and Xorg et al may be heterogenous and weird, but the joy of an open system is that if you want to take it apart and tweak it, you can.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#174

Post by indymike »

boudin wrote: post #98
bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

For me it's the opposite. I find floating window manager like Windows, MacOS, Gnome, Kde really inefficient at managing screen space. Even more now that we have big screens. Tilling window managers for me brings a few things: * Almost never require to resize or position a window, the window manager optimise the layout for you. It removes the constant needs of organizing window * Combine with workspaces and multiple m…

KDE actually can be a really nice tiling window manager. I use a script called Krohnkite. You can even turn off window decorations if you don't want titlebars. There are several other window management scripts that implement different layouts.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#175

Post by dotancohen »

profsnuggles wrote: post #95
bitigchi wrote: post #27

Probably an unpopular opinion here, but I do not understand why people prefer tiling window managers. I prefer to have lots of windows open, and being able to position them how I want with the size I want greatly increases my productivity. Tiling window managers makes you conform to their way of working.

You may be talking about auto-tilers like xmonad. Those are the devil (joking, sorta). My favorite tiling window managers in order of preference would probably be exwm (emacs wm) -> stumpwm -> ratpoison -> i3. These are manual tiling wms. So in exwm I can chose how to position and resize my windows any way I want. For example I can hit C-x 3 to split my screen in half vertically then C-x 2 to split one of the vertica…

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.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#176

Post by nhumrich »

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 have found that a lot of people _think_ Ubuntu is safe/stable. But because the Linux kernel is a little behind, it usually isn't. I have had way more stability and compatibility with arch because everything is always up to date.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#179

Post by gpanders »

pacifika wrote: post #153
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…

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

Disclaimer: self-promotion

I wrote and maintain a FOSS Hazel-like tool called pushbroom [1] that works on both macOS and Linux. It’s worked extremely well for me for several years.

[1]: https://sr.ht/~gpanders/pushbroom

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#180

Post by srtjstjsj »

gorgoiler wrote: post #173
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.

Get your keyboard setup as close as you can with whatever tools seem comfortable (eg gnome settings) and then dump the layout to an XKB file. Now you can make the tweaks you need, and load them automatically next time with a call to xkb in your .xsession. Linux and GNU and Xorg et al may be heterogenous and weird, but the joy of an open system is that if you want to take it apart and tweak it, you can.

Surely someone has already posted a solution on GitHub somewhere...
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