i3Tiling Window Manager

2015/04/13Ying Reui Liang( KK )

What is a window manager?

Without window manager

- No borders

- No decorations

- No lovely X button

"Normal" window manager

Tiling window manager

Why tiling window manager?

- All windows are in their own tile

- Always uses entire screen

- Waste none of piece of space

- Control everything with keyboard

- Fun to configure your own environment

- Feel like you're a hacker in the movie

- Beautiful!

- Prevent people who tring to use your PC

Why not tiling window manager?

- You'll lose the magic to using other's computer, or feel pain to do that

Time for i3

i3

Use i3 like a pro

Learn i3 from scratch

Install & try i3

- pacman, apt, yum, etc

- if you're using display manager, then choose session as “i3” and done!

- if you prefer startx like me, modify ~/.xinitrc to use i3

Caution!

Make sure you have the ability to edit ~/.i3/config, otherwise you gonna be stucked cause the default i3 setting might not always

work for you

Controlling with mod key

Controlling with mod and shift key

Open & close applications

- mod + return: open terminal

- mod + d: open dmenu- dmenu is an application launcher

- mod + shift + q: close a tile- same as the X button

- that's all, simple right?

Focus to other tile

- mod + j: focus left

- mod + k: focus down

- mod + l: focus up

- mod + ;: focus right

- mod + space: toggle focus on floating tiles

- anyway, you can change it as you like

Tile structure

Tile management

- mod + shift + j: move focus tile left

- mod + shift + k: move focus tile down

- mod + shift + l: move focus tile up

- mod + shift + ;: move focus tile right

- mod + f: toggle fullscreen

- mod + shift + space: toggle floating

- mod + r: toggle reisze mode

Change workspace

- mod + 1: to workspace 1- so on

- mod + n: to next workspace

- mod + p: to previous workspace

Useful operations

- mod + shift + r: restart i3 in place

- mod + shift + c: reload i3 config file

- mod + shift + e: exit i3 session

It's dangerous to go alone! Take these

- dmenu: open other applications

- i3lock: simple screen locker

- LXAppearance: set gtk theme

- LXInput: set input properties

- Unclutter: hide cursor if you stop moving

- feh: tool to set wallpaper and view images

Customization

- config file is located at ~/.i3/config

- change it as you like

- visit i3 site for more information

- become a pro

Questions?

References

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Windowmanager_ohne.png

- https://www.gnome.org/

- http://openbox.org/wiki/File:Openbox_screenshot.jpg

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tiling_window_manager#/media/File:Dwm-screenshot.png

- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Schema_of_the_layers_of_the_graphical_user_interface.svg

- http://i3wm.org/screenshots/i3-5.png

- http://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html