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Third version of new tiling window manager i3 released
i3 aims to be an improved tiling window manager, mainly inspired by wmii. Similarily to other tiling window managers, the goal is to increase productivity by not having overlapping windows. In contrast to wmii, i3 was designed to work well with Xinerama and particular focus has been on producing clean, readable and hackable code. See the website for goals, downloads and documentation or directly jump to the userguide for a quick introduction. |
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Comments (11)
Do any of you use a tiling window manager? Why? What's better about it?
I've been known to start a blank X session with just xterm -maximize on occasion to keep load to a bare minimum, but tiling wm, never had the need for it.
Some people just find it easier on the eyes than overlapping windows.
I also like having window grouping, where you can have more than one app on different tabs of the same window. I find that particularly useful for small screens.
I also like having window grouping, where you can have more than one app on different tabs of the same window. I find that particularly useful for small screens.
I thought the idea was to have the ability to leave your hands on the keyboard - use keyboard shortcuts/hotkeys to move focus from window to window.
Each cat his rat, I guess. I keep intending to try one of these tiling managers, but I haven't so far.
But the continuing flow of new, different/weird window managers puts lie to the One True Window Manager approach that MSFT, Apple and the Open Software Foundation (remember "Motif" or CDE or mwm?) would like to push on people.
All those fools would like you to believe that explicit copy and "focus means window on top" are the One True Way of doing things. Resist this rubbish. Do Your Own Thing - all they want to do is simplify the amount of work they have to do, and to require you to pay them.
Each cat his rat, I guess. I keep intending to try one of these tiling managers, but I haven't so far.
But the continuing flow of new, different/weird window managers puts lie to the One True Window Manager approach that MSFT, Apple and the Open Software Foundation (remember "Motif" or CDE or mwm?) would like to push on people.
All those fools would like you to believe that explicit copy and "focus means window on top" are the One True Way of doing things. Resist this rubbish. Do Your Own Thing - all they want to do is simplify the amount of work they have to do, and to require you to pay them.
I used Ratpoison for a while. It was fun.
The thing about tiling is that it requires a lot of effort. First is to select a good set of programs. The most frustrating thing about Ratpoison is that I needed to use Firefox, which REQUIRES a mouse to optimally operate. Of course, as all of us know, computers without a good browser are not much of use these days. Therefore, mouse usage is a must, which, of course, defeats the purpose of Ratpoison.
Secondly, it takes time to properly configure the desktop environment. Remember that you are no longer in GNOME or KDE, so you have to set up many things by yourself. You should also be aware that some programs don't work as good as they do within GNOME and KDE. Network/connectivity is another issue. Theme and other stuffs, too.
Lastly, you need to learn to live in that space. Frankly, I have never really be in tiling mode myself (although I think I am more than half way there). It really takes time to migrate, since you need a totally mindset.
The thing is, you don't really need to go to something totally tiling to harvest most of its good points. For example, you can use virtual desktop, then maximize all/most of your windows. In combination with a good, configurable window manager (I use Enlightenment myself; a friend of mine use FWVM; another use plain GNOME), you can restrain from touching the mouse 90% of the time. Oh, use Emacs instead of Open Office; Gnome/X/KTerminal instead of file browser; Conkeror (NOT Konqueror) instead of Firefox; etc. and you are good to go.
Good luck.
The thing about tiling is that it requires a lot of effort. First is to select a good set of programs. The most frustrating thing about Ratpoison is that I needed to use Firefox, which REQUIRES a mouse to optimally operate. Of course, as all of us know, computers without a good browser are not much of use these days. Therefore, mouse usage is a must, which, of course, defeats the purpose of Ratpoison.
Secondly, it takes time to properly configure the desktop environment. Remember that you are no longer in GNOME or KDE, so you have to set up many things by yourself. You should also be aware that some programs don't work as good as they do within GNOME and KDE. Network/connectivity is another issue. Theme and other stuffs, too.
Lastly, you need to learn to live in that space. Frankly, I have never really be in tiling mode myself (although I think I am more than half way there). It really takes time to migrate, since you need a totally mindset.
The thing is, you don't really need to go to something totally tiling to harvest most of its good points. For example, you can use virtual desktop, then maximize all/most of your windows. In combination with a good, configurable window manager (I use Enlightenment myself; a friend of mine use FWVM; another use plain GNOME), you can restrain from touching the mouse 90% of the time. Oh, use Emacs instead of Open Office; Gnome/X/KTerminal instead of file browser; Conkeror (NOT Konqueror) instead of Firefox; etc. and you are good to go.
Good luck.
Quoting:I keep intending to try one of these tiling managers, but I haven't so far.
I intended to try out the Awesome Window Manager last night to give it a spin, but the Debian version is 2.3 while the last 3.x release brings many new features I want. I didn't want to switch this box to Squeeze just for this little experiment so I stopped short. But in three weeks I'll get a new PC which will have Squeeze on it. I'll give Awesome a try then.
Quoting:The most frustrating thing about Ratpoison is that I needed to use Firefox, which REQUIRES a mouse to optimally operate.
I can help here. Try Vimperator. It's a Firefox extension that makes Firefox a very good keyboard-controlled browser with Vim-like keybindings and scriptability: http://vimperator.org/trac/wiki/Vimperator
Quoting:Secondly, it takes time to properly configure the desktop environment. Remember that you are no longer in GNOME or KDE, so you have to set up many things by yourself.
I know. I did find that both Awesome and XMonad play well inside Gnome though, so it might be a nice compromise.
If you're not afraid of severe Gnome / Linux bashing (though in my viewpoint lots of the bashing is valid), try this explanation of "why a tiled window manager" (If you are afraid of the mentioned bashing, be sure not to click any links on that site):
http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/
Remember it's not fully GNU as the author made some additional claims (those additional claims are meant to make it impossible for the author to be screwed by the Linux distro's, who distribute 'unsupported-test versions', it's fully explained why on the site anyway).
I tried it, and it was fairly good. Not the best thing since sliced bread (or should I say worstenbrood) however.
http://modeemi.fi/~tuomov/ion/
Remember it's not fully GNU as the author made some additional claims (those additional claims are meant to make it impossible for the author to be screwed by the Linux distro's, who distribute 'unsupported-test versions', it's fully explained why on the site anyway).
I tried it, and it was fairly good. Not the best thing since sliced bread (or should I say worstenbrood) however.
I don't think Ion is better than some other which do essentially the same thing, such as PekWM. The license restrictions essentially make it impossible to include ion with a Linux (or BSD) distro, insuring it will absolutely never be popular.
I'm getting dumb. I totally forgot that this box is already set up as a mixed lenny/sid system. I just have my apt preferences set up in such a way as to hide sid from me unless I specifically ask for it. So, I installed Awesome Window Manager from sid and so far I'm liking it.
It's very programmable (in Lua, but I already know that language) so I hope to do some cool things with it. The biggest benefit so far is that there are no workspaces. Instead, it uses tags. You can give every window a tag (for example, firefox and thunderbird get the www tag, gimp and inkscape get the graphics tab, etcetera). Windows can have more than one tag and you can display multiple tags at the same time (the WM will show all windows of all selected tags). Pretty nifty and far more flexible than workspaces. All I need to do now is to configure Awesome so that it automatically tags my windows in the right way.
It's very programmable (in Lua, but I already know that language) so I hope to do some cool things with it. The biggest benefit so far is that there are no workspaces. Instead, it uses tags. You can give every window a tag (for example, firefox and thunderbird get the www tag, gimp and inkscape get the graphics tab, etcetera). Windows can have more than one tag and you can display multiple tags at the same time (the WM will show all windows of all selected tags). Pretty nifty and far more flexible than workspaces. All I need to do now is to configure Awesome so that it automatically tags my windows in the right way.
Sander, when you get a good setup you should do a feature.
Good idea. The one thing I really missed most was a simple walkthrough for Awesome. Awesome is for power users only (which I am), but it's still hard to figure out. I really missed a simple tutorial on the level of "I'm a power user but I have never used a tiling WM before".
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