Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

Martin · 2017-01-05 22:46:09

Just wondering how this 'project' is progressing.

Myself, I have decided to take i3 for a serious spin becuse I find both Unity and Gnome wanting on my work laptop when in 'laptop mode' (no external keyboard, no mouse). I have already realised i3 may not cut it at work (important CAE program seg faults when I am in i3) but I am considering it as an alternative to the standard BL user interface for my home computer.

/Martin

ohnonot · 2017-01-06 05:39:10

Martin wrote:

I have decided to take i3 for a serious spin

this is exactly where i got stuck - i'm getting along with it so well, and then christmas & family happened so no article yet.
thanks for reminding me; if i didn't hang around various forums so much i had more time to write articles.
:8

Last edited by ohnonot (2017-01-06 05:39:29)

Martin · 2017-01-08 09:45:09

ohnonot wrote:

Martin wrote:
I have decided to take i3 for a serious spin
this is exactly where i got stuck - i'm getting along with it so well

Laptop or desktop?
The reason for asking is yesterday I tried to work a little on my work-laptop using i3. I was working in a very mouse-centric program and had to give up after a short while. I switched to Gnome which works much better with the touchpad than i3 does (still not good but OK for this particular program). I have done nothing to tune the touchpad experience in either WM.

/Martin

ohnonot · 2017-01-08 14:49:00

i3 has been the main wm on my netbook for quite some time now, and some time after starting this thread i also made it my main wm on my desktop.
i find i3 (or tilers in general) to be even more suitable for laptops because touchpads just suck, and the point of most tilers is that you use the keyboard much more.
but that doesn't mean i cannot use the pointer.
i don't quite understand what your problem is; maybe you want to elaborate?

Martin · 2017-01-08 15:35:23

Yes, touchpads are less than ideal MMIs. That is why I started to look into i3 in the first place.

This is the first time I am exposed to laptop + Linux. I don't know if the following is typical or Ubuntu specific but the two-finger scroll is new to me and so is the lack of window resizing and moving when not having a mouse. Also, the little joy-stick in the middle of the keyboard is over-sensitive to an extent that makes it useless. (On my old W7 laptop I usually switch off the touchpad and use the joy-stick instead even if it tends towards the sluggish end of the speed scale.)

Moving from Unity or Gnome to i3 I find the touchpad totally erratic. It may choose to ignore me completely or it may stick to scrolling mode when I just want to move the pointer. At first I thought it was the weather: It has been cold, hence dry indoors and I thought my finger tips may be too dry to be detected reliably. But since switching to Gnome made all the difference I had to write that theory off.

The program I was using is Mendeley desktop and I have not figured out how to move around between panes and list objects without wielding the mouse/touchpad. (I discovered Mendeley years before Elsevier acquired it.)

/Martin

PackRat · 2017-01-08 16:54:29

I use i3 and spectrwm on my laptop all the time. What I do is:

1. disable the touchpad at startup
2. have a keybinding that will toggle the touchpad on/off in case I need it.
3. use a cordless mouse.

The touchpad on my HP is also a bit too sensitive for tiling wm's, I only toggle it on if I'm in the airport or a cafe where there isn't the table space for a mouse.

Enough thread de-railing, looking forward to some additional entries, ohnonot.

ohnonot · 2017-01-09 07:37:03

i don't really mind the de-railing, i think i will always update post #1 to announce new articles.

anyhow, how the touchpad/pointer/mouse is configured has nothing to do with the window manager! (*)
if mendeley uses normal windows, you can access them with i3 and thusly with the keyboard. read the docs! if not (it creates something like its own windows inside the app window?), well then you can still see how mendeley can be set up with internal keybinds.

in any case you should research how you can configure the touchpad to your liking.
if are you using i3 without any DE these things actually get easier (gnome is infamous for adding an extra layer to the configuration of peripherals), start here: https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/Touchpad_Synaptics

(*) please understand the difference between a desktop environment and a window manager.

Last edited by ohnonot (2017-01-09 07:38:10)

ohnonot · 2017-01-31 15:56:23

i finally got around to finshing the i3 article.

i3 has been my main driver for 2 months now, mostly because of christmas & not much time for nerdy stuff.

i think i'm ready to move on soon... maybe fluxbox next...

Last edited by ohnonot (2021-07-02 08:42:51)

brontosaurusrex · 2017-02-01 11:20:08

@ohnonot, Thanks for sharing, nice article, I did wrote a small anti-tiling post (It was actually hard to articulate what bothers me, but the 'facts' are quite simple).

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2017-02-01 11:23:50)

Head_on_a_Stick · 2017-02-01 11:49:53

brontosaurusrex wrote:

I did wrote a small anti-tiling post

Nice

See also http://xahlee.info/linux/why_tiling_win … sucks.html

Posted from dwm 8o

ohnonot · 2017-02-01 16:07:56

brontosaurusrex wrote:

It was actually hard to articulate what bothers me, but the 'facts' are quite simple).

i understand;
but i could counterpoint each point with a pro point - i'm split down the middle.
i enjoy(ed) openbox because it has a bit of both really, i can use elements from a well-established floating workflow, as well as more keyboard oriented (mostly that one keybind thatmakes a window 50% width, full height, and moves it either to the right or left screen edge); i am still missing a way to combine "the best of both worlds"... maybe awesome...

the thing is using it mustn't get too complex, and it's bound to get that when you combine advanced floating with advanced tiling.

somebody told me fluxbox would have similar manual tiling options as openbox; we will see. they are not advertised, so again i guess i'm going to have to use the wm for quite a while.

Last edited by ohnonot (2017-02-01 16:10:49)

brontosaurusrex · 2017-02-01 17:10:26

ohnonot wrote:

but i could counterpoint each point with a pro point.

What would be a pro point for "window is in the wrong place, has wrong size and wrong padding/margin"?

p.s. Playing around with this ruby script in openbox, run as rtile.rb --all-auto.

Last edited by brontosaurusrex (2017-02-01 17:13:18)

ohnonot · 2017-02-02 08:02:59

brontosaurusrex wrote:

What would be a pro point for "window is in the wrong place, has wrong size and wrong padding/margin"?

"window is in the right place (i.e. covering all unused space), has right size (see previous explanation) and right padding/margin (i.e. none, again, making FULL use of all available space)"
like that?
but then i can't see my conkys anymore...
like i said, i can see both sides.

brontosaurusrex · 2017-02-02 09:39:12

Ok, you got my attention

hhh · 2017-02-03 02:59:38

Great thread! I had tons of fun with awesome and would love to see a detailed write-up...
https://forums.bunsenlabs.org/viewtopic.php?id=682

That scrot! I had forgotten how lickable that setup was.

johnraff · 2017-02-03 04:31:14

ohnonot wrote:

...but then i can't see my conkys anymore...

One workaround could be to be to make your conkys float on top of everything (maybe with opaque backgound so you can read them) and bind them to a key to toggle them on and off.
(eg with something like this.)

Last edited by johnraff (2017-02-03 04:34:40)

ohnonot · 2017-04-10 14:48:58

At long last I finished the fluxbox article

Fluxbox works really well for me, but for some reason I always find myself comparing it to (and trying to make it look & behave like) openbox!

Also, fluxbox has this uncanny ability to bring the hacker out in me.
there's so many options, and so many quirks, and the config file format is so simple...
days and days and days of tweaking, hacking, scripting, improving, failing...
well, read the article.
many of the good bits are actually inside the config files, so make sure you take a look.

Last edited by ohnonot (2021-07-02 08:23:56)

Sector11 · 2017-04-10 16:17:18

Thought OH GOOD I gotta read this ....

This article is part 4 of a series.

so I clicked on the link; 'a series' because I wanted to read from the beginning.

And I get an error, added an exception and tried to carry on. I see this message:

A username and password are being requested by https://dt.iki.fi:9113. The site says: "Restricted"

Thought you might like to know.

ohnonot · 2017-04-10 17:45:50

^thanks a lot. should be fixed now.

Sector11 · 2017-04-10 18:15:08

YUP fixed. Thank YOU. Now to get reading.

#21 2017-01-05 22:46:09

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#22 2017-01-06 05:39:10

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#23 2017-01-08 09:45:09

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#24 2017-01-08 14:49:00

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#25 2017-01-08 15:35:23

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#26 2017-01-08 16:54:29

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#27 2017-01-09 07:37:03

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#28 2017-01-31 15:56:23

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#29 2017-02-01 11:20:08

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#30 2017-02-01 11:49:53

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#31 2017-02-01 16:07:56

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#32 2017-02-01 17:10:26

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#33 2017-02-02 08:02:59

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#34 2017-02-02 09:39:12

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#35 2017-02-03 02:59:38

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#36 2017-02-03 04:31:14

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#37 2017-04-10 14:48:58

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#38 2017-04-10 16:17:18

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#39 2017-04-10 17:45:50

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

#40 2017-04-10 18:15:08

Re: Windowmanagers - a slow marathon with breaks

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