14 ms·

i3 4.18

221 points by trulyrandom 7y ago

d33 7y ago
I love i3, but there's one thing I really wish I could do that I still hadn't figured out. I used to be a KDE user and I loved the fact that I could stack windows and make the one on top semi-transparent. I'd be using this feature to watch movies while hacking in the terminal. The way you'd set it up is that you'd stack one window on top of another, set it to "always on top" and control its transparency through extra options unlocked in the title bar. Now, the question is, could i3 do that? In other words, does the "tabbed" mode actually "render" the windows underneath so that I could use an external compositor to set its transparency to whatever I want? Ideally I'd love to have a shortcut for that.
djsumdog 7y ago
I love tiling WMs. I'll try out new ones every now and then for a few days, but I always come back to i3; which has been my primary window manager since 2012. It's an amazing window manager and I'm glad to see all the work still going into it. Sometime this year, I'll have to give Sway/Wayland another try on my laptop. I'd love to switch to Wayland, but the past few releases of Sway there was always something I got stuck on I couldn't patch or work around.
- green7ea 7y ago
  My experience with Sway was the same until the 1.0 release (about 11 months ago). The 1.0 release fixed all the show stoppers and I've been happily using it ever since. It also comes with a few nice things build in like gaps. To be honest though, there isn't much difference from a day to day perspective between X11 and wayland. A few things are nice (adding and extra screen doesn't reset the video mode) and a few things are worse (recording video). Make the switch when it's the natural choice, don't force it ;-)
agumonkey 7y ago
my arch setup uses i3, it's not the only tiling wm but it's really nice, light and efficient.
Barrin92 7y ago
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.
- jolmg 7y ago
  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.).
  - awake 7y ago
    h for help and your fingers rest on jkl; not hjkl if you are typing with proper form
    - jolmg 7y ago
      When you're browsing text, though, it's more common to move up and down in text than it is to move sideways. If you're typing with proper form, "hjkl" results in the index finger moving down and the middle finger moving up. So, your most useful finger is used for the most common action, and your second most useful finger for the second most common action. What's probably the third most common action, moving left would be done with your index finger, and right with your ring finger. You'd never have to use your awkward pinky finger for anything. With "jkl;", you'd be moving down with the middle finger, and up with the ring finger. Your dexterious index finger would be waiting for the moment when you'd want to move left, which is not as often, and you'd be encouraged to use your awkward pinky finger quite often. This isn't necessarily the case when working with windows, but by now it's a matter of consistency. Although, encouraging to use the pinky finger and not being able to use the index finger for 2 actions still sucks.
  - msoucy 7y ago
    Probably just QWERTY "home row" layout
  - yyhhsj0521 7y ago
ddavis 7y ago
Happy i3 user for 7 years, thanks to all of the developers. i3 is incredibly smooth to use. Looking at the bug fixes I've only ever hit one in the wild: > move workspace to output: don’t create duplicate numbered workspace and didn't even realize it was a bug, always thought it was an issue with my configuration.
kilovoltaire 7y ago
I recently saw someone playing around with i3 and xzoom to make fractals and video feedback, seems fun- https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1228241766240768000 https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1228241766240768000
truncate 7y ago
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, xmonad) have pre-defined layouts, which (for me at-least) create more confusion than value. PS> I think I've been using i3 since 2010 something.
- djsumdog 7y ago
  I've been lucky, I've run Linux on my work devices for the past four jobs (since 2012). I would hate to work in a position where I was forced to use a Windows or Mac device.
- butterthebuddha 7y ago
  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 https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd/ https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd/
  - maximente 7y ago
    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?
  - stevewillows 7y ago
    Yabai gives the basic i3 experience. It's not as polished, but it's pretty great once you figure out a good config. i3 has the benefit of being in an OS that doesn't use a super key for everything. For Yabai, I mapped caps as HYPER -- which is good for most combinations.
  - Sir_Omnomnom 7y ago
mherrmann 7y ago
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.
- mbreedlove 7y ago
  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 definitely reach for i3 again.
  - city41 7y ago
    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-and-i3/ https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/
    - blaser-waffle 7y ago
      Cheers for the MATE panel applet you put together (that's in the blog post): https://github.com/city41/mate-i3-applet https://github.com/city41/mate-i3-applet Also, got any pictures of the desktop?
    - ppseafield 7y ago
      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!).
    - mbreedlove 7y ago
jlebar 7y ago
The thing I love about i3 is that the config file is the complete documentation. Forget how to do something? Open the config file. That's it. <3 i3
- richard78459 7y ago
  And reloading the new config is even simpler with a combination of keystrokes.
simlevesque 7y ago
i3 is a godsend. I used it for a long time before switching to Sway. I told my brother about it, helped him a bit to set it up and now he stopped using any other WM/OS.
- city41 7y ago
  It's one of my most favorite pieces of software. It has put me in a slightly odd spot of hoping to never be required to use Windows or OSX at work though. Hopefully all my future companies let me use Linux.
tigrezno 7y ago
Still no gaps support on main branch. Devs don't care about what their users want/need. Happy bspwm user here.
- simlevesque 7y ago
  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.
  - berkayozturk 7y ago
    I think it's aesthetically more pleasing with gaps.
  - bovine3dom 7y ago
    I have nice peaceful desktop backgrounds (e.g. pictures of mountains) that change every boot and I like looking at them. The gaps allow me to do that a bit and create some kind of persistence between the empty desktop and a desktop with a window on it. I do have two large monitors (one of which has almost no bezel and is lovely). On laptops I don't use gaps. For me it's a bit like having a picture on a desk. It uses up space I could have used for working but I like it.
  - ubercow13 7y ago
    Some gaps users claim that due to visual impairment, it helps them differentiate windows from each other. I guess you could use larger borders instead but gaps certainly look nicer than that.
- sibane 7y ago
  There are some vague efforts to bring gaps into i3. However, while it seems like the maintainers aren't opposed to having the functionality in base i3, they are choosing not to simply merge it in because of quality concerns. At the moment, gaps is a somewhat hacky patch on top of i3 with a few drawbacks. They probably won't add gaps until they find an elegant way of implementing them as a core feature. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724
webmobdev 7y ago
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 controls / customize the windows as you please and is thus "freer". I guess it can seem useful for, say, multiple terminal windows. But would suck for a scenario where you have to open different kinds of applications like a browser, file manager, video converter, movie player, terminal etc. etc. (just citing all the apps I have open now and am multi-tasking with) where the ability to stack them would prove to be more productive for the user. That even control freaks like Apple, who like to think only they know what's best for their consumers, doesn't use a tiling only WM in their OS is telling. Even Microsoft switched from a tiling WM from Windows 2.0 on wards and has stuck to it (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager ).
- dfee 7y ago
  Isn’t iPadOS a tiling window manager?
- joecool1029 7y ago
  >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.
  - buckminster 7y ago
    Or use WIN+ARROW. Or CTRL+WIN+ARROW to switch desktop. It's quite slick.
  - webmobdev 7y ago
    That's true. But my original point stands - they've found that the majority of users prefer stacking windows as that's easier.
- 7y ago
raoof 7y ago
I'm using i3 for a long time, the only feature I'm really missing is `bindsym j [class="google-chrome"] xdotool key Down` so I can make vi like key binding for every program that I use.
- shabble 7y ago
  If you're still looking, I quite like XKeysnail (https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail) for that, although it does occasionally get confused. It does seem like it's something a WM should be capable of though.
  - raoof 7y ago
    thanks I'll look into it
capableweb 7y ago
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 is the difference, but that hasn't bothered me too much as awesome for most part just simply works.
- qzx_pierri 7y ago
  Why change if Awesome works for you?
  - capableweb 7y ago
    Just because it works doesn't mean there isn't better things out there. Wouldn't change if the benefits are not greater, obviously, but I find it healthy to always reconsider past choices every now and then.
    - qzx_pierri 7y ago
      true. I never thought about it that way.
- ppseafield 7y ago
  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.
mxschumacher 7y ago
I've been using i3-wm for many years and am a big fan. It's great to be able to switch between workspaces so quickly and get such an efficient use of screen "real estate". My current setup i3-wm on Manjaro, alacritty with fish is exactly what I need.
cpascal 7y ago
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?
- Zhyl 7y ago
  I initially installed because it was cool, but I stayed because I started to think in i3 keyboard commands. Being able to summon a new terminal window and have it slot into place when you have a new thought is another one of those things which remove friction similar to using the command line over a GUI. I've noticed when going back to Mint/Cinnamon that even though the terminal is only a click/keypress away, I think about it differently because it feels heavier and slower, the window chrome makes it feel more 'desktoppy' and if I want to summon a bunch of them to do a few different things (or one thing with a few different strands) I'll need to put in some cognitive effort to rearrange them how I like them. It's a bit of an immersion breaker.
- qzx_pierri 7y ago
  Having all windows tiled efficiently is awesome if you multitask a lot. If you don’t have a second monitor, it can be pretty comfy.
- happimess 7y ago
  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-tab-tab. At least once a day, I make an off-by-one error and get stuck in a context-shift loop until I pause, think, and do the needful. With i3wm, I have 10 workspaces, and each is available with a single chord press. I have my own conventions about what's where, and there's no cognitive load associated with switching between text editor and documentation, or whatever. Along the same lines, I like to keep a roguelike open for quick breaks, but ideally I'd never accidentally switch to a video game. OSX gives you no ability to punt an application from your cmd-tab list except to quit the application. With i3wm, I keep that on workspace 0, and have never accidentally switched over to it. You may think I'm being precious, but it really does make a huge difference in my ability to stay in the zone.
cosmojg 7y ago
If you're looking to switch from X11 to Wayland, you should definitely check out Sway[1]. It's all the greatness of i3 rebuilt on top of a cleaner, leaner, meaner tech stack! [1]: https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/
- Naac 7y ago
  >> cleaner, leaner, meaner tech stack! What does that mean? Sway is a great project, but I would be careful of using Wayland, as lots of minor issues came up last time I was using it ( death by a thousand papercuts ). For example, if you rely on years of small x scripts ( xrandr, etc. ), be prepared to rewrite all of them for wayland. Last time I used Sway/Wayland, I couldn't find a good alternative to redshift. While Gnome has it, I can't seem to just use this feature independently on other DEs. Again, Sway is fantastic, and I fully support moving off to Wayland. But best case scenario Sway is a drop-in replacement. Most likely there will be some fiddling. Especially if you've been using i3 for years and have built a custom ecosystem around it.
  - thomasfortes 7y ago
    There's a patched redshift for wlroots compositors (sway is the most prominent one) on AUR, works perfectly in my machine.
  - dpbriggs 7y ago
    I'm also holding out with i3 until the wayland ecosystem matures a bit more. I am thankful that a wayland equivalent already exists though.
  - nearmiss 7y ago
    I found similar issues. One other showstopper for me was the lack of keyboard/mouse sharing ala synergy or barrier.
- Kaze404 7y ago
  I switched to Sway a couple days ago and to be completely honest I'm not sure what I gained from it besides Wofi feeling more modern than Rofi. I don't regret the switch but I don't feel like it was a good choice either.
ww520 7y ago
Somehow I read that host name as “I3MW” and thought it’sa site for the BMW i3 car.
TZVdosOWs3kZHus 7y ago
Huge shoutout to all developers of i3, I absolutely love it! Since I started using it, the connection to my machine improved vastly. The precious pixel space of my X230 finally felt utilised fully! I never had any issues with i3. Cannot recommend it enough!
Naac 7y ago
For anyone here who loves i3, but has always had trouble getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ), check out the Regolith project[0] It's a curation of several tools combined with i3 that gives a pretty fantastic gnome/i3 experience. Similar to spacemacs and emacs. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/
- ckrailo 7y ago
  +1 for regolith and the quality Slack community around it! Ken is awesome!
- Symmetry 7y ago
  I tried that for a while and I did find the integration very well done. I ended up going back to my automatic-tiling Gnome/Xmonad ways (thanks Gekkio!) but that was all about window manager preferences themselves rather than any fault in the Regolith project.
- bombela 7y ago
  I have been using the mate desktop daemons to handle all of this. Works quite well. See my comment with more details there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834
- thunderbong 7y ago
  This is really nice. The key bindings out of the box are really useful.
- mttyng 7y ago
  This looks cool. I didn’t immediately see anything mentioned, but can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?
  - Naac 7y ago
    >> can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Yes. >> Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? I'm not sure what you mean. The Ubuntu package provided lets you select this desktop from the login screen ( as opposed to i3, Plasma, or Gnome ). This is essentially a new Desktop Environment, made up of gnome and i3. >> Also, is this really only for Ubuntu? Unfortunately yes. I've tried looking at packaging this for Arch Linux, but it looks like quite a bit of dependencies are forked ( i3blocks is now i3xrocks ). Not everything is pushed upstream. Getting this to work on non-ubuntu based distributions looks tricky if you're not familiar with packaging already.
pedrovhb 7y ago
I've always liked i3 a lot but it was a real pain to get some stuff working (like connecting a new monitor, or having to deal with wifi and bluetooth, or using two different keyboard layouts). Everything had to be configured, and while that's great for understanding how things work together, it's pretty painful when you're just trying to get stuff done. All the pain went away when I found Regolith [0], which I heavily recommend. It's i3 with Ubuntu but it comes with sensible defaults, a nicer theme and shortcuts to all the configs you could need out of the box. It really makes things a lot easier than using just i3, especially when doing a fresh install (it's available both as an installable image and as a package - I've had no issue with either). Some default shortcuts are different so if you've been using i3 for a while you'll have to iterate a bit over the config to get to a comfortable point, but it's the same config file. I also changed the default terminal back to gnome term, since their default one doesn't have a scrollbar, but again it's pretty easy to do and you only do it once. All in all, really made my life better. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/
- asterisk_ 7y ago
  I personally didn't encounter any problems whatsoever installing a clean i3, but for anyone searching a batteries-included version of the window manager I've heard a lot of good things about i3-Manjaro (cf. 30-minute review on Youtube [0]). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG9ORRUkUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG9ORRUkUQ
nickjj 7y ago
If you're on Windows and are upset that nothing like i3 exists, you can get a useful but watered down i3-like experience by: 1. Using Windows 10's snapped windows along with various Windows key + arrow key hotkeys[0] for managing windows. 2. Using DexPot[1] for hotkey controlled virtual workspaces (same ALT + N hotkeys as i3) 3. Using Keypirinha[2] for fuzzy finding programs to launch (similar'ish to dmenu for launching apps at least) Combine that with WSL + tmux + terminal Vim and it's not bad for day to day development. I've been using the above for over a year for full time development and while I miss my i3 set up on my native Linux laptop, it's manageable. [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-nz/help/12445/windows-keyboard-shortcuts https://support.microsoft.com/en-nz/help/12445/windows-keybo... [1]: https://dexpot.de/?lang=en https://dexpot.de/?lang=en [2]: https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/
pkrumins 7y ago
I have been using i3 for a long time and here are some advanced features that I'd love it to have. 1) Workspaces of workspaces Let's say I'm working on five projects at the same time. Each project usually has totally different workspace configurations. For example: Project1 might have workspaces 1: dev, 2: mail, 3: tail -f access.log Project2 might have workspaces 1: photoshop, 2: mypaint, 3: shell Project3 might have workspaces 1: trello, 2: research ... This is like tmux sessions. I can have multiple sessions, each session has multiple windows and panes. In tmux this works very well but in i3 you can'd do that. I'm currently emulating this by running five independent i3 copies on five displays :1, :2, :3, :4, :5 and I switch between displays to switch to another project. 2) Static tiling I3 is a dynamic tiling manager, which means it uses the entire screen. However, once you establish your workflow, you often have windows that take 1/3 of the screen and are 1/3 off the top, etc. and you don't really want them to take the entire screen because it makes you less productive and it feels weird. Also, once you establish your workflow, you don't want the workspace to change or resize. You just know where everything is and don't want a slightest disturbance in your workflow. This is often hard to do in i3 and you need to use tricks such as vertical and horizontal splits of empty terminals to put the app where you need it to be. And it's extremely easy to mess this up, if you accidentally open a new terminal. Then your app resizes and shifts, and when you close the accidental terminal, it's no longer where it was because of many vertical and horizontal splits. I found Notion window manager that is static tiling but I haven't tried it. It can also have tabs inside static tiles, which makes it very interesting. 3) Run or raise Run or raise starts a program if it's not running, focuses it if it's running, and hides it when no longer needed. For example, pressing alt+n starts and shows a notepad if it's not yet running. If it's running, it focuses the notepad and pressing alt+n again hides it. I3 doesn't have this feature but it can be emulated via xdotool and scratchpads. 4) Using fzf instead of dmenu Dmenu is nice but you need to type too much. The solution is to use fzf instead of dmenu. I'm currently displaying a floating sticky terminal window that runs fzf, gets my input, performs the action, and disappears. It's so much faster than dmenu. 5) Using fzf to switch apps, workspaces, workspaces-of-workspaces Often, when you're working on project2, you remember you had similar idea/code/notes in project4. You then have to switch to display :4, then switch to correct workspace and find the info. This could be simplified by using fzf and just instantly switching where you need. 6) Using alt-tab to switch back to previous place you were. Let's say you switched from appx in project2 on display :2 to appy in project4 on display :4, and now you have to cycle between them. You can't do that right now so the workflow isn't perfect and there's a lot of drag.
purplezooey 7y ago
Why isn't i3-gaps merged by now?
- secure 7y ago
  The tracking issue for that feature is https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 Merging gap support isn’t that easy, and our spare time is not unlimited. Serious offers to help very welcome.
adminu 7y ago
Quick and shameless plug: I wrote a windows 10 style, true transparency enabled notification center/daemon, extending on the concept of dunst: https://github.com/phuhl/linux_notification_center https://github.com/phuhl/linux_notification_center Feel free to check it out and give it a try. PS, for the enthusiasts: 100% written in Haskell
danans 7y ago
A great use case for i3 that is my daily driver is as a remote desktop windowing solution. My i3 desktop state is preserved and sanely laid out if I'm at home on a 15" laptop, at work on a 30" monitor, or even on my portable 12" laptop while I'm in meetings.
- philwelch 7y ago
  How do you do the remote desktop part?
  - danans 7y ago
    I use Chrome Remote Desktop, but I imagine any similar system would work too. This Wikipedia page has a server/client/OS support matrix for various systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software#Operating_system_support https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop...
esjeon 7y ago
As a long time dwm[1] user and the developer of a tiling script for KDE, Krohnkite[2], I'm purely curious what makes i3 so popular. It makes you spend extra brain cycles on managing windows, which isn't far from stacking WMs in my perspective. I mean, this extra cycle was the reason why I abandoned stacking WM. Especially on small ("13 ~ "15) laptop screens, where people usually have <= 4 apps per virtual desktop, I think i3 doesn't have much benefit, because there are only a few possible layouts: half-and-half, master-and-stack(│├│ or │┤│) and quarter(田). All of these are well covered by Tile layout (or nv-stack, according to Arch wiki[3]). On the other hand, I do admit manual layout can be really useful on large screens and ultra-wide ones. There's neither golden nor silver layout that always works well on large area. There are just too many possibilities, and imagination is the only limit in this case. [1]: https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/ [2]: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite [3]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_tiling_window_managers#Layouts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_tiling_wi...
yewenjie 7y ago
I used i3 about two years ago, and have been using awesome since then. Can anybody elaborate how do these two projects compare in 2020?
richard78459 7y ago
I use i3 on rooted chrome book and its amazing. I also use it on a 21 inch monitor its still amazing. It's so light weight, boots very quickly, uses all of the pixels and loading the new configuration is extremely simple. Just edit ~/.config/i3/config file and press Win-shift-R it loads the new configuration, basically very easy to experiment. Thanks so much Michael Stapelberg(https://michael.stapelberg.ch/ https://michael.stapelberg.ch/) for this amazing software.

221 points by trulyrandom 7y ago

d33 7y ago

I love i3, but there's one thing I really wish I could do that I still hadn't figured out. I used to be a KDE user and I loved the fact that I could stack windows and make the one on top semi-transparent. I'd be using this feature to watch movies while hacking in the terminal. The way you'd set it up is that you'd stack one window on top of another, set it to "always on top" and control its transparency through extra options unlocked in the title bar. Now, the question is, could i3 do that? In other words, does the "tabbed" mode actually "render" the windows underneath so that I could use an external compositor to set its transparency to whatever I want? Ideally I'd love to have a shortcut for that.

djsumdog 7y ago

I love tiling WMs. I'll try out new ones every now and then for a few days, but I always come back to i3; which has been my primary window manager since 2012. It's an amazing window manager and I'm glad to see all the work still going into it. Sometime this year, I'll have to give Sway/Wayland another try on my laptop. I'd love to switch to Wayland, but the past few releases of Sway there was always something I got stuck on I couldn't patch or work around.

green7ea 7y ago
My experience with Sway was the same until the 1.0 release (about 11 months ago). The 1.0 release fixed all the show stoppers and I've been happily using it ever since. It also comes with a few nice things build in like gaps. To be honest though, there isn't much difference from a day to day perspective between X11 and wayland. A few things are nice (adding and extra screen doesn't reset the video mode) and a few things are worse (recording video). Make the switch when it's the natural choice, don't force it ;-)

agumonkey 7y ago

my arch setup uses i3, it's not the only tiling wm but it's really nice, light and efficient.

Barrin92 7y ago

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.

jolmg 7y ago
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.).
- awake 7y ago
  h for help and your fingers rest on jkl; not hjkl if you are typing with proper form
  - jolmg 7y ago
    When you're browsing text, though, it's more common to move up and down in text than it is to move sideways. If you're typing with proper form, "hjkl" results in the index finger moving down and the middle finger moving up. So, your most useful finger is used for the most common action, and your second most useful finger for the second most common action. What's probably the third most common action, moving left would be done with your index finger, and right with your ring finger. You'd never have to use your awkward pinky finger for anything. With "jkl;", you'd be moving down with the middle finger, and up with the ring finger. Your dexterious index finger would be waiting for the moment when you'd want to move left, which is not as often, and you'd be encouraged to use your awkward pinky finger quite often. This isn't necessarily the case when working with windows, but by now it's a matter of consistency. Although, encouraging to use the pinky finger and not being able to use the index finger for 2 actions still sucks.
- msoucy 7y ago
  Probably just QWERTY "home row" layout
- yyhhsj0521 7y ago

ddavis 7y ago

Happy i3 user for 7 years, thanks to all of the developers. i3 is incredibly smooth to use. Looking at the bug fixes I've only ever hit one in the wild: > move workspace to output: don’t create duplicate numbered workspace and didn't even realize it was a bug, always thought it was an issue with my configuration.

kilovoltaire 7y ago

I recently saw someone playing around with i3 and xzoom to make fractals and video feedback, seems fun- https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1228241766240768000 https://twitter.com/maxbittker/status/1228241766240768000

truncate 7y ago

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, xmonad) have pre-defined layouts, which (for me at-least) create more confusion than value. PS> I think I've been using i3 since 2010 something.

djsumdog 7y ago
I've been lucky, I've run Linux on my work devices for the past four jobs (since 2012). I would hate to work in a position where I was forced to use a Windows or Mac device.
butterthebuddha 7y ago
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 https://github.com/koekeishiya/yabai [2] https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd/ https://github.com/koekeishiya/skhd/
- maximente 7y ago
  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?
- stevewillows 7y ago
  Yabai gives the basic i3 experience. It's not as polished, but it's pretty great once you figure out a good config. i3 has the benefit of being in an OS that doesn't use a super key for everything. For Yabai, I mapped caps as HYPER -- which is good for most combinations.
- Sir_Omnomnom 7y ago

mherrmann 7y ago

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.

mbreedlove 7y ago
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 definitely reach for i3 again.
- city41 7y ago
  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-and-i3/ https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/
  - blaser-waffle 7y ago
    Cheers for the MATE panel applet you put together (that's in the blog post): https://github.com/city41/mate-i3-applet https://github.com/city41/mate-i3-applet Also, got any pictures of the desktop?
  - ppseafield 7y ago
    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!).
  - mbreedlove 7y ago

jlebar 7y ago

The thing I love about i3 is that the config file is the complete documentation. Forget how to do something? Open the config file. That's it. <3 i3

richard78459 7y ago
And reloading the new config is even simpler with a combination of keystrokes.

simlevesque 7y ago

i3 is a godsend. I used it for a long time before switching to Sway. I told my brother about it, helped him a bit to set it up and now he stopped using any other WM/OS.

city41 7y ago
It's one of my most favorite pieces of software. It has put me in a slightly odd spot of hoping to never be required to use Windows or OSX at work though. Hopefully all my future companies let me use Linux.

tigrezno 7y ago

Still no gaps support on main branch. Devs don't care about what their users want/need. Happy bspwm user here.

simlevesque 7y ago
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.
- berkayozturk 7y ago
  I think it's aesthetically more pleasing with gaps.
- bovine3dom 7y ago
  I have nice peaceful desktop backgrounds (e.g. pictures of mountains) that change every boot and I like looking at them. The gaps allow me to do that a bit and create some kind of persistence between the empty desktop and a desktop with a window on it. I do have two large monitors (one of which has almost no bezel and is lovely). On laptops I don't use gaps. For me it's a bit like having a picture on a desk. It uses up space I could have used for working but I like it.
- ubercow13 7y ago
  Some gaps users claim that due to visual impairment, it helps them differentiate windows from each other. I guess you could use larger borders instead but gaps certainly look nicer than that.
sibane 7y ago
There are some vague efforts to bring gaps into i3. However, while it seems like the maintainers aren't opposed to having the functionality in base i3, they are choosing not to simply merge it in because of quality concerns. At the moment, gaps is a somewhat hacky patch on top of i3 with a few drawbacks. They probably won't add gaps until they find an elegant way of implementing them as a core feature. https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724

webmobdev 7y ago

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 controls / customize the windows as you please and is thus "freer". I guess it can seem useful for, say, multiple terminal windows. But would suck for a scenario where you have to open different kinds of applications like a browser, file manager, video converter, movie player, terminal etc. etc. (just citing all the apps I have open now and am multi-tasking with) where the ability to stack them would prove to be more productive for the user. That even control freaks like Apple, who like to think only they know what's best for their consumers, doesn't use a tiling only WM in their OS is telling. Even Microsoft switched from a tiling WM from Windows 2.0 on wards and has stuck to it (Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager ).

dfee 7y ago
Isn’t iPadOS a tiling window manager?
joecool1029 7y ago
>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.
- buckminster 7y ago
  Or use WIN+ARROW. Or CTRL+WIN+ARROW to switch desktop. It's quite slick.
- webmobdev 7y ago
  That's true. But my original point stands - they've found that the majority of users prefer stacking windows as that's easier.
7y ago

raoof 7y ago

I'm using i3 for a long time, the only feature I'm really missing is `bindsym j [class="google-chrome"] xdotool key Down` so I can make vi like key binding for every program that I use.

shabble 7y ago
If you're still looking, I quite like XKeysnail (https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail https://github.com/mooz/xkeysnail) for that, although it does occasionally get confused. It does seem like it's something a WM should be capable of though.
- raoof 7y ago
  thanks I'll look into it

capableweb 7y ago

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 is the difference, but that hasn't bothered me too much as awesome for most part just simply works.

qzx_pierri 7y ago
Why change if Awesome works for you?
- capableweb 7y ago
  Just because it works doesn't mean there isn't better things out there. Wouldn't change if the benefits are not greater, obviously, but I find it healthy to always reconsider past choices every now and then.
  - qzx_pierri 7y ago
    true. I never thought about it that way.
ppseafield 7y ago
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.

mxschumacher 7y ago

I've been using i3-wm for many years and am a big fan. It's great to be able to switch between workspaces so quickly and get such an efficient use of screen "real estate". My current setup i3-wm on Manjaro, alacritty with fish is exactly what I need.

cpascal 7y ago

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?

Zhyl 7y ago
I initially installed because it was cool, but I stayed because I started to think in i3 keyboard commands. Being able to summon a new terminal window and have it slot into place when you have a new thought is another one of those things which remove friction similar to using the command line over a GUI. I've noticed when going back to Mint/Cinnamon that even though the terminal is only a click/keypress away, I think about it differently because it feels heavier and slower, the window chrome makes it feel more 'desktoppy' and if I want to summon a bunch of them to do a few different things (or one thing with a few different strands) I'll need to put in some cognitive effort to rearrange them how I like them. It's a bit of an immersion breaker.
qzx_pierri 7y ago
Having all windows tiled efficiently is awesome if you multitask a lot. If you don’t have a second monitor, it can be pretty comfy.
happimess 7y ago
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-tab-tab. At least once a day, I make an off-by-one error and get stuck in a context-shift loop until I pause, think, and do the needful. With i3wm, I have 10 workspaces, and each is available with a single chord press. I have my own conventions about what's where, and there's no cognitive load associated with switching between text editor and documentation, or whatever. Along the same lines, I like to keep a roguelike open for quick breaks, but ideally I'd never accidentally switch to a video game. OSX gives you no ability to punt an application from your cmd-tab list except to quit the application. With i3wm, I keep that on workspace 0, and have never accidentally switched over to it. You may think I'm being precious, but it really does make a huge difference in my ability to stay in the zone.

cosmojg 7y ago

If you're looking to switch from X11 to Wayland, you should definitely check out Sway[1]. It's all the greatness of i3 rebuilt on top of a cleaner, leaner, meaner tech stack! [1]: https://swaywm.org/ https://swaywm.org/

Naac 7y ago
>> cleaner, leaner, meaner tech stack! What does that mean? Sway is a great project, but I would be careful of using Wayland, as lots of minor issues came up last time I was using it ( death by a thousand papercuts ). For example, if you rely on years of small x scripts ( xrandr, etc. ), be prepared to rewrite all of them for wayland. Last time I used Sway/Wayland, I couldn't find a good alternative to redshift. While Gnome has it, I can't seem to just use this feature independently on other DEs. Again, Sway is fantastic, and I fully support moving off to Wayland. But best case scenario Sway is a drop-in replacement. Most likely there will be some fiddling. Especially if you've been using i3 for years and have built a custom ecosystem around it.
- thomasfortes 7y ago
  There's a patched redshift for wlroots compositors (sway is the most prominent one) on AUR, works perfectly in my machine.
- dpbriggs 7y ago
  I'm also holding out with i3 until the wayland ecosystem matures a bit more. I am thankful that a wayland equivalent already exists though.
- nearmiss 7y ago
  I found similar issues. One other showstopper for me was the lack of keyboard/mouse sharing ala synergy or barrier.
Kaze404 7y ago
I switched to Sway a couple days ago and to be completely honest I'm not sure what I gained from it besides Wofi feeling more modern than Rofi. I don't regret the switch but I don't feel like it was a good choice either.

ww520 7y ago

Somehow I read that host name as “I3MW” and thought it’sa site for the BMW i3 car.

TZVdosOWs3kZHus 7y ago

Huge shoutout to all developers of i3, I absolutely love it! Since I started using it, the connection to my machine improved vastly. The precious pixel space of my X230 finally felt utilised fully! I never had any issues with i3. Cannot recommend it enough!

Naac 7y ago

For anyone here who loves i3, but has always had trouble getting full integration to work on their laptop ( sleep, screen brightness, etc. ), check out the Regolith project[0] It's a curation of several tools combined with i3 that gives a pretty fantastic gnome/i3 experience. Similar to spacemacs and emacs. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/

ckrailo 7y ago
+1 for regolith and the quality Slack community around it! Ken is awesome!
Symmetry 7y ago
I tried that for a while and I did find the integration very well done. I ended up going back to my automatic-tiling Gnome/Xmonad ways (thanks Gekkio!) but that was all about window manager preferences themselves rather than any fault in the Regolith project.
bombela 7y ago
I have been using the mate desktop daemons to handle all of this. Works quite well. See my comment with more details there: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22302834
thunderbong 7y ago
This is really nice. The key bindings out of the box are really useful.
mttyng 7y ago
This looks cool. I didn’t immediately see anything mentioned, but can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? Also, is this really only for Ubuntu?
- Naac 7y ago
  >> can I set this up as an alternative WM and select it in my gnome-login-manager screen? Yes. >> Or do I have to install it as a completely separate DM? I'm not sure what you mean. The Ubuntu package provided lets you select this desktop from the login screen ( as opposed to i3, Plasma, or Gnome ). This is essentially a new Desktop Environment, made up of gnome and i3. >> Also, is this really only for Ubuntu? Unfortunately yes. I've tried looking at packaging this for Arch Linux, but it looks like quite a bit of dependencies are forked ( i3blocks is now i3xrocks ). Not everything is pushed upstream. Getting this to work on non-ubuntu based distributions looks tricky if you're not familiar with packaging already.

pedrovhb 7y ago

I've always liked i3 a lot but it was a real pain to get some stuff working (like connecting a new monitor, or having to deal with wifi and bluetooth, or using two different keyboard layouts). Everything had to be configured, and while that's great for understanding how things work together, it's pretty painful when you're just trying to get stuff done. All the pain went away when I found Regolith [0], which I heavily recommend. It's i3 with Ubuntu but it comes with sensible defaults, a nicer theme and shortcuts to all the configs you could need out of the box. It really makes things a lot easier than using just i3, especially when doing a fresh install (it's available both as an installable image and as a package - I've had no issue with either). Some default shortcuts are different so if you've been using i3 for a while you'll have to iterate a bit over the config to get to a comfortable point, but it's the same config file. I also changed the default terminal back to gnome term, since their default one doesn't have a scrollbar, but again it's pretty easy to do and you only do it once. All in all, really made my life better. [0] https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/

asterisk_ 7y ago
I personally didn't encounter any problems whatsoever installing a clean i3, but for anyone searching a batteries-included version of the window manager I've heard a lot of good things about i3-Manjaro (cf. 30-minute review on Youtube [0]). [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG9ORRUkUQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vG9ORRUkUQ

nickjj 7y ago

If you're on Windows and are upset that nothing like i3 exists, you can get a useful but watered down i3-like experience by: 1. Using Windows 10's snapped windows along with various Windows key + arrow key hotkeys[0] for managing windows. 2. Using DexPot[1] for hotkey controlled virtual workspaces (same ALT + N hotkeys as i3) 3. Using Keypirinha[2] for fuzzy finding programs to launch (similar'ish to dmenu for launching apps at least) Combine that with WSL + tmux + terminal Vim and it's not bad for day to day development. I've been using the above for over a year for full time development and while I miss my i3 set up on my native Linux laptop, it's manageable. [0]: https://support.microsoft.com/en-nz/help/12445/windows-keyboard-shortcuts https://support.microsoft.com/en-nz/help/12445/windows-keybo... [1]: https://dexpot.de/?lang=en https://dexpot.de/?lang=en [2]: https://keypirinha.com/ https://keypirinha.com/

pkrumins 7y ago

I have been using i3 for a long time and here are some advanced features that I'd love it to have. 1) Workspaces of workspaces Let's say I'm working on five projects at the same time. Each project usually has totally different workspace configurations. For example: Project1 might have workspaces 1: dev, 2: mail, 3: tail -f access.log Project2 might have workspaces 1: photoshop, 2: mypaint, 3: shell Project3 might have workspaces 1: trello, 2: research ... This is like tmux sessions. I can have multiple sessions, each session has multiple windows and panes. In tmux this works very well but in i3 you can'd do that. I'm currently emulating this by running five independent i3 copies on five displays :1, :2, :3, :4, :5 and I switch between displays to switch to another project. 2) Static tiling I3 is a dynamic tiling manager, which means it uses the entire screen. However, once you establish your workflow, you often have windows that take 1/3 of the screen and are 1/3 off the top, etc. and you don't really want them to take the entire screen because it makes you less productive and it feels weird. Also, once you establish your workflow, you don't want the workspace to change or resize. You just know where everything is and don't want a slightest disturbance in your workflow. This is often hard to do in i3 and you need to use tricks such as vertical and horizontal splits of empty terminals to put the app where you need it to be. And it's extremely easy to mess this up, if you accidentally open a new terminal. Then your app resizes and shifts, and when you close the accidental terminal, it's no longer where it was because of many vertical and horizontal splits. I found Notion window manager that is static tiling but I haven't tried it. It can also have tabs inside static tiles, which makes it very interesting. 3) Run or raise Run or raise starts a program if it's not running, focuses it if it's running, and hides it when no longer needed. For example, pressing alt+n starts and shows a notepad if it's not yet running. If it's running, it focuses the notepad and pressing alt+n again hides it. I3 doesn't have this feature but it can be emulated via xdotool and scratchpads. 4) Using fzf instead of dmenu Dmenu is nice but you need to type too much. The solution is to use fzf instead of dmenu. I'm currently displaying a floating sticky terminal window that runs fzf, gets my input, performs the action, and disappears. It's so much faster than dmenu. 5) Using fzf to switch apps, workspaces, workspaces-of-workspaces Often, when you're working on project2, you remember you had similar idea/code/notes in project4. You then have to switch to display :4, then switch to correct workspace and find the info. This could be simplified by using fzf and just instantly switching where you need. 6) Using alt-tab to switch back to previous place you were. Let's say you switched from appx in project2 on display :2 to appy in project4 on display :4, and now you have to cycle between them. You can't do that right now so the workflow isn't perfect and there's a lot of drag.

purplezooey 7y ago

Why isn't i3-gaps merged by now?

secure 7y ago
The tracking issue for that feature is https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/3724 Merging gap support isn’t that easy, and our spare time is not unlimited. Serious offers to help very welcome.

adminu 7y ago

Quick and shameless plug: I wrote a windows 10 style, true transparency enabled notification center/daemon, extending on the concept of dunst: https://github.com/phuhl/linux_notification_center https://github.com/phuhl/linux_notification_center Feel free to check it out and give it a try. PS, for the enthusiasts: 100% written in Haskell

danans 7y ago

A great use case for i3 that is my daily driver is as a remote desktop windowing solution. My i3 desktop state is preserved and sanely laid out if I'm at home on a 15" laptop, at work on a 30" monitor, or even on my portable 12" laptop while I'm in meetings.

philwelch 7y ago
How do you do the remote desktop part?
- danans 7y ago
  I use Chrome Remote Desktop, but I imagine any similar system would work too. This Wikipedia page has a server/client/OS support matrix for various systems: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop_software#Operating_system_support https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_remote_desktop...

esjeon 7y ago

As a long time dwm[1] user and the developer of a tiling script for KDE, Krohnkite[2], I'm purely curious what makes i3 so popular. It makes you spend extra brain cycles on managing windows, which isn't far from stacking WMs in my perspective. I mean, this extra cycle was the reason why I abandoned stacking WM. Especially on small ("13 ~ "15) laptop screens, where people usually have <= 4 apps per virtual desktop, I think i3 doesn't have much benefit, because there are only a few possible layouts: half-and-half, master-and-stack(│├│ or │┤│) and quarter(田). All of these are well covered by Tile layout (or nv-stack, according to Arch wiki[3]). On the other hand, I do admit manual layout can be really useful on large screens and ultra-wide ones. There's neither golden nor silver layout that always works well on large area. There are just too many possibilities, and imagination is the only limit in this case. [1]: https://dwm.suckless.org/ https://dwm.suckless.org/ [2]: https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite https://github.com/esjeon/krohnkite [3]: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_tiling_window_managers#Layouts https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Comparison_of_tiling_wi...

yewenjie 7y ago

I used i3 about two years ago, and have been using awesome since then. Can anybody elaborate how do these two projects compare in 2020?

richard78459 7y ago

I use i3 on rooted chrome book and its amazing. I also use it on a 21 inch monitor its still amazing. It's so light weight, boots very quickly, uses all of the pixels and loading the new configuration is extremely simple. Just edit ~/.config/i3/config file and press Win-shift-R it loads the new configuration, basically very easy to experiment. Thanks so much Michael Stapelberg(https://michael.stapelberg.ch/ https://michael.stapelberg.ch/) for this amazing software.