I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager • Hacker News Board

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#301

Post by pmoriarty » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:20 PM UTC

nicolapcweek94 wrote: post #288

pmoriarty wrote: post #240

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a heavy user of both i3 and emacs. I would never use emacs as a window manager, because it's simply not stable enough for me -- it crashes and hangs quite a lot, and I have to restart it from time to time when I update my configuration and want to test it out from scratch, or when emacs get confused after running it for a long time. i3, by contrast, has been 100% stable for me, and I almost never have to quit or…

This makes sense to me, looking for stability both in usage and in configuration. Emacs has been that for me, but I do use it for nearly everything for a very extensive configuration. As I understand it the idea is to look for the familiarity and consistency of using the same environment in the same way for all uses, which makes total sense if you haven't been putting stuff in your init.el for years. Thanks for the P…

I have a very extensive emacs config myself (10's of thousands of lines worth), and try to use it for most everything as well. I'd love to use it to manage windows too, but, like I said, it's not nearly stable enough for me for that. I don't want my WM to freeze up when emacs does.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#302

Post by 3np » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

pmoriarty wrote: post #266

3np wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think it comes down to personal preferences a lot. I've been tiling-only (save for a couple of secondary things) for over a decade and it's by far the most productive to me. Always having 100% screen used, no windows overlapping (apart from things like file dialogs, alerts and my "quake console"), and never having to touch the mouse for navigating/repositioning is great. It works great both on a single laptop, a…

"The only time it doesn't fit great is with e.g. GIMP that has several small windows for toolboxes and stuff" You could try running GIMP in single-window mode (via GIMP's menu option: Windows -> Single-Window Mode ). It doesn't get rid of every little window GIMP has, as it'll still pop up windows for saving files, for example, but it's much better than multi-window mode, if you don't want to bother with lots of litt…

Didn't know that, thanks!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#303

Post by hibbelig » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:21 PM UTC

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.

Well, the normal window management makes you confirm to its way of working, too! For each window, at each point in time, you have to decide what the size and position should be.

At one point I had lots of windows open and positioned them how I wanted with the size I wanted, every time I used them. Then I realized that the positions and sizes actually didn't change for certain windows. And I hated having to move windows around all the time!

For example, my email program could always be in the same position with the same size, no need to make changes to this from one day to another.

Currently, I've got keyboard shortcuts to move the current window to a position/size I like. E.g. one keyboard shortcut for "covers 100% of the screen", another for "covers the right 75% (and 100% of the height) of the screen", and so on.

But this approach restricts you to specific arrangements of windows. E.g. if you want to have a "right 75%" window on top, with a "100%" window below it so that the left bit "peeks out", but the windows aren't always the same, then it gets more cumbersome to arrange it.

(In my case that doesn't apply because there is only one application that I run in "right 75%" mode and there are only two that I want to peek out from underneath.)

Tiling gives you convenient ways to have different arrangements without having to invest a lot of manual work, and for some people this is useful.

For example, dwm provides a layout of two columns, where a single tall window goes in the left column and the other windows go in the right column, stacked above each other. It is really easy to go through the windows, and it is also really easy to move one window into the left column. So you can have a main window that you are working in (in the left column) while you can watch the other windows on the right. And it's really convenient to to change the window you're working in, and you can always follow what is going on in the other windows.

I encourage you to try this different way of working for a bit. Maybe you can learn something from it. Perhaps it teaches you something new so that you an adapt the way you work.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#304

Post by pimeys » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:24 PM UTC

necrotic_comp wrote: post #295

francis-io wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. I bought a beefy computer last year and in…

It has been much better for the past 5+ years, but what I did with my workstation is I installed Arch into a btrfs file system. Now when I `pacman` whatever, it'll create a snapshot first and then run the updates. If anything breaks, I go to the grub menu, boot into the previous snapshot and rollback into that state.

Never needed it yet, but it's good to have. I remember the problems in the past...

You can also do it with zfs, but I wanted to not have the filesystem as DKMS.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#305

Post by bitigchi » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:27 PM UTC

hibbelig wrote: post #303

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.

Well, the normal window management makes you confirm to its way of working, too! For each window, at each point in time, you have to decide what the size and position should be. At one point I had lots of windows open and positioned them how I wanted with the size I wanted, every time I used them. Then I realized that the positions and sizes actually didn't change for certain windows. And I hated having to move windo…

I appreciate the post, but I'm already part-time using dwm on a Linux machine, and I'm still struggling. The screen size of that machine is smaller, so it's acceptable, but I'd never be able to use it on my main display, it's just too much wasted screen space.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#306

Post by Geminidog » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

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…

>Mouse is used because it has very low learning curve and you can just click on stuff that interests you without thinking how to reach it.

I have this idea for a tiling manager called rubik's cube. Basically to switch windows all you gotta use your brain and solve a rubik's cube. You also have to memorize a bunch of short cut keys for rotating the cube. Specifically avoided allowing you to use arrow keys or the mouse for this because you lose precious nanoseconds of efficiency. Also no graphics either. The cube is represented by console text in a 3 by 3 grid with letters representing color because all graphics are useless and get in the way of my efficiency. Every command is represented by a very specific rubik's cube configuration so you just need to memorize all the problems and solutions.

Want to move your cursor 1 space to the right? Solve a rubik's cube. I made sure there's a short cut keys for every possible solution so 1 key press is all you need to execute any command.

This idea is basically to design an interface for people like you and me who totally get it and understand truly what a good interface design is. It's also for people who understand that there are no tradeoffs in the UI world and that everything needs to be designed for ruthless efficiency.

Have you tried learning chinese? It's a hard language to learn how to write but pretty efficient because every freaking word has its own symbol aka shortcut key.

I'm also thinking of creating a keyboard and a programming language written in chinese where every single key you press generates an entire programming language token (written as a single chinese word), because seriously letters and english is overrated just easy learning curve that's all.

I also agree with you on animations and decorations. Never helped me and neither does any other aesthetic concept in the real world. I don't need anything pretty because it's not efficient. For example my girl friend. Getting a pretty girl is against human nature nobody wants that because it's not logical prettiness only gets in the way of my ruthless efficiency plus it's overrated.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#307

Post by 3np » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:28 PM UTC

cycomanic wrote: post #268

3np wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I do think it comes down to personal preferences a lot. I've been tiling-only (save for a couple of secondary things) for over a decade and it's by far the most productive to me. Always having 100% screen used, no windows overlapping (apart from things like file dialogs, alerts and my "quake console"), and never having to touch the mouse for navigating/repositioning is great. It works great both on a single laptop, a…

Yes GIMP is the one application, that really works poorly under tiling window managers. I've had a setup previously that would automatically layout the different windows (I think that was when I was still using awesomewm), but that also worked poorly. Has anyone found a way to work well with GIMP in a tiling WM?

sibling comment got us covered!

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#308

Post by hgodil » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

I used i3 for a bit, but in the end I had to ditch it because I kept getting confused.

I already use tmux (since everything I do is on a remote machine) and vim for panes, and even with just two I get mixed up on which system is owning the pane that I want to switch to. Adding in the third system of i3 was really nifty, but lead to a lot of broken trains of thought. Does anyone have tmux+vim+i3? Should I just try to power through this awkward period?

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#309

Post by siraben » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:29 PM UTC

adkadskhj wrote: post #264

siraben wrote: post #221

I've used i3 for several years[0], and it's one of my favorite window managers out there. I had a couple of failed attempts on Debian/Ubuntu but NixOS made it so easy to switch to i3 and use XFCE as the desktop environment, which is great when you want to use i3 but not worry about setting sleep settings/keybindings for volume and display, etc., so I recommend i3+xfce for anyone wanting to give i3 a try without inves…

Hah, i've been debating switching to Sway for that mixed HiDPI reason. I've got a three monitor setup where 1 is 4k and the other two are 1080p. X11 has been annoying, with a handful of small compromises and gotchas, unusable without xrandr. > let me know of any questions regarding program compatibility under Wayland. What types of programs might not work in Sway?

xwayland helps mitigate this problem by letting you run X applications on Wayland, (though purists might differ).

I use alternate versions of Chromium, Firefox that are Wayland-compatible, see https://arewewaylandyet.com/ for more.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#310

Post by lbhdc » Wed, Dec 16, 2020, 4:33 PM UTC

necrotic_comp wrote: post #295

francis-io wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own. I bought a beefy computer last year and in…

> My only/major beefs with Arch are the frequency with which they introduce breaking changes, the fact that your system may not work if you miss a news item, and the lack of humility in the community. It works, for sure, but I always felt a bit iffy when doing a massive update after a while, and I felt like I was being dragged along with their choices instead of making my own.

This was my experience with Arch as well. It left me feeling like I needed to check the wiki to see if there were any new warnings before updating.

I switched to distros that release ~6-12mo, and I have found my environment is much stable. Currently on Fedora, but considering trying out Suse Leap.