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i3 4.18

i3wm.org

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Re: i3 4.18

#61

Post by tastroder »

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 prefer multiple desktops to stacking for the apps you mention, usually split between two monitors. For other things, e.g. file browser next to something else, tiling is what I want on that particular desktop anyway. Most always-on apps live on their own desktop and thus hotkey, works great. I have a script running that renames the i3 workspace to indicate what's on it for the rest.

While I kind of get where you're coming from, contrary to what you describe it's actually more control for me personally. What you call constraint is my preference that I'd otherwise have to handle manually. Sizing is more convenient than what I did before (basically manually adjusting everything to the tiled views, I prefer that both for basic layouts and keybinds or fiddling with the mouse). Plus, at least with i3, you can always bind something to enable floating mode for a particular window if you really feel like it (in practice I rarely do that anymore honestly).

Re: i3 4.18

#62

Post by flyingcircus3 »

mherrmann wrote: post #21

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.

Is there a way to force certain workspaces to always be on certain monitors?

Re: i3 4.18

#63

Post by adimitrov »

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…

The exact scenario you're describing is a great use case for tiling WMs. I couldn't imagine doing it with windows that occlude each other. In fact, I've been using tiling WMs for over a decade now, and I find my colleagues' use of stacked windows gives me anxiety. You never know where anything is, and they have to constantly alt-tab to find it, or hunt for it with their mouse.

The key to effective use of tiling window management is the use of virtual desktops. The two go hand in hand. That's why Windows and Mac OS don't have it. Windows, btw, did re-introduce a "tiling mode" (or something like it) in their recent OSes. The use case to have two windows next to each other without fiddling with your mouse is just so prominent.

I rarely have more than 2-3 windows per desktop. The browser usually dominates its space completely, and is full-screen, almost always.

EDIT: I know Mac OS has "virtual desktops" now, but in the grand scheme of things, it's a relatively recent addition, and I doubt that many people use it. It's probably more of a power-user feature. But then again, so is tiling window management.

Re: i3 4.18

#64

Post by ppseafield »

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…

I moved from awesomewm to i3. The big difference for me when I changed over was that i3 didn't use templates for window placement. In its place is a tree-style system that's fairly intuitive IMHO. In i3 I also frequently switch between tabbed and split/tiled layouts, which IMHO is a killer feature.

Re: i3 4.18

#65

Post by happimess »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #57
happimess wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I move everything around manually on login, and then try not to log out. For a while I was using xmonad, and setting things to automatically land on the right workspace was easy there, but ultimately I like the i3wm experience better.

I saw something in the i3 docs about this feature, but it didn't work on the first try and I didn't dig deeper.

Re: i3 4.18

#66

Post by buckminster »

joecool1029 wrote: post #39
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…

>Even Microsoft switched from a tiling WM from Windows 2.0 on wards and has stuck to it Yet they've been steadily adding tiling features since Win7. Don't believe me? Grab any window in Win10 and drag to any of the corners.

Or use WIN+ARROW. Or CTRL+WIN+ARROW to switch desktop. It's quite slick.

Re: i3 4.18

#67

Post by berkayozturk »

simlevesque wrote: post #38
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.

I wonder why that is, but I never understood the appeal of gaps. It's wasted space. I wonder if people who like gaps like bezel on their screen too.

I think it's aesthetically more pleasing with gaps.

Re: i3 4.18

#68

Post by DyslexicAtheist »

city41 wrote: post #47
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…

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…

> and places the window ideally 90% of the time, and I fix up the 10% of the time

you can replicate whatever setup you had using i3-save-tree which outputs a json file e.g

  i3-save-tree > .config/i3/workspace1.json
and then load that upon startup (from your i3/config):

  exec --no-startup-id i3-msg 'workspace $ws1; append_layout ~/.config/i3/workspace1.json'
or see full config mentioned in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22303128

Re: i3 4.18

#69

Post by ppseafield »

yyhhsj0521 wrote: post #10
jolmg wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

With exception of the directional keybindings. I wonder how it came to be that the defaults are "jkl;" for the directions instead of the "hjkl" used by everything else (vi(m), less, shells, repls, etc.).

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 left, $mod+k is down, $mod+l is up and $mod+; is right.

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

Re: i3 4.18

#70

Post by Naac »

flyingcircus3 wrote: post #62
mherrmann wrote: post #21

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.

Is there a way to force certain workspaces to always be on certain monitors?

If you switch workspaces on monitor A, whatever workspace you have on monitor B will not move.

So what you want is already supported. Just don't switch over to monitor B and switch it to a different workspace.

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