For more details, consult i3's documentation.There are a number of reasons you might want to change your window manager in Linux. This article just scratches the surface of what i3 can do. You need to learn a few basic shortcuts to get around at the beginning, but they'll soon feel natural and you'll start using them without thinking. Some say it is for advanced users, but that is not necessarily the case. If you value simplicity and efficiency and are not afraid of working with the keyboard, i3 is the window manager for you. This is a convenient way to access windows or programs that you frequently use, such as an email client or your music player. It is an invisible workspace that shows up in the middle of the other workspaces by pressing a shortcut. If you switch to that workspace, you switch to that monitor-without moving your hand off the keyboard.įinally, there is another, special type of workspace in i3: the scratchpad. In addition, you can use workspaces to control multi-monitor setups, where each monitor gets an initial workspace. If you get into the habit of always assigning applications/groups of windows to the same workspace, you can quickly switch between them, which makes workspaces a very useful feature. As usual in i3, do it with a keyboard shortcut. You can even change i3's configuration to always assign specific applications to their own workspaces. For example, you can put the browser on one workspace, the terminal on another, an email client on a third, etc. You can group them in different ways according to your workflow. In i3, a workspace is an easy way to group windows. I3 with rofi menu and dunst desktop notificationsįinally, for more advanced users, i3 provides a full interprocess communication ( IPC) interface that allows you to use your favorite language to develop scripts or programs for even more customization options. From changing all keyboard shortcuts, to redefining the name of the workspaces, to modifying the status bar, you can make i3 behave in any way that makes the most sense for your needs. I3 is fully configurable, and you can control every aspect of it by updating the default configuration file. Use dmenu or rofi to enable customizable menus that can be launched from a keyboard shortcut.Use a compositor manager such as compton to enable effects like window fading and transparency.Use feh to define a background picture for your desktop.Because i3 is a window manager, it doesn't provide tools to enable customizations you need external tools for that. I3 is flexible and can be customized in several ways to improve the visual experience. I3 strives to be minimal and use few system resources, but that does not mean it can't be pretty. Now that I am used to this workflow, I can't see myself going back to a regular desktop environment. In i3, you can define shortcuts for everything. Combine that with a nice terminal-driven text editor (e.g., Vim) and a keyboard-focused browser for a fully keyboard-driven workflow. Since the windows are automatically positioned, you can start typing your commands right away. With practice, it means you'll improve the speed and efficiency of your workflow.įor example, to open a new terminal, press +. The main benefit is that you don't often need to switch contexts from the keyboard to the mouse. When you start using i3, you need to memorize a few of those shortcuts to get around and, with time, you'll use more of them. These include opening the terminal and other programs, resizing and positioning windows, changing layouts, and even exiting i3. I3 makes extensive use of keyboard shortcuts to control different aspects of your environment. If you need more space for a particular window, enable full-screen mode or switch to a different layout, such as stacked or tabbed. For example, system administrators can open several terminals to monitor or work on different remote systems simultaneously and developers can use their favorite IDE or editor and a few terminals to test their programs. It also allows you to get to what you need faster. Since you don't need to worry about window positioning, i3 generally makes better use of your screen real estate. Screen real estateĪs a tiling window manager, i3 will automatically "tile" or position the windows in a non-overlapping way, similar to laying tiles on a wall. Pick the tools that make the most sense for your workflow, and i3 will manage them all in the same way. Do you want to use Thunar from Xfce as your file manager? GNOME's gedit to edit text? I3 does not care. In addition, i3 is a window manager and, unlike full-featured desktop environments, it does not dictate the applications you should use. Free online course: RHEL Technical Overview.
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