3 ms·

i3wm is worth trying out for at least a week to see if it's right for you. It only takes a day to get used to - it's a small time investment for the payoff and

i3wm is worth trying out for at least a week to see if it's right for you. It only takes a day to get used to - it's a small time investment for the payoff and there's a lot of customization available.

dfischer 7y ago
Looks amazing. Thanks!
FourSigma 7y ago
Take a look at Regolith Linux. Has some sane configurationsfor i3 on top of Ubuntu. https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/
- dfischer 7y ago
  Wow that does look good. Why use Ubuntu? Wouldn’t it add a lot of cruft instead of just i3?
  - jeromescuggs 7y ago
    in my experience, if cruft is a major concern in your day-to-day use of linux, you probably already have a desktop/window management environment and theme you've settled on :P i consider myself a sort of power-casual linux user, i don't develop professionally but love to tinker and play around with it, almost exclusively for aesthetic reasons. regolith being built on ubuntu means that the second i find myself out of my element, there's always the familiar and ever-present terminal i can pull up, that responds to all the commands i already know, has the binaries and services i am already familiar with, etc. that being said, i've taken some light dips into the wild, mainly using manjaro architect to play around with manjaro/i3 - regolith was a very awesome(lol) way to learn i3wm because i wasn't simultaneously having to also learn the ins-and-outs of a non-debian-based operating system
  - dustinmr 7y ago
    Another Mac refugee to Linux here. I first installed a minimal Debian install, and you begin running into lots of things along these lines: https://cravencode.com/post/essentials/enable-tap-to-click-in-i3wm/ https://cravencode.com/post/essentials/enable-tap-to-click-i... And you need to configure i3br/polybar, amongst lots of other things. I ended up on Regolith mostly to see how someone else who’s used i3 for a while sets things up. I’ve found I like it pretty well. It’s a nice middle ground. I may sometime go back to building my desktop from the bottom up, but Regolith has been a good way to get a working i3 setup to build from. It’s also a very fast way to have i3 setup and use for a week to see if you like it. If you do, then you can build what you like. But if you start from building first, your initial time investment will be much greater.
clinta 7y ago
To add to this, if you just use i3 you may miss some niceties from a full desktop environment. Fortunately it is easy to run xfce and replace the window manager with i3.
- dfischer 7y ago
  What are some things you may miss? I think it may be perfect for me. I live in either the browser or terminal.
  - clinta 7y ago
    When I ran i3 without xfce if I wanted a battery monitor, I needed to find a daemon to do that. If I wanted an icon to adjust my volume, I had to find a daemon to do that. I wasn't getting notifications from apps because I forgot to install a notifications daemon. XFCE gives you all those things built in, and many more that can be easily added to the panel without having to go find another app.

dfischer 7y ago

Looks amazing. Thanks!

FourSigma 7y ago

Take a look at Regolith Linux. Has some sane configurationsfor i3 on top of Ubuntu. https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/

dfischer 7y ago
Wow that does look good. Why use Ubuntu? Wouldn’t it add a lot of cruft instead of just i3?
- jeromescuggs 7y ago
  in my experience, if cruft is a major concern in your day-to-day use of linux, you probably already have a desktop/window management environment and theme you've settled on :P i consider myself a sort of power-casual linux user, i don't develop professionally but love to tinker and play around with it, almost exclusively for aesthetic reasons. regolith being built on ubuntu means that the second i find myself out of my element, there's always the familiar and ever-present terminal i can pull up, that responds to all the commands i already know, has the binaries and services i am already familiar with, etc. that being said, i've taken some light dips into the wild, mainly using manjaro architect to play around with manjaro/i3 - regolith was a very awesome(lol) way to learn i3wm because i wasn't simultaneously having to also learn the ins-and-outs of a non-debian-based operating system
- dustinmr 7y ago
  Another Mac refugee to Linux here. I first installed a minimal Debian install, and you begin running into lots of things along these lines: https://cravencode.com/post/essentials/enable-tap-to-click-in-i3wm/ https://cravencode.com/post/essentials/enable-tap-to-click-i... And you need to configure i3br/polybar, amongst lots of other things. I ended up on Regolith mostly to see how someone else who’s used i3 for a while sets things up. I’ve found I like it pretty well. It’s a nice middle ground. I may sometime go back to building my desktop from the bottom up, but Regolith has been a good way to get a working i3 setup to build from. It’s also a very fast way to have i3 setup and use for a week to see if you like it. If you do, then you can build what you like. But if you start from building first, your initial time investment will be much greater.

clinta 7y ago

To add to this, if you just use i3 you may miss some niceties from a full desktop environment. Fortunately it is easy to run xfce and replace the window manager with i3.

dfischer 7y ago
What are some things you may miss? I think it may be perfect for me. I live in either the browser or terminal.
- clinta 7y ago
  When I ran i3 without xfce if I wanted a battery monitor, I needed to find a daemon to do that. If I wanted an icon to adjust my volume, I had to find a daemon to do that. I wasn't getting notifications from apps because I forgot to install a notifications daemon. XFCE gives you all those things built in, and many more that can be easily added to the panel without having to go find another app.