{"id":27359,"date":"2017-02-19T10:12:27","date_gmt":"2017-02-19T08:12:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/?p=27359"},"modified":"2017-02-19T10:12:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-19T08:12:27","slug":"i3-window-manager-a-week-later","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/02\/19\/i3-window-manager-a-week-later\/","title":{"rendered":"i3 window manager – a week later"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A week ago I blogged about i3 window manager<\/a> and my attempt to use it instead of MATE<\/a>. \u00a0So, how am I am doing so far?<\/p>\n

The long story short: I love i3. \u00a0It’s awesome. \u00a0But I still switch back to MATE once in a while.<\/p>\n

What’s good about i3?<\/strong> \u00a0It’s super fast. \u00a0Even faster than a pretty fast MATE. \u00a0It’s keyboard navigated, and it only takes about a day to get used to enough keyboard shortcuts to feel comfortable and productive. \u00a0It’s super efficient. \u00a0Until I tried i3 I didn’t recognize how much time I spend moving windows around. \u00a0It is unexcusable amount of time spent needlessly.<\/p>\n

What’s bad about i3?<\/strong> \u00a0It’s low level. \u00a0In order to make it work right with multiple screens, one need to get really familiar with xrandr<\/a>, the tool I last used years ago. \u00a0If you are on a laptop, with a dynamic setup for the second screen (one monitor at the office, one at home, and an occasionally different project at client’s premises), you’ll need a bunch of helper scripts to assist you in quick change between these setups.<\/p>\n

And then there is an issue of flickering desktop. \u00a0The web is full of questions about how to solve a variety of flickering issues when using i3. \u00a0The one that I see most often is the screen going black once in a while. \u00a0Sometimes it takes a second to come back, sometimes a few seconds, and sometimes and it doesn’t come back at all. \u00a0The more windows I have, spread across more workspaces, with more connected monitors – the more often I see the issues. \u00a0It’s annoying, and it’s difficult to troubleshoot or even report, as I haven’t found a pattern yet, or how to reproduce the problem.<\/p>\n

With that said though, I am now about 80% time using i3. \u00a0I like the simplicity and efficiency of it. \u00a0It’s so good, that I work better even without a second monitor. \u00a0But when I do need a second monitor (paired programming, demos, etc), or when I have a projector connected, I switch to MATE. \u00a0That’s about 20% of my time.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\n

A week ago I blogged about i3 window manager and my attempt to use it instead of MATE. \u00a0So, how am I am doing so far? The long story short: I love i3. \u00a0It’s awesome. \u00a0But I still switch back to MATE once in a while. What’s good about i3? \u00a0It’s super fast. \u00a0Even faster … Continue reading i3 window manager – a week later<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"i3 window manager - a week later #desktop #i3wm #Linux","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[1,6,62],"tags":[65,2351,3496,1079],"keyring_services":[],"class_list":["post-27359","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general","category-linux","category-technology","tag-desktop","tag-fedora-linux","tag-i3","tag-productivity"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":27338,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/02\/12\/i3-tiling-window-manager\/","url_meta":{"origin":27359,"position":0},"title":"i3 – tiling window manager","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"February 12, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"In the last few days my attention was unfairly distributed between a whole lot of tasks. \u00a0The fragmentation and constant context switching affected my productivity, so I briefly revisited my toolbox setup, in hopes to find something that I didn't know about, forgot about, or have greatly underutilized. One of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "All"","block_context":{"text":"All","link":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/category\/general\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2017\/02\/i3-500x281.png?resize=350%2C200&ssl=1","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":27820,"url":"https:\/\/mamchenkov.net\/wordpress\/2017\/07\/31\/replacing-default-mate-window-manager-with-i3wm\/","url_meta":{"origin":27359,"position":1},"title":"Replacing default MATE window manager with i3wm","author":"Leonid Mamchenkov","date":"July 31, 2017","format":false,"excerpt":"For the last few month I've been torn between i3 tiling window manager and MATE desktop environment. \u00a0I love them both, even though they are very different from each other. 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