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 🙂
Can we get a screenshot of your setup please?
Sure why not.
But there’s notthing spectacular or out of the ordinary here: it’s just a boring-ass, bog-standard i3 installation. What I spent time configuring isn’t visible - stuff like keyboard bindings, how it starts, how it handles multiple monitors… things like that.
what i don’t like about most tiling WMs is they are keyboard only. you can’t hold a beverage in one hand and use them easily with the mouse. only very few let you also do most things with mouse (notion for example). currently i use Gnome (mutter standard WM) with the Forge extension (that adds tiling) for that reason. It’s not perfect, but lets me use my phone with one hand and operate the PC with the other etc.
what i don’t like about most tiling WMs is they are keyboard only. you can’t hold a beverage in one hand and use them easily with the mouse.
Depends. Here for example, I’m lounging in the couch with a beer in one hand, watching Youtube videos in FreeTube, chatting with a friend in Signal and lazily browsing a few browser tabs and windows the rest of the time. The browser windows are arranged in one tabbed workspace, Signal in another workspace and Freetube in a third workspace, all of which are available with a mouse click. I’m basically not touching the keyboard unless I have to.
I guess it depends on how involved you want things to be with one hand clutching a beer 🙂 Me, that’s as complicated as I’m willing to let things get when I booze.
Sway by default lets you move windows by dragging their title bar. Minimise/maximise doesn’t make sense in Sway, but adding fullscreen and close behaviour to buttons on your menubar of choice or extra mouse buttons would be pretty easy. Graphical app launchers exist too — I use one in Sway on my Yoga since I primarily use its touchscreen.
I appreciate those things aren’t in place by default, but they are kinda antithetical to the tiling paradigm, and if you’re using something like Sway then you’re probably tinkering a ton with it anyway.
Personnaly I don’t need to manipulate windows with Bspwm. How they spawn is fine for me.
I don’t use i3 because windows spawns in such a layout that force to use shortcuts for changing the layout. Bspwm displays everything in nice rectangles.
To start apps you can keep an application menu in your bar, such as Whisker menu, or the KDE bar, while having a tiling window manager, so you can run apps with mouse clicks. And after the spawn you should not need to manipulate them if you use more automatized tiling WM such as Bspwm or Xmonad.
Just checked Forge. Seems like repo had been archived 2 days ago. Ouch… I was so hopeful. Maintaining a FOSS project is a lot of work. I am very grateful to all the devs that are doing it. Thisagain reminds thatwe need to donate and support greatdevs. Couldn’t help but notice the pattern. Bismuth / KDE, Forge / Gnome.
I spent years using i3 as my main machine and I loved everything about it. Fast forward to now where I have to use a Mac. Most of the time I’m in a terminal with tmux so it’s fine but any time I have to deal with a gui element that is under something else I get more and more upset.
now where I have to use a Mac
Why did you start using a Mac? It sounds like a couple of steps backward in terms of freedom.
Also, I did a quick a quick search and this came up.
I have the same issue, and I had to use a Mac for work, didn’t have a choice in that matter.
I didn’t know about AeroSpace though, sounds interesting. Currently I’m using Amethyst which provides tiling, but it’s not i3/sway-like, so not perfect.
Hey!
Here’s some sway dotfiles of mine incase they help: https://gitlab.com/_j/dotfiles
