[10GBps]

> it can feel quite overwhelming as you need to visualize the tree in your head

And that's why I don't use a tiling window manager. I prefer to use my brain for actual work, not futzing around with configuration and OS BS. I mean if it takes 3000 lines of code to make your friggin window manager work then you're doing it wrong.

I happen to like overlapping windows, it's just natural and free-flowing. I don't mind wasting a little space when I have a 6400x1200 desktop.

[Pius_IX]

First of all, you are absolutely right. Using your brain for actual work and not futzing around with configuration is always a great choice.

But honestly, the amount of mental energy the author seems to put into this is way beyond anything I would consider needed to use a tiling window manager. Just the base configuration with an application launcher installed is pretty much enough for most people.

And I have never in my whole live visualized the tree in my head. For me at least i3 is a simple and performance conscious way to use my small/old laptop screen, easily switch between the 10 virtual desktops and either use a stack or a side-by-side view. Sometimes I build a very, very simple tree if I use a ton of terminals at once.

I feel like these kind of 'I installed a new kind of desktop environment'-blog posts are just desperate for any kind of content that exceeds 'I installed it and fiddled around in the configuration file to adjust it to my keyboard and then it worked well enough. Over the next couple of weeks I kept adjusting small things to better fit my workflow. After a while I got used to the shortcuts. Oh, and I changed the background.'

[sndwnm]

This. The author is obsessed, but that makes it fun to read. I've been using i3 exclusively for close to a decade and never used a window placement other than 1-3 windows in a horizontal row; switching to tabbed layout when I want something fullscreen; and rarely, for specific applications, a floating layout. Rather, I use a lot of workspaces (16) and put windows in those that I expect to find them.

My point is, you don't need to use a WM/DE like others are using it, but how you prefer to use it. i3 is flexible enough to allow many styles, so choosing to use it might be mostly about whether you think it can cover your preferences.

[megous]

I've spent too much time manually moving, resizing and aligning windows before switching to i3wm and tabbing between randomly popped out overlapping windows is not exactly pleasant either.

Now everything is fixed in muscle memory, and I certainly don't need to expand any thought arranging a workspace for some task. I can do it with even looking at the screen, so predictable and easy it is. I can't imagine doing the workspace arrangement out of muscle memory with a mouse.

I also like how customizable i3wm is. That helps with orientation even more. For example I have my browser instances running under different system users, to have some relatively strong isolation between various work environments, and i3wm allows me to highlight the browser name and show a system user name it's running under in the titlebar.

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/98179a60c08bbdb1.png

If a command running in a terminal fails or is still in progress I get notified:

https://megous.com/dl/tmp/bc3e6c16abad3713.png

I don't even need to switch between terminals to see if something succeeded, or is still in progress.

Small but invaluable productivity things that I can't get elsewhere, without sacrificing something else. :)

[dkersten]

I came to filing window managers through musca[1] and then goomwwm[2] (Get Out Of My Way Window Manager) and then switched to i3 (and more recently, away) because both Musca and goomwwm haven’t been updated in years.

I still miss Musca and goomwwm. They didn’t require any visualisation of the hierarchy, things were just layer out next to each other without a hierarchy and just worked. It was very intuitive. Goomwwm went a step further: it’s not technically a tiling window manager at all, but rather a floating window manager (so you can have your windows overlap if you want) that happens to be usable as if it were tiling and that’s keyboard centric (but you can use mouse too if you wish). That really was the sweet spot for me and I often find annoying behaviour in i3/sway that goomwwm didn’t have (typically around movement and resizing).

I sometimes dream of updating the goomwwm codebase but I neither have the time nor the interest in learning winDow manager programming.

[1] https://github.com/enticeing/musca (original source and all documentation seems to be gone)

[2] https://github.com/seanpringle/goomwwm

[12ian34]

I'm not trying to convince you, but I thought I'd just add my thoughts as an actual i3 user to some of your statements to provide a more balanced view to the audience.

> it can feel quite overwhelming as you need to visualize the tree in your head

I find it strange that the author finds it overwhelming here. You don't need to visualise the tree in your head - it's literally there in front of you, visually, with clear UX cues and four very simple keyboard shortcuts. and that's if you even want to bother with the tree anyway - I need to nest windows perhaps once a month.

> I mean if it takes 3000 lines of code to make your friggin window manager work then you're doing it wrong.

This is exaggeration. 5 years down the line, my i3 config is 280 lines, perhaps 70% of which are default. Additionally, it is not your place to tell others they're doing something wrong. Perhaps spending n hours writing 3000 lines of i3 code actually saved someone 10n time over 1 year. How would you know?

> I happen to like overlapping windows

You can achieve this with i3 floating windows. I use them sometimes, works very well.

[heavenlyblue]

I3 is perfectly usable with a default config by the way, you are vastly overblowing the situation.