6 ms·

I used i3 for a while when unity had a really annoying multi-touch bug I could not work around. The thing is? I never used much more than a simple L/R split th

I used i3 for a while when unity had a really annoying multi-touch bug I could not work around. The thing is? I never used much more than a simple L/R split that was available in any OS / WM forever. If I wanted to split more, it was usually in the terminal, and done via tmux or the term app. Add to this, a full desktop environment will handle all sorts of things for you like brightness, volume controls, proper locking on sleep, a easily configurable toolbar, hot plugging an external display, etc. i3 handles none of these! It's left up to the user to google around and find a brightness command that actually works, or why pauctrl is muted on startup, or why the lock screen only locks on resume, not sleep, thus flashing your screen. It's death by a thousand cuts. I know i3 is a window manager, and it's 'not it's job' to handle this stuff, supposedly, but why could they not add the most common way people control brightness, volume, etc to the default config, and let people swap it all out if they wanted? It's a really frustrating experience. For myself, I've went back to gnome. If someday I get a really massive display that benefits from complex tiling, I'll revisit i3, but I'll probably wind up using that awesome material shell for gnome and calling it a day. https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/c8le62/gnome_materialshell_beta/ https://old.reddit.com/r/unixporn/comments/c8le62/gnome_mate...

dahfizz 6y ago
For a while, KDE supported using i3 as the window manager. So you got the whole "plasma desktop" for things like volume controls and locking, etc but then you get i3 for managing windows. That's the beauty of software with a focused scope. I haven't tried to set it up in a while, I'm sure you could get the same setup running with sway under wayland with some effort.
hiq 6y ago
The easy answer to your second point and some integrated experience is the unix philosophy of 'do one thing but do it right'. I was also frustrated at the beginning, but I dealt with it and now I have i3 mappings to do most of what I used to do through GUIs. I can also do much more through scripting because I know which commands to use to handle clipboard, screens, etc. If you use your computer once a week to check your emails I understand that it's just a waste of time. If you do more, long-term investments such as these might be worth it. Now I agree that a more integrated experience out of the box would make the learning curve more gentle. Some have mentioned Regolith, it looks like it would be better for you than plain i3 (I haven't tried it personally so I can't judge): https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/
- peatmoss 6y ago
  I just wrote in another comment that I wish I had a little more desktop in my i3/sway, and this looks to be the ticket.
- wing-_-nuts 6y ago
  I get 'do one thing, and do it well', but there's absolutely nothing stopping the i3 folks from putting sensible defaults in the config for controlling brightness, sound, etc. It's simply a lack of care for the user experience. I have tried regolith, but I found it to have weird conflicts between i3 and gnome. It may be worth another look though.
  - hiq 6y ago
    I'm not sure what kind of defaults you would like to see. For instance I have this in my i3 config: bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id amixer sset 'Master' 2%+ bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id amixer sset 'Master' 2%- but there's no guarantee that this would work everywhere depending on what's installed, I just know that it works in my case. It's easy enough to look up anyway ('linux change volume from terminal'), so users would just save 5 minutes if the default worked for them. I think the message is that i3 is not targeting the same people as Gnome, and it's fine. Different software for different needs and trade-offs.
  - city41 6y ago
    MATE with i3 as its window manager is excellent. No compromises, neither gets in the other's way. I wrote how to set it up here: https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/ https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/
    - reportgunner 6y ago
      This. I just install debian with MATE, install i3 on top, clone i3 config file from my git repo and all setup is done. Sound works, brightness works, external displays work.
- kellyjprice 6y ago
peatmoss 6y ago
Yeah, there’s a core of “just enough” desktop support that I wish I could get with i3 and Sway that I didn’t have to painstakingly do myself.
diablerouge 6y ago
I use a tiling window manager configured to work alongside XFCE, which provides many of those things you listed, with maybe the exception of hot plugging an external display and the keybindings for volume/brightness. It means I get a preconfigured panel, a set of small GUI utilities designed to work together, and also the ease/comfort of the window management scheme that I prefer.
vmchale 6y ago
> I never used much more than a simple L/R split I use multi-displays too (XMonad; I assume i3 has the same!). I use more complex splits occasionally for dev work I quite like it but I guess I could use something more conventional if it were keyboard-friendly.
Geminidog 6y ago
Try https://github.com/gTile/gTile https://github.com/gTile/gTile or https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/ regolith works only under ubuntu though but both should work under gnome.
- Zizizizz 6y ago
  there is pop shell as well https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell
greggyb 6y ago
All those niceties you're talking about are handled by a settings daemon for the major DEs. You can easily run the Gnome or XFCE settings daemon without launching a session of their window manager.

dahfizz 6y ago

For a while, KDE supported using i3 as the window manager. So you got the whole "plasma desktop" for things like volume controls and locking, etc but then you get i3 for managing windows. That's the beauty of software with a focused scope. I haven't tried to set it up in a while, I'm sure you could get the same setup running with sway under wayland with some effort.

hiq 6y ago

The easy answer to your second point and some integrated experience is the unix philosophy of 'do one thing but do it right'. I was also frustrated at the beginning, but I dealt with it and now I have i3 mappings to do most of what I used to do through GUIs. I can also do much more through scripting because I know which commands to use to handle clipboard, screens, etc. If you use your computer once a week to check your emails I understand that it's just a waste of time. If you do more, long-term investments such as these might be worth it. Now I agree that a more integrated experience out of the box would make the learning curve more gentle. Some have mentioned Regolith, it looks like it would be better for you than plain i3 (I haven't tried it personally so I can't judge): https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/

peatmoss 6y ago
I just wrote in another comment that I wish I had a little more desktop in my i3/sway, and this looks to be the ticket.
wing-_-nuts 6y ago
I get 'do one thing, and do it well', but there's absolutely nothing stopping the i3 folks from putting sensible defaults in the config for controlling brightness, sound, etc. It's simply a lack of care for the user experience. I have tried regolith, but I found it to have weird conflicts between i3 and gnome. It may be worth another look though.
- hiq 6y ago
  I'm not sure what kind of defaults you would like to see. For instance I have this in my i3 config: bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec --no-startup-id amixer sset 'Master' 2%+ bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec --no-startup-id amixer sset 'Master' 2%- but there's no guarantee that this would work everywhere depending on what's installed, I just know that it works in my case. It's easy enough to look up anyway ('linux change volume from terminal'), so users would just save 5 minutes if the default worked for them. I think the message is that i3 is not targeting the same people as Gnome, and it's fine. Different software for different needs and trade-offs.
- city41 6y ago
  MATE with i3 as its window manager is excellent. No compromises, neither gets in the other's way. I wrote how to set it up here: https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/ https://www.mattgreer.org/articles/mate-and-i3/
  - reportgunner 6y ago
    This. I just install debian with MATE, install i3 on top, clone i3 config file from my git repo and all setup is done. Sound works, brightness works, external displays work.
kellyjprice 6y ago

peatmoss 6y ago

Yeah, there’s a core of “just enough” desktop support that I wish I could get with i3 and Sway that I didn’t have to painstakingly do myself.

diablerouge 6y ago

I use a tiling window manager configured to work alongside XFCE, which provides many of those things you listed, with maybe the exception of hot plugging an external display and the keybindings for volume/brightness. It means I get a preconfigured panel, a set of small GUI utilities designed to work together, and also the ease/comfort of the window management scheme that I prefer.

vmchale 6y ago

> I never used much more than a simple L/R split I use multi-displays too (XMonad; I assume i3 has the same!). I use more complex splits occasionally for dev work I quite like it but I guess I could use something more conventional if it were keyboard-friendly.

Geminidog 6y ago

Try https://github.com/gTile/gTile https://github.com/gTile/gTile or https://regolith-linux.org/ https://regolith-linux.org/ regolith works only under ubuntu though but both should work under gnome.

Zizizizz 6y ago
there is pop shell as well https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell

greggyb 6y ago

All those niceties you're talking about are handled by a settings daemon for the major DEs. You can easily run the Gnome or XFCE settings daemon without launching a session of their window manager.