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i3 4.18

i3wm.org

51–60 of 188 posts

Re: i3 4.18

#51

I've been using i3 for a few months and can never see myself going back to working without it now. I must say that I think it makes most sense when you have multiple monitors though.

I think that i3wm is amazing for single-monitor development; it lets me switch workspaces as quickly as flicking my eyes over to another monitor.

Re: i3 4.18

#52

i3 ruined my life. It's an absolute delight to use, particularly when programming. However, its hard to get Linux laptops at work (Mac or Windows), and I constantly miss i3. Also, among all tiling window managers, I think its config is probably the most intuitive to mingle with. Hardly ever breaks (if ever) between upgrades, and default workflow is very intuitive and explicit. Other window managers (eg. Awesome, xmon…

If you're on Mac, I can't recommend the yabai [1]/skhd [2] combo enough! I haven't used i3, so I don't know if yabai mirrors the i3 experience, but it's a very nice programmable keyboard-centric tiling wm for macOS. [1] https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd/

i'm interested in an xmonad equivalent for client work that mandates use of OS X.

these looks good, thanks for sharing - have you tried amethyst?

Re: i3 4.18

#53
post #37

I've been considering trying out a tiling window manager. I'm curious what people feel they gain using a tiling window manager versus something like Windows/Gnome's screen splitting features. Is it being able to arrange more windows on the screen than just side-by-side windows? Is it keyboard shortcut efficiencies? Is it just cool?

You can indeed get pretty far with most screen splitting as supported by Windows/Gnome. Tilers go even further than that and give you a few more nice features.

I run i3 inside Mate (gnome 2 fork). The features I use most are switching between tiled and "tabbed", where you have fullscreen windows that can be navigated between like tabs quickly. I can pull up a browser and terminal or editor side by side, then switch to fullscreen terminal/editor, then back, very quickly.

i3 works in sort of a tree structure, so you can, say, split the root window level into two horizontal frames, then split the left one into three vertical ones, and the right one into three internal horizontal ones (if that's what you want).

I suspect I use the mouse more than most tilers, but I find to resize while the windows stay tiled is quick enough and very accurate.

Re: i3 4.18

#54
post #3

been a long time i3 user mostly for the sane defaults. It requires significantly less fiddling than any other window manager I've tried out.

Have you figured out how to make i3 move the mouse pointer to the area of the newly-focused window when you change window focus by keyboard? AwesomeWM does that out of the box. i3 doesn't and it's very annoying, because then when my table makes a microscopic movement and causes the mouse to move, suddenly what I'm typing is diverted to another window and weird things happen.

i3 does this, but only if the window is on a different screen.

https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_mouse_warping

> By default, when switching focus to a window on a different output (e.g. focusing a window on workspace 3 on output VGA-1, coming from workspace 2 on LVDS-1), the mouse cursor is warped to the center of that window.

> With the mouse_warping option, you can control when the mouse cursor should be warped. none disables warping entirely, whereas output is the default behavior described above.

I agree that would be nice, though I've never really minded; If I'm gonna touch the mouse, I'm gonna touch the mouse.

Re: i3 4.18

#55
post #47

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…

Window management is truly a preference thing. I feel the opposite of what you state. To me, a non tiling-window manager burdens me with moving and resizing windows, mostly with my mouse. With i3, its algorithm sizes and places the window ideally 90% of the time, and I fix up the 10% of the time with key commands, never needing my mouse. My windows being so predictable and so easily maintained with the keyboard enabl…

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.

Re: i3 4.18

#56
post #37

I've been considering trying out a tiling window manager. I'm curious what people feel they gain using a tiling window manager versus something like Windows/Gnome's screen splitting features. Is it being able to arrange more windows on the screen than just side-by-side windows? Is it keyboard shortcut efficiencies? Is it just cool?

The gains come a few different ways: from using keys (avoiding mouse); not having to fiddle with window size and placement, windows blocked by other windows, etc.; from making workspaces an essential part of your ui. After using i3 for a bit, non-tiled window management seems very fiddly, and more importantly, a completely unnecessary waste of time and attention.

Re: i3 4.18

#57
post #37

I've been considering trying out a tiling window manager. I'm curious what people feel they gain using a tiling window manager versus something like Windows/Gnome's screen splitting features. Is it being able to arrange more windows on the screen than just side-by-side windows? Is it keyboard shortcut efficiencies? Is it just cool?

On my personal machine, I use i3wm, and on my work machine I use OSX with Spectacle (a window tiler). For me, the killer feature of i3wm is not how it lets me arrange windows on my screen, but how it lets me switch between them. With OSX, I have to maintain a mental stack of recently-used applications: If I'm in my terminal and I want to get to firefox, I have to hit cmd-tab, or maybe cmd-tab-tab, or maybe cmd-tab-ta…

Do you manually move certain apps to certain workspaces, or do you have configurations to do it automatically? I've tried setting up the config to always have Firefox on workspace 3 and Slack on 4, but it doesn't work. I can do it with terminal, though. I've also done the xprop command to find the WM_CLASS property, but still no luck

Re: i3 4.18

#58
post #37

I've been considering trying out a tiling window manager. I'm curious what people feel they gain using a tiling window manager versus something like Windows/Gnome's screen splitting features. Is it being able to arrange more windows on the screen than just side-by-side windows? Is it keyboard shortcut efficiencies? Is it just cool?

I initially started using it because I found I could not control multiple screens well with gnome and friends. Moving windows between screens and workplaces, moving workplaces between screens, arranging windows.

Then I got addicted to the speed of flipping between windows and not having to fiddle with layout. Now I only have one screen but it is always the first install on a new Linux.

Nice small and configurable window dressing and i3bar were very nice also.

Re: i3 4.18

#59
post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I used i3 for a while and really enjoyed it. Though, I eventually switched back to KDE. I didn't like having to fiddle with power management and configuring screen locking. I was noticing that I was only using 1-2 tiles at a time and I could easily emulate that by just side-by-siding windows in KDE. I think if I ever have the chance to use a Linux machine professionally, especially with multiple monitors, I'll defini…

i3 couples with desktop environments rather nicely. I've used it with KDE and MATE, and others have used it successfully with XFCE. My success with it with KDE was a little mixed, but I also didn't make any effort to resolve the little issues. With MATE though, it works flawlessly with no downsides or really any config needed. It's fantastic. Here is how I set it up with MATE: https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-…

I also run i3 and MATE. It's a great combo: powerful tiling window manager plus a DE that handles all the settings / control panel well (without me having to do much configuration myself!).

Re: i3 4.18

#60
post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Window management is truly a preference thing. I feel the opposite of what you state. To me, a non tiling-window manager burdens me with moving and resizing windows, mostly with my mouse. With i3, its algorithm sizes and places the window ideally 90% of the time, and I fix up the 10% of the time with key commands, never needing my mouse. My windows being so predictable and so easily maintained with the keyboard enabl…

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.

Shortcuts are great when you have two windows, not so much when you have more than four
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