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I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

i3wm.org

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Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#401

Post by boogies »

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’ll assume you don’t actually need to see you browser tabs or the Zoom mute toggle, just to be able to access them instantaneously. If I were you, I might keep Slack filling the screen most of the time, with the browser on workspace 9 — so it can pulled up with Super + 9 — and make a combo like Super + M both focus Zoom (on a third workspace), `xdotool key --clearmodifiers Alt+m` (with the setting enabled for that to toggle mute), and perhaps `xdotool windowmove 80% y` or so Slack and make Super + S or something reset the Slack workspace afterwards.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#402

Post by carlsverre »

I have been a heavy user of i3 for the last 4 years and all in all I highly recommend it. That said - I encourage you to not jump on it just because it's the first tiling window manager that you try (like me). It turns out that a lot of what makes a tiling window manager good is how well it maps to your internal expectation of how things should be layed out. I encourage you to think about what window layout you want in each situation and figure out how much work it is to get the wm to do it.

In my particular case I recently switched to https://www.herbstluftwm.org/ and haven't looked back. HBWM allows me to provide more rigid control over my layouts and then tile my windows in. Since switching I have found myself spending a lot less time messing around with relative sizes and a lot more time getting work done. Just one opinion - but the point is that you should do your own research.

If you are interested here is my current config https://github.com/carlsverre/config/tree/master/dotfiles/he... Visual: https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/kcn16u/herbstluft...

And here is my i3 config https://github.com/carlsverre/config/tree/9f953365481cb96bec...

If you do decide on using i3, I encourage you to check out i3-gaps which gives windows a bit of breathing room which some people fine visually pleasant. And don't forget to join the ricing community at https://www.reddit.com/r/unixporn

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#403

Post by highmastdon »

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…

On mac there’s a window manager called yabai which I’m using and works very well. It’s a bsp (binary space partitioner) for some advanced uses as moving to other desktops it requires SIP to be disabled (System Integrity Protection) but for the basic stuff it works much much better than Magnet or Amethyst

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#404

Post by rewgs »

boudin wrote: post #325
stfwn wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In macOS it is not entirely clear to me what category of things the cmd key is for. On one hand it's used for keyboard shortcuts related to window management and the system, but on the other hand it's also used to issue commands to the application itself. In i3 you assign a $mod key, which then always and exclusively used for 'system and window management'. Opening, closing, moving and resizing windows, switching wor…

I'm with you, I find the meta key on mac messy. I personally change ctrl+shift+c and ctrl+shift+v to ctrl+c and ctrl+v in my terminal emulator so that it's consistent accross the board. This way it's clear: * meta key: my windows manager shortcuts * ctrl: app specific shortcuts

Cmd isn't really a meta key, though. It's just the equivalent of Control on Windows; there's no equivalent of a Windows key on macOS. That said, it's not quite necessary due to the decoupling of app windows and app open/close state.

Personally I find Apple's approach to key commands far and away the most well thought out and intuitive.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#405

Post by hxegon »

toxik wrote: post #166
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…

i3 aside, the continuation to your story for me is, use Linux machine, be decently productive but nothing works quite the way it should. Change your keyboard layout to one of your own? Eh maybe Xmodmaps, oh but then it gets reset every so often because $HISTORICAL_ARTIFACT. You have to change the actual xkb mapping, which is very much not a “happy path” in any DE. The only graphical e-mail client that actually seems…

Current apple user/ex linux user

Can't speak to your firebird issues, never used it, but as for keyboard issues?

Spouse uses my main machine for basic stuff, she has her own account. I use dvorak, she uses qwerty. About 75% of the time when the layout is switched back from qwerty to dvorak it becomes completly fubar, and all layouts output non-sense garbage until a restart. Because the layouts are broken, I can't save any of my terminal work.

I'm still pretty on the fence about things, but honestly I'd say linux and os-x are pretty even as far as shit breaking, and imo linux is a little bit better. I remember the old days when you sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade & pray, but stuff is pretty stable even on distros like arch these days.

Every time there's a major update for os x, I already know it will definitely break something for me. Catalina broke most my game collection that could run on os x to begin with, and I'll be waiting at least another couple months before upgrading to big sur.

This isn't to try and invalidate your experience, but just saying that mine has been: Switched to OS X because things were more stable and I need a solid work machine, but linux is getting more stable while my faith in apple's software quality goes down dramatically every year.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#407

Post by city41 »

wing-_-nuts wrote: post #284
hiq wrote: post #211

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The easy answer to your second point and some integrated experience is the unix philosophy of 'do one thing but do it right'. I was also frustrated at the beginning, but I dealt with it and now I have i3 mappings to do most of what I used to do through GUIs. I can also do much more through scripting because I know which commands to use to handle clipboard, screens, etc. If you use your computer once a week to check y…

I get 'do one thing, and do it well', but there's absolutely nothing stopping the i3 folks from putting sensible defaults in the config for controlling brightness, sound, etc. It's simply a lack of care for the user experience. I have tried regolith, but I found it to have weird conflicts between i3 and gnome. It may be worth another look though.

MATE with i3 as its window manager is excellent. No compromises, neither gets in the other's way. I wrote how to set it up here: https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#408

Post by yurlungur »

Been using it for more than two years at work via remote desktop but I'd still choose xmonad if I were to run one locally on a bigger display. Xmonad is really powerful in allowing you to reposition and resize multiple windows while i3 is more avaible and pain free to setup.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#409

Post by dllthomas »

smabie wrote: post #373
b0rsuk wrote: post #318

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course this is satire. For your information, there is a tiling WM which is more radical than my preference. It's called 'ratpoison' and it literally doesn't have mouse support, by design. I don't use it because I think having mouse support is useful as a fallback, when the application can't be effectively worked with otherwise. It is for real, it's written in C was developed 2000-2017. Got any arrows left in your…

Ratpoison has mouse support. I've used it, it's just a normal tiling window manager, nothing too radical.

I currently use it. I guess you could say it "doesn't have mouse support" in that you don't interact with the window manager itself using a mouse. It certainly doesn't get in the way of you using the mouse with hosted applications, though.

My favorite thing about it is the way it handles key bindings, where you populate any number of keymaps and one of the possible commands is `readkey`, which will read the next keypress and look it up in the specified keymap. This makes it easy to build a tree of commands, grouped conceptually, without getting in the way.

Re: I3: Improved Tiling Window Manager

#410

Post by smabie »

dllthomas wrote: post #409
smabie wrote: post #373

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ratpoison has mouse support. I've used it, it's just a normal tiling window manager, nothing too radical.

I currently use it. I guess you could say it "doesn't have mouse support" in that you don't interact with the window manager itself using a mouse. It certainly doesn't get in the way of you using the mouse with hosted applications, though. My favorite thing about it is the way it handles key bindings, where you populate any number of keymaps and one of the possible commands is `readkey`, which will read the next keyp…

If you like ratpoison, you should check out StumpWM. It's by the same guy, but takes the whole customization thing to a whole next level. It's written in Common Lisp so you can connect to the window mananger while it is running and make changes.
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