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I used to be a huge i3 user (and sometimes I give in to the temptation to load it up and mess with my config). I love tweaking my desktop to make it look like i

I used to be a huge i3 user (and sometimes I give in to the temptation to load it up and mess with my config). I love tweaking my desktop to make it look like it should be on /r/unixporn. However, there are certain desktop things I don't enjoy messing with at all: - audio - displays - bluetooth Audio is especially confusing on Linux because there are so many parts to one system. Even after researching PulseAudio, ALSA, Pipewire, Jack, etc. it is super hard for me to know exactly what does what on my Linux machines. I found that with i3 I often spent more time tweaking my desktop than actually doing work. However, I think that tweaking like this is actually super fun and educational on how Linux display stuff works -- I would never discourage someone from taking the time to mess around with i3, bspwm, or an alternative. My perfect balance is GNOME plus the Pop! OS shell extension[1]. I'm not a Pop! OS user (and likely never will be) but I loooove having tiling in GNOME and being able to have all the stuff I don't like to manage just work. [1] https://github.com/pop-os/shell https://github.com/pop-os/shell EDIT: minor grammar tweak

darthrupert 4y ago
Audio is fixed by just using pipewire. Displays is fixed by using Wayland (sway). Bluetooth is indeed an unsolved problem. I suppose the skilled hacker types have just declared the whole protocol as broken and use wires.
- kaba0 4y ago
  Pipewire “solves”, or at least improves the bluetooth landscape quite a bit. Do I read parent as saying that these things are best managed through GUI widgets attached to the desktop environment
  - heywoodlh 4y ago
    > Do I read parent as saying that these things are best managed through GUI widgets attached to the desktop environment 100% you are reading my original comment correctly. An example I ran into recently: I start up bluetoothctl, I power on the adapter, start scanning for Blueooth devices and am spammed by a bluetooth device nearby to the point where I can't see the one I am trying to pair to (even after turning off scanning). In contrast, blueman-applet or GNOME's control-center neatly organizes each unique Bluetooth device as individual icons and makes it easy to see each of those. Lots of little papercuts like that can make it frustrating when you're just trying to get work done. This is also true things like displays -- sure I could take 20 minutes write a script to rearrange my displays the way I prefer -- or I could just open GNOME's control center and take two minutes using the display setting. There are lots of little things like this that can get in the way when you just need to get something done. And this is totally subjective to my experience, my opinion and what I currently value so please don't take this like I am saying everyone should prioritize things the way I do. For those more comfortable in i3 or something else -- great! :)
    - darthrupert 4y ago
      Perhaps my tolerance is just too high again, if my 2nd display is on the wrong side, I just move my mouse cursor via the other direction. It doesn't seem to cause any friction for me. What would cause friction is if the display plain didn't work, or had bad aspect ratio or fonts. Wayland (in combination with kernel graphics probably) seems to have fixed those problems.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  > Audio is fixed by just using pipewire. My experience with Pipewire has definitely been excellent. > Displays is fixed by using Wayland (sway). I still have some tooling that requires X11 -- but whenever I've used Wayland I feel like there is still a lot that relies on X11. For me, Rofi is one of those tools that I just haven't been able to totally replace in Wayland (even with the Wayland forks of Rofi). Some other day-to-day examples are Zoom[1] and Nvidia graphics cards[2]. While I am aware that these are third parties lagging behind Wayland support and not really an issue with Wayland itself, it still demonstrates how everything is not magically "just fixed" simply because you are on Wayland. [1] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Sharing-your-screen-on-Wayland-GNOME https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Shar... [2] https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/wayland-information-for-r515-beta-release/214275 https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/wayland-information-fo...
- mst 4y ago
  VcXsrv + WSL2 means I don't have to care about any of this. Though note I basically only use Windows as a fat driver layer unless I'm playing games (Wintendo!)
  - heywoodlh 4y ago
    Random anecdote: I use Docker as my universal package manager for a large majority of my tools/workflows. I was so pleased when the Docker + WSL2 integration was released as it made all of my Docker workflows on Linux/MacOS + a POSIX shell (BASH, ZSH, etc.) totally functional on Windows. I'm a big fan of WSL2. > unless I'm playing games This is one area I've not been able to completely ditch Windows. Valve is doing some great work to get Windows games running on Linux in Steam but I find myself playing a bunch of games that are not in Steam with an anti-cheat engine that sucks in Proton. I hope more external game launchers/stores and anti cheat engines are motivated by Valve to implement Linux (or emulated) support.
    - mst 4y ago
      I love being a linux/BSD server admin. I totally cannot be arsed being a desktop admin for either. So I use WSL2+Xsrv to give me my -client- environment on windows and then use that to ssh into servers to actually do stuff. Meanwhile, windows acts as a fat driver layer that provides firefox and my X11 setup and easy access to games. I am in no way recommending this. But it works for me.
- NoGravitas 4y ago
  I sometimes use Sway. My approach to Bluetooth was always to use bluetoothctl in a terminal. Then I saw there was an Emacs interface to bluetoothctl and I started using that. A system tray applet for bluetooth would be better (by analogy to nm-applet), but I don't know of one that is currently maintained and working.
  - aDfbrtVt 4y ago
    Add the following lines to your sway config. It works for me when using Waybar. exec_always --no-startup-id blueman-applet exec_always --no-startup-id nm-applet --indicator
    - NoGravitas 4y ago
      Ah, blueman wasn't in my distro's repositories for the longest time, which led me to believe it was unmaintained. Apparently it was incompatible for a while, but that's now been fixed.
englishrookie 4y ago
Maybe Regolith [1] is something for you. It's an Ubuntu derivative that combines i3 and Gnome. It has sane defaults, a nice app launcher, and everything 'just works': audio, bluetooth, wifi. I have been using Regolith for half a year now, after 10 years of endless tweaking of XMonad and Gnome under Ubuntu. [1] https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  I am a very happy Arch (and sometimes NixOS) user but I am thrilled to know that Regolith leverages GNOME and i3 (I knew about Regolith using i3 but I didn't know it combined that with GNOME). Gets me interested in getting my build setup like that!
  - kataklasm 4y ago
    Theres also the Fedora-i3 spin. Not nearly as plug-and-play as Regolith though, just thought I'd mention it.
  - _y5hn 4y ago
    I'm on Manjaro-i3-minimal from Mint+i3. Manjaro (Arch-based) seems so far a very good match. Minimal tweaking as most defaults are sane and looks good. Most of the time was spent just to familiarize with Arch and find packages, which will pay off later. Regular Manjaro seems newbie friendly as well.
    - heywoodlh 4y ago
      I feel like Manjaro strikes a good balance at providing all the benefits of an Arch-based system without the downsides of stock Arch. For example, Arch's super newbie-unfriendly install process. Hopefully the archinstall script[1] now included in the official Arch ISO eventually becomes a more mainstream method of installing Arch -- but still allows for users like me to do the by-hand installation when I need custom/more flexible configuration. I would say if someone is curious to give Arch a try but doesn't want to go through the installation process that they should give archinstall a try! In my opinion, the preset profiles (for GNOME, KDE, etc.) really removes a bunch of friction to using Arch if you are a new user or just want to save yourself time. (I would imagine my views don't reflect the majority of the Arch community as it often seems like deliberate steps are taken to keep Arch as a gated community to those who are elite enough to invest in Arch 100%) [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall
forgotpwd16 4y ago
>there are certain desktop things I don't enjoy messing with at all One of the advantages of NixOS model. hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true; hardware.bluetooth.enable = true; services.blueman.enable = true; #for systray applet They work fine and are wm/de independent. As for displays, I simply use `arandr`. Can even save/apply layouts for specific setups.
- jstanley 4y ago
  I'm not saying you're lying (I'm sure you're not), but... colour me skeptical. This sounds too good to be true. Can you explain how audio and bluetooth works independently of the desktop session? Does it need custom support compiled in to every window manager? If it's so easy to do it independently of the desktop session, why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session? I had assumed that it was something like the desktop session needing to set up environment variables so that all your applications knew how to talk to PulseAudio.
  - JamesSwift 4y ago
    From the documentation on the PulseAudio module (the nix term for those 'enable = true' things) [1]: > Explicit PulseAudio support in applications > Normally, the system-wide ALSA configuration (/etc/asound.conf) redirects the audio of applications which use the ALSA API through PulseAudio. For this reason, most applications do not need to be PulseAudio-aware. Some NixOS packages can be built with explicit PulseAudio support which is disabled by default. This support can be enabled in all applicable packages by setting: > nixpkgs.config.pulseaudio = true; [1] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio
  - ParetoOptimal 4y ago
    I can't answer your questions about why Ubuntu ties sound to desktop session, but i can say audio and bluetooth in NixOS has been that trivially easy and worked on 8 different machines of mine and friends without issue.
  - chriswarbo 4y ago
    > If it's so easy Note that the parent is only changing a config option; there may be all sorts of logic behind the scenes which branch on that value, e.g. to splice different text into /etc files, to add compile flags to package builds, etc. ;)
lmm 4y ago
I found a lot of stuff became simpler when I switched to FreeBSD. Audio is still OSS, same way it's been for ~30 years. Displays are still X11. Networking is still ifconfig. Admittedly I didn't touch bluetooth, but I'd trust them to get something similarly plain and simple going.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  The two blockers I've had with FreeBSD as a workstation: - huge lack of basic hardware support for things like wifi (or bluetooth) chipsets - lack of Docker support (I'm one of those that uses Docker as my universal CLI package manager) Aside from these things, I absolutely love the mentality and philosophies behind FreeBSD and would love to have a FreeBSD workstation!
NoGravitas 4y ago
I use both Sway and GNOME, and have tried various tiling window extensions for GNOME. I absolutely agree with you that the Pop! OS shell extension is a good balance. I also think it's an excellent introduction to tiling window managers for people who might otherwise be afraid to try them.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  Absolutely agreed! The thing I care about that a tiling window manager brings me is a way to automatically organize your windows in a minimal looking environment. The way I set up GNOME I am able to achieve that.
nathias 4y ago
I can't imagine going back to a desktop after using a tiling manager ...
- lolive 4y ago
  99% of the time, you just need full screen windows, on dual screens (or even triple screens!), with (OF COURSE) virtual desktops.
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  Yeah, for me, I find the only parts I care about with a tiling window manager is a minimal looking environment and windows that organize themselves automatically. On GNOME I am able to get all the same workflows and benefits that I care about from a tiling window manager while not worrying about having to tweak something on my work machine when I'm on a Zoom call working on an issue.
programmer_dude 4y ago
I had the same problem as you. You should look into Manjaro's i3 edition. It's not perfect but it's serviceable.

darthrupert 4y ago

Audio is fixed by just using pipewire. Displays is fixed by using Wayland (sway). Bluetooth is indeed an unsolved problem. I suppose the skilled hacker types have just declared the whole protocol as broken and use wires.

kaba0 4y ago
Pipewire “solves”, or at least improves the bluetooth landscape quite a bit. Do I read parent as saying that these things are best managed through GUI widgets attached to the desktop environment
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  > Do I read parent as saying that these things are best managed through GUI widgets attached to the desktop environment 100% you are reading my original comment correctly. An example I ran into recently: I start up bluetoothctl, I power on the adapter, start scanning for Blueooth devices and am spammed by a bluetooth device nearby to the point where I can't see the one I am trying to pair to (even after turning off scanning). In contrast, blueman-applet or GNOME's control-center neatly organizes each unique Bluetooth device as individual icons and makes it easy to see each of those. Lots of little papercuts like that can make it frustrating when you're just trying to get work done. This is also true things like displays -- sure I could take 20 minutes write a script to rearrange my displays the way I prefer -- or I could just open GNOME's control center and take two minutes using the display setting. There are lots of little things like this that can get in the way when you just need to get something done. And this is totally subjective to my experience, my opinion and what I currently value so please don't take this like I am saying everyone should prioritize things the way I do. For those more comfortable in i3 or something else -- great! :)
  - darthrupert 4y ago
    Perhaps my tolerance is just too high again, if my 2nd display is on the wrong side, I just move my mouse cursor via the other direction. It doesn't seem to cause any friction for me. What would cause friction is if the display plain didn't work, or had bad aspect ratio or fonts. Wayland (in combination with kernel graphics probably) seems to have fixed those problems.
heywoodlh 4y ago
> Audio is fixed by just using pipewire. My experience with Pipewire has definitely been excellent. > Displays is fixed by using Wayland (sway). I still have some tooling that requires X11 -- but whenever I've used Wayland I feel like there is still a lot that relies on X11. For me, Rofi is one of those tools that I just haven't been able to totally replace in Wayland (even with the Wayland forks of Rofi). Some other day-to-day examples are Zoom[1] and Nvidia graphics cards[2]. While I am aware that these are third parties lagging behind Wayland support and not really an issue with Wayland itself, it still demonstrates how everything is not magically "just fixed" simply because you are on Wayland. [1] https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Sharing-your-screen-on-Wayland-GNOME https://support.zoom.us/hc/en-us/articles/6634039380877-Shar... [2] https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/wayland-information-for-r515-beta-release/214275 https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/wayland-information-fo...
mst 4y ago
VcXsrv + WSL2 means I don't have to care about any of this. Though note I basically only use Windows as a fat driver layer unless I'm playing games (Wintendo!)
- heywoodlh 4y ago
  Random anecdote: I use Docker as my universal package manager for a large majority of my tools/workflows. I was so pleased when the Docker + WSL2 integration was released as it made all of my Docker workflows on Linux/MacOS + a POSIX shell (BASH, ZSH, etc.) totally functional on Windows. I'm a big fan of WSL2. > unless I'm playing games This is one area I've not been able to completely ditch Windows. Valve is doing some great work to get Windows games running on Linux in Steam but I find myself playing a bunch of games that are not in Steam with an anti-cheat engine that sucks in Proton. I hope more external game launchers/stores and anti cheat engines are motivated by Valve to implement Linux (or emulated) support.
  - mst 4y ago
    I love being a linux/BSD server admin. I totally cannot be arsed being a desktop admin for either. So I use WSL2+Xsrv to give me my -client- environment on windows and then use that to ssh into servers to actually do stuff. Meanwhile, windows acts as a fat driver layer that provides firefox and my X11 setup and easy access to games. I am in no way recommending this. But it works for me.
NoGravitas 4y ago
I sometimes use Sway. My approach to Bluetooth was always to use bluetoothctl in a terminal. Then I saw there was an Emacs interface to bluetoothctl and I started using that. A system tray applet for bluetooth would be better (by analogy to nm-applet), but I don't know of one that is currently maintained and working.
- aDfbrtVt 4y ago
  Add the following lines to your sway config. It works for me when using Waybar. exec_always --no-startup-id blueman-applet exec_always --no-startup-id nm-applet --indicator
  - NoGravitas 4y ago
    Ah, blueman wasn't in my distro's repositories for the longest time, which led me to believe it was unmaintained. Apparently it was incompatible for a while, but that's now been fixed.

englishrookie 4y ago

Maybe Regolith [1] is something for you. It's an Ubuntu derivative that combines i3 and Gnome. It has sane defaults, a nice app launcher, and everything 'just works': audio, bluetooth, wifi. I have been using Regolith for half a year now, after 10 years of endless tweaking of XMonad and Gnome under Ubuntu. [1] https://regolith-desktop.com/ https://regolith-desktop.com/

heywoodlh 4y ago
I am a very happy Arch (and sometimes NixOS) user but I am thrilled to know that Regolith leverages GNOME and i3 (I knew about Regolith using i3 but I didn't know it combined that with GNOME). Gets me interested in getting my build setup like that!
- kataklasm 4y ago
  Theres also the Fedora-i3 spin. Not nearly as plug-and-play as Regolith though, just thought I'd mention it.
- _y5hn 4y ago
  I'm on Manjaro-i3-minimal from Mint+i3. Manjaro (Arch-based) seems so far a very good match. Minimal tweaking as most defaults are sane and looks good. Most of the time was spent just to familiarize with Arch and find packages, which will pay off later. Regular Manjaro seems newbie friendly as well.
  - heywoodlh 4y ago
    I feel like Manjaro strikes a good balance at providing all the benefits of an Arch-based system without the downsides of stock Arch. For example, Arch's super newbie-unfriendly install process. Hopefully the archinstall script[1] now included in the official Arch ISO eventually becomes a more mainstream method of installing Arch -- but still allows for users like me to do the by-hand installation when I need custom/more flexible configuration. I would say if someone is curious to give Arch a try but doesn't want to go through the installation process that they should give archinstall a try! In my opinion, the preset profiles (for GNOME, KDE, etc.) really removes a bunch of friction to using Arch if you are a new user or just want to save yourself time. (I would imagine my views don't reflect the majority of the Arch community as it often seems like deliberate steps are taken to keep Arch as a gated community to those who are elite enough to invest in Arch 100%) [1] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Archinstall

forgotpwd16 4y ago

>there are certain desktop things I don't enjoy messing with at all One of the advantages of NixOS model. hardware.pulseaudio.enable = true; hardware.bluetooth.enable = true; services.blueman.enable = true; #for systray applet They work fine and are wm/de independent. As for displays, I simply use `arandr`. Can even save/apply layouts for specific setups.

jstanley 4y ago
I'm not saying you're lying (I'm sure you're not), but... colour me skeptical. This sounds too good to be true. Can you explain how audio and bluetooth works independently of the desktop session? Does it need custom support compiled in to every window manager? If it's so easy to do it independently of the desktop session, why does Ubuntu etc. make it dependent on the desktop session? I had assumed that it was something like the desktop session needing to set up environment variables so that all your applications knew how to talk to PulseAudio.
- JamesSwift 4y ago
  From the documentation on the PulseAudio module (the nix term for those 'enable = true' things) [1]: > Explicit PulseAudio support in applications > Normally, the system-wide ALSA configuration (/etc/asound.conf) redirects the audio of applications which use the ALSA API through PulseAudio. For this reason, most applications do not need to be PulseAudio-aware. Some NixOS packages can be built with explicit PulseAudio support which is disabled by default. This support can be enabled in all applicable packages by setting: > nixpkgs.config.pulseaudio = true; [1] - https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio https://nixos.wiki/wiki/PulseAudio
- ParetoOptimal 4y ago
  I can't answer your questions about why Ubuntu ties sound to desktop session, but i can say audio and bluetooth in NixOS has been that trivially easy and worked on 8 different machines of mine and friends without issue.
- chriswarbo 4y ago
  > If it's so easy Note that the parent is only changing a config option; there may be all sorts of logic behind the scenes which branch on that value, e.g. to splice different text into /etc files, to add compile flags to package builds, etc. ;)

lmm 4y ago

I found a lot of stuff became simpler when I switched to FreeBSD. Audio is still OSS, same way it's been for ~30 years. Displays are still X11. Networking is still ifconfig. Admittedly I didn't touch bluetooth, but I'd trust them to get something similarly plain and simple going.

heywoodlh 4y ago
The two blockers I've had with FreeBSD as a workstation: - huge lack of basic hardware support for things like wifi (or bluetooth) chipsets - lack of Docker support (I'm one of those that uses Docker as my universal CLI package manager) Aside from these things, I absolutely love the mentality and philosophies behind FreeBSD and would love to have a FreeBSD workstation!

NoGravitas 4y ago

I use both Sway and GNOME, and have tried various tiling window extensions for GNOME. I absolutely agree with you that the Pop! OS shell extension is a good balance. I also think it's an excellent introduction to tiling window managers for people who might otherwise be afraid to try them.

heywoodlh 4y ago
Absolutely agreed! The thing I care about that a tiling window manager brings me is a way to automatically organize your windows in a minimal looking environment. The way I set up GNOME I am able to achieve that.

nathias 4y ago

I can't imagine going back to a desktop after using a tiling manager ...

lolive 4y ago
99% of the time, you just need full screen windows, on dual screens (or even triple screens!), with (OF COURSE) virtual desktops.
heywoodlh 4y ago
Yeah, for me, I find the only parts I care about with a tiling window manager is a minimal looking environment and windows that organize themselves automatically. On GNOME I am able to get all the same workflows and benefits that I care about from a tiling window manager while not worrying about having to tweak something on my work machine when I'm on a Zoom call working on an issue.

programmer_dude 4y ago

I had the same problem as you. You should look into Manjaro's i3 edition. It's not perfect but it's serviceable.