Same for moving windows using the keyboard. Enter i3. C. Anything. left|right|top-left|top-right|etc However, I again doubt this would apply to my case, since I use Unity & it's i3 I'm dealing with. Switching workspaces is quick and easy. I'd like to stress out that such major documentation is not translated at all. Submit an article proposal today. Go 1.7 Released. Not as flexible as Awesome, but it provides all the functionality I personally need right now right out of the box. With the Linux kernel I can use Firefox, my VPN, Kile, Tor, and Krita on a T5500 CPU. The main benefit is that you don't often need to switch contexts from the keyboard to the mouse. ), On the other hand, I've heard that i3 is a little easier to configure, which is good. Docs; Screens; FAQ; Contact; Bugs; i3-2.png VIM, MPlayer. Also of a note: i3 has a pretty robust IPC system which can be made to script sessions startups - i.e. Since you don't need to worry about window positioning, i3 generally makes better use of your screen real estate. A window manager controls the placement and appearance of windows within a windowing system. Author Topic: awesome window manager with polybar - no more conky (Read 6400 times) PackRat. but I found the best way with the xfce and tmux. Cinnamon. If you need more space for a particular window, enable full-screen mode or switch to a different layout, such as stacked or tabbed. I used AwesomeWM for a about a year on my netbook, and I still love it. To achieve this goal, awesome has been designed as a framework window manager. A month or two ago I decided to try i3 after hearing good things about it. With xfce4, have you tried looking at the settings under "window manager"? i3 is a dynamic tiling window manager with clean, readable and documented code, featuring extended Xinerama support, usage of libxcb instead of xlib and several improvements over wmii . On one hand, I really liked Awesome's behavior, specifically the ability to control which tabs are shown, and the ability to have several tabs/workspaces shown on the same screen at once. Hello! If you get into the habit of always assigning applications/groups of windows to the same workspace, you can quickly switch between them, which makes workspaces a very useful feature. I3 strives to be minimal and use few system resources, but that does not mean it can't be pretty. This article just scratches the surface of what i3 can do. As a tiling window manager, i3 will automatically "tile" or position the windows in a non-overlapping way, similar to laying tiles on a wall. It is primarily targeted at power users, developers and any people dealing with every day computing tasks and who want to have fine-grained control on their graphical environment. Posts: 2246 ; awesome window manager with polybar - no more conky « on: November 14, 2017, 12:47:24 AM » I'm really liking polybar, smooth panel works with most window managers. It's written in Rust, but along with bringing all the security guarantees of the language, it also requires extensions to be granted permissions, unlike X11, where any app has free reign to do things like capture all keystrokes. Awesome. -- Peter. Almost 10 years ago (and who knows how many years I used it before that) I wrote post on my custom FVWM based setup:http://skliarie.blogspot.com/2008/11/my-45-workplaces.html, And needless to say - I still use it, doubling my performance as sysadmin :), Arie: Can you send me your fvwm config file? From changing all keyboard shortcuts, to redefining the name of the workspaces, to modifying the status bar, you can make i3 behave in any way that makes the most sense for your needs. Thankfully, i3 comes with both. Hi. You can bind these to whatever key-combo you want. On my desktop, I feel that the way the 9 tags are split between all of your monitors is a bit awkward to live with 24/7. Installing i3 isn’t enough. Red Hat and the Red Hat logo are trademarks of Red Hat, Inc., registered in the United States and other countries. You can have floating windows in i3 as well. At first try I was a bit lost.. but after a bit reading and custom, now I use it from time to time. "Winkey+ appropriate key on numpad" Using your Linux distribution’s package manager, search for “i3 window manager”, and install it. Awesome was the first window manager to be ported to use the asynchronous XCB library instead of XLib, making it much more responsive than most other window managers. It is very fast, extensible and licensed under the GNU GPLv2 license . Another annoyance with regular desktop environments: the windows positioning, especially when you open a new window. Awesome also saved me the ~20 vertical pixels usually devoted to titlebars by incorporating them into the panel, which is very welcome on a 1024x600px screen. Awesome can be skinned, configured, and extended with Lua, a language with a programming model similar to the ubiquitous Javascript. A tiling window manager automatically arranges the windows to occupy the whole screen in a non-overlapping way. i3; awesome; dwm; Related posts: What is a Window Manager? Winkey+7 = tile to top-left. I seem to remember it working nicely out of the box on Awesome, though. For example, system administrators can open several terminals to monitor or work on different remote systems simultaneously; and developers can use their favorite IDE or editor and a few terminals to test their programs. A Windows Manager like i3 showed me that a status bar and an application launcher are enough. Which means that any customization made does not require the service to be restarted. This is a convenient way to access windows or programs that you frequently use, such as an email client or your music player. Ricardo Gerardi is a Senior Consultant at Red Hat Canada where he specializes in IT automation with Ansible and Openshift. I3 s a dynamic tiling window manager insp i red by wmii and is entirely different from Desktop Managers you may be used in the past like GNOME or KDE. awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X. i3 also allows for things like moving a tag from one screen to the next. Yes, because you can configure the tiles to have very thin or no borders. awesome is a free and open-source next-generation tiling manager for X built to be fast … Navigating between windows and tags in Awesome is easy, and it's also pretty easy to set up automatic tag management (add terminals to tag 2, firefox to 3, music player to 9 etc). One big thing I missed with i3 was the window navigation. Pretty much exactly what I was going to say. I have installed i3 since more than 1 year ago and I really like it, also I have this WM fully integrated with Plasma (my favourite Desktop Manager) and it is very useful. If you are feeling adventurous and want to install additional DEs or WMs you can reference these guides: Install Desktop Environments and Window Managers; Choose from a wide selection available in our repositories! If you value simplicity and efficiency and are not afraid of working with the keyboard, i3 is the window manager for you. I'm sorry, but a lot of points you bring up as advantages of i3 are common to most window managers, including the ones from XFCE, GNOME and KDE. Most of my understanding of what the different LUA objects are and what to do with them was pieced together by reading the rather cryptic online documentation and experimenting in awesome-client. Plasma lets you use another window manager, such as i3, bspwm or any other tilling window manager. For me the biggest reason I switched to i3 from awesome was sane defaults. Get the highlights in your inbox every week. Besides the config part I was a happy awesome user till I bought a 21:9 monitor and the fixed awesome layouts just wouldn't cut it. On my laptop I have mine bound to I recently tried i3. The trees of splits, tabs and stacks were just what I needed, the documentation is great and with just a few easy changes to the configuration I was happy with it. That said, some Linux distributions may name it differently in their package management systems, so it’s always good to do a search first. (I don't know lua, and I have no major problem with learning something new, but in the half a month that I used awesome, I never really got it setup the way I wanted it. For example, to open a new terminal, press +. I can see the appeal, configuration is much better/easier. It can be configured during runtime. i3 is primarily targeted at advanced users and developers. Way Cooler is also a tiling window manager, described by its developers as "heavily inspired by the tiling of i3 and the extensibility of awesome". I3 makes extensive use of keyboard shortcuts to control different aspects of your environment. Thanks, (pre-)automated layouts (I have two scripts: one for 'large screen' mode and one for 'laptop screen' mode). Based upon the experiences we made when wanting to hack/fix wmii, Sorry OP if I'm barging in. I actually really like tiling WMs on my netbook because they give you a lot of fullscreen options which is mostly what I want on a 10 inch screen. You’ll also need to inst… But I still don't understand the differences between tabs (Mod+w) vs stacks (Mod+s). I use AwesomeWM(https://awesomewm.org/) initiated by one of the Red Hatter Julien Danjou and it works like a charm. XMonad is ideal for you if you want totally extensible in Haskell and you will not be limited … Awesome is a customizable, “next-generation” Window manager framework for the Xorg/X11 graphical server. The extra room can make a big difference on a small screen. Using i3 does the same, minus 5 Celsius degrees. It's extremely fast, small, dynamic and heavily extensible using the Lua programming language. The slick set-up … Awesome's Status bar meets my needs though. In addition, you can use workspaces to control multi-monitor setups, where each monitor gets an initial workspace. It replaces the standard GNOME Shell workflow with a unique, keyboard-driven one, with a heavy focus on window tiling and key combos. A colleague of mine suggested that I should try tiling window managers, and proceeded to produce a list of them, including i3, awesome, wmii and xmonad. LUA was a bit tricky at first, but after spending some time reading scripts, solutions and fragments of tutorials it started to make sense and I managed to write up some simple widgets for my panel. Here are some examples: Now that I am used to this workflow, I can't see myself going back to a regular desktop environment. Including: Awesome, bspwm, Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin, i3, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, and Openbox. In Awesome, I love just cycling thought all windows in a clockwise fashion using 'j' and 'k', vs. explicitly going up/down left/right. That becomes a deterrent to trying the tiling window manager. For me, they look like the same thing, except for the fact that tabs are horizontal and stacks are vertically displayed. It's a very good choice, but ... it does have some problems with programs like Android Studio and Android Emulator (that aren't optimized for tilling WMs). Material Shell is a fantastic new GNOME Shell extension/user experience currently in development. Haven't tried awesome, but I can say that i3 has a very clean config. There are many useful cases for this. Haven't found a way to do that in i3. External. Screenshot: https://postimg.cc/image/46672jx31/. From experience: just be careful when switching to tiling wm, you may like them so much that seeing anything not-tiling will make you cringe. Press +num to switch to workspace num. Screenshot of i3 with three tiled windows. I've read about the different tiling window managers on the wiki, I've tried Awesome before, and I've seen several videos of i3 in use. Because i3 is a window manager, it doesn't provide tools to enable customizations; you need external tools for that. Very Unix philosophy friendly. Budgie; The main Budgie article. You can group them in different ways according to your workflow. Never tried tiling before. In i3, you can define shortcuts for everything. The i3 wm components usually need elaborate installation and detailed configuration steps. Combine that with a nice terminal-driven text editor (e.g., Vim) and a keyboard-focused browser for a fully keyboard-driven workflow. the default binds for these are j/k/l/; (navigate containers) and Shift+(j/k/l/;) for move containers. The downside is, I didn't like Awesome's configuration methods at all. This article was created in neovim for Linux, running on a zsh shell inside i3 window manager running in a MobaXTerm X Server on a Windows 10 laptop. Does it make sense to use tiling WM on a netbook? Indeed, the only way to change dwm default configuration is to Opensource.com aspires to publish all content under a Creative Commons license but may not be able to do so in all cases. It also allows you to get to what you need faster. Tiling window managers represent windows as tiles, or split views, with windows displayed next to one another, but with none of the windows overlapping. Awesome, or awesomewm, is a window manager which comes with a lot of features, right out of the box.It is written in the Lua programming language (almost), but configuring it does not require a lot of knowledge about the same. Xfce was my choice of desktop environment before I found i3. It always felt random to me, which means that you always need to position your windows manually after opening them with the … As an avid i3 user I still recommend you check your options, as this is the proper way to do it. Switched to i3, the config is sane, the docs are better, the manual tiling allows me to have any layout easily. Deepin. If I have time to sit down and hack on my awesome configuration I might get closer :), I have try the most tiling WM like i3, dwm, awesome, qtile etc. – Ned64 Oct 15 '16 at 12:21 It covers all my needs and is very light. I'm an i3 wm user for about 2 months, I think. In addition, i3 is flexible. You are responsible for ensuring that you have the necessary permission to reuse any work on this site. I've been using Linux for a long time, but I was never entirely happy with the desktop environment options available. I'm a happy Plasma user, but time ago I tried i3wm. windows; linux; i3; windows; linux; i3; Career 2.0 - Go Training, Videos, Speaking. i3 requires more keystrokes to get the layout I want when opening more then 2 windows. bspwm. Mouse window movement is easier for me too, I can Mod+Right Click drag windows to different locations and monitors. If you end up not liking i3, I'd give awesome a try. e.g. With practice, it means you'll improve the speed and efficiency of your workflow. Once the control panel launches, you can arrow down a list of settings or use the mouse. As a developer, I value these features, as I can use the extra capacity to power my favorite development tools or test stuff locally using containers or virtual machines. In the end I went back to Awesome. In this video we take a look at i3wm and the power and productivity that comes with this powerful windows manager that can be used as a desktop environment. So, I'm interested in trying out a tiling window manager for my laptop. v-split, h-split. To conclude, as in every one of these threads, individual preference trumps what anyone else says. Haven't found a way to do that in i3. There’s not a Linux distributionout there that doesn’t have it in the package repositories. Yes. For those who have used Tiling window managers longer than I have, what do you think of them? I use XFCE with i3 shortcuts and rofi, truly the best of both worlds. I3 is flexible and can be customized in several ways to improve the visual experience. TL;DR: Both are great, it just boils down to preference. However, my experience with the documentation is that it is horrendously bad. don't quote me on this but I believe i3 can be configured to approximate Awesome's behaviour on this (or at least how I remember its behaviour, it's been a while since I used it). It's a good choice! Following are the top five reasons I use the i3 window manager and recommend it for a better Linux desktop experience. For more discussion on open source and the role of the CIO in the enterprise, join us at The EnterprisersProject.com. Sat 28 September 2013 by Chris Glass in Ubuntu. It is neither bloated nor fancy. Hybrid. I use i3 standalone because it's fast and lightweight. The target platforms are GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems, our code is Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) under the BSD license. awesome. How would you compare i3 to awesome, awesome to i3, etc.? I've since converted to i3 on my netbook as well. Since the i3 window manager is largely a keyboard-driven interface, very little in the way of a graphical user display exists in Regolith Linux. On a 2005 laptop, switching from the Windows kernel to Linux is like killing a mosquito with a RPG launcher. awesome tries to complete these tools with what we miss: an extensible, highly configurable window manager. I find i3's window containers like to equally scale all windows in a little limiting. That being said, it seems to be missing some of the functionality I really loved with Awesome. That's an interesting use case. For more details, consult i3's documentation. He is currently interested in hacking stuff using the Go Programming... 6 open source tools for staying organized, Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview. And then i3 came along... And for several years I haven't wanted to try another one. With … In i3, the only option seemed to only have them, or not. However, the config is not in plaintext and it does not dynamically tile like i3. Ricardo has been a Linux enthusiast for over 20 years. The few distros that offer i3 as a sort of desktop option are built into Arch-based distros. KWin is the default window manager (WM) in Plasma and has lot of features, but it only supports floating windows. XMonad. I’ve found that on a laptop that I connect and disconnect to external monitors freely, i3 is more dynamic and allows me to preserve my tiling layouts as I move around. Navigating and manipulating windows was a bit awkward at first, but eventually I found that i3 makes it much easier to manipulate layouts just like I wanted in just a few keystrokes. If you use the terminal frequently, having a good window manager is essential to your well being. I love i3..... Gnome, kde, plasma, xfce, mate cinnamon were my desktops before i3. As a developer, I value these features, as I can use the extra capacity to power my favorite development tools or test stuff locally using containers or virtual machines. tile window to the: Send us home-grown sysadmin scripts. It helps you be more productive whether it’s for your work or if you’re doing it as a hobby. Budgie. Windows managers can be dynamic, stacking, or tiling in their behavior. It's easy to get started with, I can definitely recommend it as a first tiling WM. Another really major difference between i3 and awesome is the way they handle multi-monitor setups. I personally did not like it, but it is a very solid window manager. Flexible. From my roommate's reluctant and educated point of view, we shouldn't do more than 2 things with this computer: VPN client, Steam, a Facebook tab, ProtonMail, or the games he'd play with. These include opening the terminal and other programs, resizing and positioning windows, changing layouts, and even exiting i3. Imagine GNOME Shell and the i3 window manager got married, settled down, and had a kid — that kid would grow up to be Material Shell. e.g. The goal of a window manager is to control the appearance and placement of windows in a windowing system. Some say it is for advanced users, but that is not necessarily the case. If you switch to that workspace, you switch to that monitor—without moving your hand off the keyboard. Thanks for the in-depth reply. Other window managers are only available when using X.org. The i3 Window Manager is an extremely lightweight, fast, text-oriented alternative to the other Desktop Environments and Window Managers I have discussed so far. i3 requires more keystrokes to get the layout I want when opening more then 2 windows. One goal of the project is to keep dwm minimal and small. The dwm window manager focuses more on being lightweight. On one hand, I really liked Awesome's behavior, specifically the ability to control which tabs are shown, and the ability to have several tabs/workspaces shown on the same screen at once. Could you enlighten me a little bit on what you mean by Dynamic vs Explicit? Dynamic window managers are window managers that can dynam… On the other hand, dwm isn’t as easy to customize and configure. I have long outstanding issues with my Awesome config, but overall behavior better matches my work flow. 2. You don't have to enter the assigment with text = you can press the appropriate keys themselves when setting. Verdict: A very nice window manager, and a dream for anyone who likes tinkering and customizing - the options are literally endless, if you're willing to put some effort into it. Seems to work better with full screen games too. So to me (XFCE user) it seems like you just haven't eplored those WM's very well before switchting to i3. Window re-sizing is more intuitive in Awesome, for me anyway. It’s very fast… I find I only use the 'tile' and 'floating' layout in Awesome. And I hate your captcha. He has experience in the telecommunications sector, having worked as Senior Architect at TELUS, and had previous experience as Senior Consultant and Pre-Sales specialist for Network Management solutions at IBM Brazil and IBM Canada for 13 years. I3 is fast. In Awesome, the default is to have all window titles listed in series, similar to many taskmanager bars. It is neither bloated nor fancy. i3 stands on top of X Window Manager or X11, which has been a standard for these last +30 years for providing the building blocks for windows managers or desktop environments (Gnome, KDE, XFCE,…). Having explicit tiling sounds good, but I rarely have any more need then one fully vertical window with a 2nd column of secondary windows. Does anyone know what I need to do to "de-uglify" i3? Plasma using i3 as window manager. Just what I need. i3 is a tiling window manager designed for X11, inspired by wmii and written in C. It supports tiling, stacking, and tabbing layouts, which it handles dynamically. I'm also thinking about installing polybar and using that instead of XFCE's panels. In i3, a workspace is an easy way to group windows. (That is, the ability to have windows from several different tabs/workspaces showing at the same time). You need to learn a few basic shortcuts to get around at the beginning, but they'll soon feel natural and you'll start using them without thinking. No resizing windows with the mouse so you can see many terminals at the same time, it's all done automatically, and when you know the bindings its second nature and very fast to use. Using the i3 window manager. As usual in i3, do it with a keyboard shortcut. Verdict: A fantastic window manager, though with a bit of learning curve - window movements can be confusing until you figure out how it works. Perhaps I could have a 2nd i3-status bar + using the i3-client to pull window titles. These changes cannot be made for Wayland sessions yet. Me too. When you start using i3, you need to memorize a few of those shortcuts to get around and, with time, you'll use more of them. To save screen real state, I prefer not to have window titles right on top of each window. tagged ubuntu, i3. Just seen another note about a distro featuring such a window manager: Awesome has been around for a few years now, but may be gaining some visibility now that Sabayon Linux has added an awesome edition.Guest author Koen Vervloesem has been using awesome for a number of years, and subscribers can click below for his look at the window manager from this week's edition. i3 - improved tiling WM. It is an invisible workspace that shows up in the middle of the other workspaces by pressing a shortcut. window manager, completely written from scratch. Though there is still some work to be done in this area. Press question mark to learn the rest of the keyboard shortcuts. I also looked at this question, which points to installing lxappearance for this issue in Awesome Window Manager. I really like it, and I'll probably continue using it even if I don't have the nice GTK themes, but obviously it would be nicer to The control panel is accessed with the keyboard shortcut Super key + c, for example. I think the main difference is when you open a new terminal it is automatically placed on the screen and the existing ones are resized to accommodate.... You can easily move the windows with keystrokes to rearrange the layout .....as far as I'm aware these features are not supported by other WMs and this is the main advantage of tiling window managers. 1. Other popular tiling window managers include wmii and xmonad. That part wasn't making a whole lot of sense to me.