i3 window manager screencast v4.1

Screencast explaining the basics and demonstrating the look and feel of the i3 tiling window manager. See http://i3wm.org/

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• screencast
• i3wm
• tiling
• linux

[tjpld]

What is the key difference between Awesome and i3?

[i3wm]

@tjpld The way in which you manage your windows. In awesome (and other dwm-based WMs), you have layout algorithms, while in i3 you move your windows around the way you need them right now. You should be able to get an impression of this by watching the window. Another important difference is that i3 uses a plain-text configuration file while awesome uses lua.

[niacinsoupbowl]

i3 is great, fits my needs perfectly.

[tjpld]

@i3wm Danke, dann werd' ich mir mal eine Arch Linux VM aufsetzen damit zum Ausprobieren. Bis jetzt war mein Bildschirm am effizientesten genutzt, wenn das aktuelle Fenster (meist Browser) einfach maximiert war. 3 Terminals hab ich nur sehr selten simultan gebraucht. Aber vielleicht merk ich die Vorzüge beim Benutzen.

Gruß von der anderen Rheinseite.

[elnavegante2006]

Yo lo uso con OpenBSD :D, Gracias!

[i3wm]

No, you can use key symbols as well. The default config comes with keycodes since people’s keyboard layouts are different. Use i3-config-wizard to create a keysym-config.

The fact that hjkl is used in a lot of software is not due to it being especially ergonomic. The different keyboard layouts (or terminal layouts, back in the days) were very different in the keys that are next to l. vi cannot interpret keycodes, only keysymbols. Therefore, vi is constrained to using hjkl, while i3 can use jkl;

[dciezarkiewicz]

@i3wm It's wasting peoples' time. Especially that from what I've saw, keycodes must be used instead of letters. Editing config files is fine, but sane defaults are important. For over two decades people are using hjkl and the fact it hasn't been changed and is adopted as a standard in toons of software means something. The reason why hjkl is superior to jkl; is because index finger is most agile and strong while little finger is terribly weak.EOT for me. It's your software, thank you anyway. :)

[i3wm]

I do accept the fact. But changing the config is not a bad thing — you’ll see that i3 has a nice configuration format and you should read the user’s guide during that process. Both are things which *every* i3 user should know. Also, I doubt the 99.9% number :). A study would indeed be interesting.

[dciezarkiewicz]

@i3wm Even if the author of the i3wm has some heretical personal preferences, he should accept the fact that the church of Vim has established traditions regarding that matter and many (99.9% ?) of potential i3wm users will have to change these right after installation.

[i3wm]

That’s where your fingers are when touch-typing :)