Turns out, I wanted a tiled window manager all along
Turns out, I wanted a tiled window manager all along
I got into computers when there was no GUI.
Then years later I got a Win95 PC and I found the Windows GUI pretty good - although the rest of the OS was not. My personal Linux PC running Slackware 96 came with FVWM95 wich was a good approximation. So I switched to that.
That was just for graphical utilities of course - of which there weren't very many. I spent the rest of my time in the Linux console or in xterm using screen for convenience.
Fast-forward to today: I still do that. I still like the Win95 UI paradigm, so I run Mint / Cinnamon. But most of what I do with it is open a Gnome terminal, blow it up and start tmux - like screen but better.
And, ya know, for almost 3 decades, whether it's Mint or anything else I used, that's pretty much what I've been doing: running screen in a terminal in a Win95-like GUI. And it works fine for me.
I recently ordered a laptop that comes with Debian / Wayland and the Sway window manager installed by default. I learned a long time ago that it's often better to go with whatever is installed by default than try to reinstall everything and fight a system that wasn't designed for it.
The laptop will take a few weeks to get here. So to prepare for when it lands on my porch, I decided to get into Sway on my current machine, to get used to it. I figured even if I don't like it, at least that way I'll be comfortable with it, and I'll know whether it's acceptable as it is or whether I should spend the time installing something more Win95-like.
But my current machine doesn't run Wayland, just plain Xorg. 2 minutes of searching revealed that Sway is in fact i3wm for Wayland.
Great! I promptly installed i3 on my Linux Mint box, switch to it, fucked around with the config file for a few hours and... I love it! That's pretty much exactly what I do with Cinnamon anyway but quicker!
And just like that, I switch to i3. I felt right at home with it from the get-go. The whole Win95-like UI was just a familiarity: in fact, what I've always wanted was a tiling window manager.
And yes, I did spend a few hours - almost half a day really - configuring the thing exactly how I like. But if I'm honest, I probably spent just as much time with Cinnamon way back when I switched to that too. So it's no different really.
So the takeaway here is: even if you have decades-old die-hard habits and you don't want to change, you should expose yourself to change every once in a while: you might just get surprised 🙂
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Even as someone that got into computers in the Apple II days, I've never been able to get used to tiling WMs. I remember being blown away with Solaris Xwindow and I've never really looked back on those days without a mouse. I just slap on more monitors and use virtual desktops now.
That's what I thought too - and I tried other tiling window managers in the past, only to quickly return to whatever I was used to. But somehow i3 hit the spot, It you're used to screen or tmux, this thing has the same DNA and you'll feel right at home. Give it an honest try, you might just like it.
But I do believe that you kind of have to be halfway there already to "get it". My halfway-there was being so used to the same concept in the terminal. If you're never exposed to tiling in any way, shape or form, maybe it's more of a stretch.
Oh, I've tried every tiling WM at one point or another, but it's never taken hold. And I've used no end of Tmux over the years, but never really bothered with the shortcuts in those either, so doing it for a WM never took.
Everyone that uses one raves about it, but I've never found the fit, even with the amount of windows I keep open at any given time. If I get really ambitious I'll use Plasma's Meta-T to set up tiles, then promptly forget about it.
I used tmux extensively at home with a pimped out config. But then I started using it on servers at work which don't let me configure it, so I'm just using default keybindings now.
TBH something like ratpoison would be more of my thing if I ever switched to WMs except it's no longer maintained (sucks). I don't want to spend too much time configuring it though so bspwm is probably out of the running already. Do you think I'll like i3? I've heard people calling it bloat. Well I suppose if you're not using dwm/ratpoison you're OK with so called bloat anyway
Do you think I’ll like i3?
No idea. I only have (a little) experience with i3.
Wnat I do know is that they'll all require you to configure them, and it's always a huge PITA to configure a OS or parts thereof, whichever it may be. But I figure even if I spend 2 days doing that, it's a one-off job, and then I can reuse my favorite config forever. So it's work worth doing.
you’re OK with so called bloat anyway
I don't mind bloat if it's worth it. Cinnamon / Gnome for instance is a bit of a pig (less than KDE / Qt for sure, but still) but I like it so... Okay. Conversely, I've yet to encounter any Electron app that offers anywhere near the amount of features that would justify the hundreds of megabytes and the amount of CPU Electron requires. Or Snap, Flatpak or Appimage packages for that matter. Those are wasteful for the benefit of the developer, not for yours.