6 ms·

I used to like KDE and dislike Gnome, but by the time I switched to i3 I realized I don't care about traditional window managers. I used a lot of console anyway

by b0rsuk 6y ago

I used to like KDE and dislike Gnome, but by the time I switched to i3 I realized I don't care about traditional window managers. I used a lot of console anyway. Why wait for windows and icons to appear? I want animations and decorations to get out of the way. If I'm playing, it's usually fullscreen. When I'm working, I want to use as much screen as possible. i3 sounded radical at first, but when was the last time an animation or decoration helped you? I mean there are some rare cases, but it needs to be helpful for me to leave it enabled. I now honestly believe mouse interfaces are overrated. They have their place in games and graphical applications. Anything that does NOT require precision is better done with a keyboard. The exception is websites. Mouse is used because it has very low learning curve and you can just click on stuff that interests you without thinking how to reach it.

edejong 6y ago
Well, I browse a lot of the web using my keyboard using either Vimium or Tridactyl. Together with i3, it feels like a totally different and pleasant experience.
- shakezula 6y ago
  Agreed, between vimium, Vim, and a window manager, I almost never have to actually touch my mouse. Keeps me in the zone a lot more.
  - scaladev 6y ago
    Except for all the JS-heavy crap which refuses to work properly with keyboard navigation plugins. It's obviously an excellent idea to use a styled <div/> instead of a <button/>. For example, Grafana is nearly unusable without a mouse: try configuring a chart and see how far you'll get. These interfaces must present enormous problems for users who rely on accessibility features.
    - shakezula 6y ago
      Oh for sure, I get insanely annoyed when I run across sites that have unnecessarily complicated JS for stuff as mundane as buttons, but cutting 90% of my mouse usage still makes my computer use a lot better.
Blikkentrekker 6y ago
Aren't tiling window managers the traditional ones? The ability for one window to float over another was a later innovation and is of course more difficult to implement. The earliest versions of Windows were also tiling only, which is thus the traditional way.
- pqb 6y ago
  > The ability for one window to float over another was a later innovation and is of course more difficult to implement. I find it funny, because I would say I have seen more floating window manager, when I was browsing GitHub, so I assume it is also quite easy to create a new one from scratch. Such floating VMs usually have 200-1000 LOC and die after 1 month after initial commit. Recently, xwm has been on HN [0] and it is small in terms of SLOC. There is smaller one called tinywm[1]. When we would compare them to i3[2] and sway, we can see they have thousand times larger codebase but they also bring a lot more features. I keep my fingers crossed for more sophisticated WMs like PaperWM[3], which is "tiled scrollable window manager" to take off. They might synthesize ideas from floating and tiling managers and provide a better tool to manage windows on a screen. [0]: https://github.com/mcpcpc/xwm https://github.com/mcpcpc/xwm [1]: https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm [2]: https://github.com/i3/i3 https://github.com/i3/i3 [3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
  - Blikkentrekker 6y ago
    > I find it funny, because I would say I have seen more floating window manager, when I was browsing GitHub, so I assume it is also quite easy to create a new one from scratch. Such floating VMs usually have 200-1000 LOC and die after 1 month after initial commit. Recently, xwm has been on HN [0] and it is small in terms of SLOC. There is smaller one called tinywm[1]. When we would compare them to i3[2] and sway, we can see they have thousand times larger codebase but they also bring a lot more features. That is because the X11 server handles the drawing of windows over each other. Older display protocols simply had no support for it.
- blibble 6y ago
  Windows 1.0 was a tiling window manager! https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/4_wxRAsOvukqwxpkQ-2SAZTx4ro=/2384x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Windows1_0-56aa11d35f9b58b7d000b1ed.jpg https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/4_wxRAsOvukqwxpkQ-2SAZTx4ro=/2... 2.0 added floating windows https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/qXTZ7Mk9cLKSc3wpEP2wK14oT8I=/1280x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Windows2_0-56aa11d33df78cf772ac3ef4.jpg https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/qXTZ7Mk9cLKSc3wpEP2wK14oT8I=/1...
Geminidog 6y ago
>Mouse is used because it has very low learning curve and you can just click on stuff that interests you without thinking how to reach it. I have this idea for a tiling manager called rubik's cube. Basically to switch windows all you gotta use your brain and solve a rubik's cube. You also have to memorize a bunch of short cut keys for rotating the cube. Specifically avoided allowing you to use arrow keys or the mouse for this because you lose precious nanoseconds of efficiency. Also no graphics either. The cube is represented by console text in a 3 by 3 grid with letters representing color because all graphics are useless and get in the way of my efficiency. Every command is represented by a very specific rubik's cube configuration so you just need to memorize all the problems and solutions. Want to move your cursor 1 space to the right? Solve a rubik's cube. I made sure there's a short cut keys for every possible solution so 1 key press is all you need to execute any command. This idea is basically to design an interface for people like you and me who totally get it and understand truly what a good interface design is. It's also for people who understand that there are no tradeoffs in the UI world and that everything needs to be designed for ruthless efficiency. Have you tried learning chinese? It's a hard language to learn how to write but pretty efficient because every freaking word has its own symbol aka shortcut key. I'm also thinking of creating a keyboard and a programming language written in chinese where every single key you press generates an entire programming language token (written as a single chinese word), because seriously letters and english is overrated just easy learning curve that's all. I also agree with you on animations and decorations. Never helped me and neither does any other aesthetic concept in the real world. I don't need anything pretty because it's not efficient. For example my girl friend. Getting a pretty girl is against human nature nobody wants that because it's not logical prettiness only gets in the way of my ruthless efficiency plus it's overrated.
- b0rsuk 6y ago
  Of course this is satire. For your information, there is a tiling WM which is more radical than my preference. It's called 'ratpoison' and it literally doesn't have mouse support, by design. I don't use it because I think having mouse support is useful as a fallback, when the application can't be effectively worked with otherwise. It is for real, it's written in C was developed 2000-2017. Got any arrows left in your quiver? I speak a language which is often considered harder to learn than Chinese. It uses latin characters but has a great deal more accumulated grammar complexity. (Spoken) Chinese doesn't scare me. Not saying this to boast - my point is that people from my country find almost all other languages easy after what they went through in school. Perspective matters. Things change. i3 continues being popular. People will refine the idea and make it more accessible. If that catches on, you'll see more and more apps written with keyboard control in mind, initially for Linux. Other operating systems copied features from Linux in the past, like user accounts or central repositories. Web interfaces will continue to change too. Today the elderly struggle with the web, because it's so inconsistent.

by b0rsuk 6y ago

edejong 6y ago

Well, I browse a lot of the web using my keyboard using either Vimium or Tridactyl. Together with i3, it feels like a totally different and pleasant experience.

shakezula 6y ago
Agreed, between vimium, Vim, and a window manager, I almost never have to actually touch my mouse. Keeps me in the zone a lot more.
- scaladev 6y ago
  Except for all the JS-heavy crap which refuses to work properly with keyboard navigation plugins. It's obviously an excellent idea to use a styled <div/> instead of a <button/>. For example, Grafana is nearly unusable without a mouse: try configuring a chart and see how far you'll get. These interfaces must present enormous problems for users who rely on accessibility features.
  - shakezula 6y ago
    Oh for sure, I get insanely annoyed when I run across sites that have unnecessarily complicated JS for stuff as mundane as buttons, but cutting 90% of my mouse usage still makes my computer use a lot better.

Blikkentrekker 6y ago

Aren't tiling window managers the traditional ones? The ability for one window to float over another was a later innovation and is of course more difficult to implement. The earliest versions of Windows were also tiling only, which is thus the traditional way.

pqb 6y ago
> The ability for one window to float over another was a later innovation and is of course more difficult to implement. I find it funny, because I would say I have seen more floating window manager, when I was browsing GitHub, so I assume it is also quite easy to create a new one from scratch. Such floating VMs usually have 200-1000 LOC and die after 1 month after initial commit. Recently, xwm has been on HN [0] and it is small in terms of SLOC. There is smaller one called tinywm[1]. When we would compare them to i3[2] and sway, we can see they have thousand times larger codebase but they also bring a lot more features. I keep my fingers crossed for more sophisticated WMs like PaperWM[3], which is "tiled scrollable window manager" to take off. They might synthesize ideas from floating and tiling managers and provide a better tool to manage windows on a screen. [0]: https://github.com/mcpcpc/xwm https://github.com/mcpcpc/xwm [1]: https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm [2]: https://github.com/i3/i3 https://github.com/i3/i3 [3]: https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM https://github.com/paperwm/PaperWM
- Blikkentrekker 6y ago
  > I find it funny, because I would say I have seen more floating window manager, when I was browsing GitHub, so I assume it is also quite easy to create a new one from scratch. Such floating VMs usually have 200-1000 LOC and die after 1 month after initial commit. Recently, xwm has been on HN [0] and it is small in terms of SLOC. There is smaller one called tinywm[1]. When we would compare them to i3[2] and sway, we can see they have thousand times larger codebase but they also bring a lot more features. That is because the X11 server handles the drawing of windows over each other. Older display protocols simply had no support for it.
blibble 6y ago
Windows 1.0 was a tiling window manager! https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/4_wxRAsOvukqwxpkQ-2SAZTx4ro=/2384x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Windows1_0-56aa11d35f9b58b7d000b1ed.jpg https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/4_wxRAsOvukqwxpkQ-2SAZTx4ro=/2... 2.0 added floating windows https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/qXTZ7Mk9cLKSc3wpEP2wK14oT8I=/1280x0/filters:no_upscale():max_bytes(150000):strip_icc():format(webp)/Windows2_0-56aa11d33df78cf772ac3ef4.jpg https://www.lifewire.com/thmb/qXTZ7Mk9cLKSc3wpEP2wK14oT8I=/1...

Geminidog 6y ago

>Mouse is used because it has very low learning curve and you can just click on stuff that interests you without thinking how to reach it. I have this idea for a tiling manager called rubik's cube. Basically to switch windows all you gotta use your brain and solve a rubik's cube. You also have to memorize a bunch of short cut keys for rotating the cube. Specifically avoided allowing you to use arrow keys or the mouse for this because you lose precious nanoseconds of efficiency. Also no graphics either. The cube is represented by console text in a 3 by 3 grid with letters representing color because all graphics are useless and get in the way of my efficiency. Every command is represented by a very specific rubik's cube configuration so you just need to memorize all the problems and solutions. Want to move your cursor 1 space to the right? Solve a rubik's cube. I made sure there's a short cut keys for every possible solution so 1 key press is all you need to execute any command. This idea is basically to design an interface for people like you and me who totally get it and understand truly what a good interface design is. It's also for people who understand that there are no tradeoffs in the UI world and that everything needs to be designed for ruthless efficiency. Have you tried learning chinese? It's a hard language to learn how to write but pretty efficient because every freaking word has its own symbol aka shortcut key. I'm also thinking of creating a keyboard and a programming language written in chinese where every single key you press generates an entire programming language token (written as a single chinese word), because seriously letters and english is overrated just easy learning curve that's all. I also agree with you on animations and decorations. Never helped me and neither does any other aesthetic concept in the real world. I don't need anything pretty because it's not efficient. For example my girl friend. Getting a pretty girl is against human nature nobody wants that because it's not logical prettiness only gets in the way of my ruthless efficiency plus it's overrated.

b0rsuk 6y ago
Of course this is satire. For your information, there is a tiling WM which is more radical than my preference. It's called 'ratpoison' and it literally doesn't have mouse support, by design. I don't use it because I think having mouse support is useful as a fallback, when the application can't be effectively worked with otherwise. It is for real, it's written in C was developed 2000-2017. Got any arrows left in your quiver? I speak a language which is often considered harder to learn than Chinese. It uses latin characters but has a great deal more accumulated grammar complexity. (Spoken) Chinese doesn't scare me. Not saying this to boast - my point is that people from my country find almost all other languages easy after what they went through in school. Perspective matters. Things change. i3 continues being popular. People will refine the idea and make it more accessible. If that catches on, you'll see more and more apps written with keyboard control in mind, initially for Linux. Other operating systems copied features from Linux in the past, like user accounts or central repositories. Web interfaces will continue to change too. Today the elderly struggle with the web, because it's so inconsistent.