You are not logged in.
Pages: 1
I'm afraid I have made a monster! A Halloween special.
So, in continued pursuit of a tiled bunsen, I made a little franken desktop environment with both tint2, and i3wm. They are not good bedfellows. This is is a vm and is not my main desktop (that's still crunchbang/Jessie at home and Bunsen/crunchbang/jessie at work).
Is anyone else using i3wm?
I'm frustrated by the ugliness of the i3bar, and a little lost without obmenu so making do with dmenu. Is there a desktop menu replacement for obmenu which can use the same xml file as obmenu? My googling has drawn a blank. I couldn't gleen whether it's possible to use obmenu outside of openbox.
What do you folk with i3wm use?
Lots of stuff doesn't work yet in my little experiment: no powermanager icon, and tint2 does not understand i3 workspaces so it's running in single window mode. I have a little plan to us i3msg and the tint2 launchers to switch i3 workspaces, then I could do away with the i3 bar completely.
I really get why people go for these tiling window managers now, but I'm wedded to tint2 and obmenu... for the moment. *insert comedy evil laugh here*
red
Knowledge Ferret
Offline
For menus in i3 and other tiling wm's, I use either dmenu or 9menu. Either can be customized so that they display the apps you use frequently. 9menu is mouse friendly if you prefer that.
What didn't you like about the i3bar? The font is easy enough to change in the i3 config, and conky can be piped to the bar for system status. As an alternative, you could go with dzen2 which allows for clickable areas - launchers, menus etc ...
If you can get to the archived #! forum, the i3 thread there has a lot of nice setups with configs.
i3 with 9menu, conky JSON for status bar -
Last edited by PackRat (2015-10-30 23:59:56)
You must unlearn what you have learned.
-- yoda
Online
having tint2 & the i3bar is recursive imo.
i3bar handles workspaces, urgency hints and such really nicely, and it has a systray and everything else you need.
generally, the visual customization options of i3 are even more limited than openbox'.
i3 documentation is very good. i3's config file syntax is very understandable, by design.
but, a nice font + a nice icon font will do a lot for the i3bar. plus some colorization.
for a menu, i use this.
Offline
For a menu I use rofi and/or dmenu-extended;
https://davedavenport.github.io/rofi/
https://github.com/markjones112358/dmenu-extended
Feel free to try one of my i3 'distrolettes'
i3X based on Jessie
i3live based on Sid+Liquorix kernel
Offline
Some stuff here you may not have seen
http://www.j4tools.org/
Offline
For a menu I use rofi and/or dmenu-extended;
https://davedavenport.github.io/rofi/
https://github.com/markjones112358/dmenu-extended
+1
I tend to prefer other dmenu patched versions over dmenu-extended, but dmenu (whatever version) and rofi are my runners to go on every system.
Offline
Nice links folks thankyou for those. It's a bg learning curve for me and everything is helpful.
Dmenu extended looks awesome (no pun intended).
Still looking for something to replace obmenu. Any recommendations?
There seems to be a lot of abandonware around the tiling window manager ecosystem. I was originally hunting for something to bolt onto openbox (which to be honest, was my ideal), but it seems this is not an option if you want well supported tools, so hence the exploration of i3 and others for a better solution.
red
Knowledge Ferret
Offline
@redcollective, sorry we bounced this thread around a bit, it should be good here from now on.
No, he can't sleep on the floor. What do you think I'm yelling for?!!!
Offline
I use pytyle to tile windows in openbox. Pytyle was built for openbox and works reasonably well.
There is a short paragraph and pictures about it at the bottom of Lxlinux - After Openbox. It is controlled with key bindings, which can be launched from menus by using xdotool. In the link mentioned above, there is an image entitled "Wmdrawer Open", which shows 4 phases of pytyle launchable from that menu.
Last edited by seppalta (2015-11-02 00:40:28)
Offline
pretty old, but then again it's just a menu app.
You must unlearn what you have learned.
-- yoda
Online
@ seppalta, Yes, I've tried pytyle3 and it just didn't seem to work, are you using pytyle 1 or 2?
@cPackRat, Thankyou, nice find - I wonder if it's compatible with obmenu's config?
red
Knowledge Ferret
Offline
^ I read the whole description, compatible with Openbox 2 - so the menu is a text file similar to blackbox/fluxbox; some example menu entries towards the bottom of the page.
You must unlearn what you have learned.
-- yoda
Online
Still looking for something to replace obmenu.
do you mean the gtk application obmenu that helps you build the openbox root menu?
i'm not sure i understand, what do you want?
for i3? why, it doesn't have a root menu.
do you want a way to manually build a menu? it can be achieved with dmenu.
Offline
Check out rofi as a replacement to dmenu.
You'll have to compile it, it's not in the Jessie repos. But it's awesome
Offline
Window managers were reviewed in the Jan 2016 issue of Linux Voice. i3 came out on top.
Killer feature: Tiling heaven
If you have a big monitor, you absolutely must try this - don't be put off by the learning curve.
i3 makes so much sense for geeks - while it takes awhile to master, the learning curve is worth it.
redcollective...YOU GEEK!
Offline
Check out rofi as a replacement to dmenu.
You'll have to compile it, it's not in the Jessie repos. But it's awesome![]()
Why is it more awesome than dmenu? I tried it but it didn't seem to offer anything useful that I can't already do with dmenu
Last edited by shot-in-the-head (2016-02-16 12:30:08)
Offline
Mrbrightside wrote:Check out rofi as a replacement to dmenu.
You'll have to compile it, it's not in the Jessie repos. But it's awesome![]()
https://davedavenport.github.io/rofi/Why is it more awesome than dmenu? I tried it but it didn't seem to offer anything useful that I can't already do with dmenu
i've been using rofi for a while now.
it has some extra functionality (which i hardly ever use), as compared to dmenu.
it sits there as a daemon and still is slower to pop up than dmenu.
its hotkey can't be addressed with xdotool (and there's no way to add it as a menu entry).
it tends to lock up in particular situations (e.g. call a program with sudo).
i'm still using it (so it isn't that bad), but really it's just laziness to change back to dmenu.
Offline
I've converted completely to i3 now, having discarded my reliance on the right click menu and openbox and embraced all things dmenu.
One thing eludes me: I can not get any changes to the /.config/dmenu/dmenu-bind.sh script to take any effect.
removal of -b option is not positioning dmenu at top of screen.
addition of a custom font is not happening
switch to vertical lines not working
I think I'm editing the wrong config file, or a config somewhere else takes precedence?
Can anyone advise?
red
Knowledge Ferret
Offline
I think I'm editing the wrong config file, or a config somewhere else takes precedence?
That script is only sourced by the rc.xml keybinds and menu entries in openbox.
Otherwise `dmenu_run` is probably being used and the options should be added to the command line, as per dmenu(1)
Offline
arrggh! Thanks HOAS, having made umpteen mods to the i3 config file I completely overlooked that.
Everything works as I want it now.
red
Knowledge Ferret
Offline
Pages: 1