So I had enough of Gnome breaking every now and then, filling up my RAM with all sorts of unwanted services and decided to switch to something new. I wanted something that would reduce the whole dependency cycle; something which does not make you choose between eye-candy and performance.
And i3wm caught my eye, which claims to be “targeted at advanced users and developers.” I looked around for some screenshots for how does it look and was surprised to find that every one of them was drastically different from the other.
I3wm is a tiling manager and not a desktop environment which makes it lighter and thus faster than Gnome or KDE or any other desktop environment.
What do we do when we want any information regarding a Linux?
Arch Wiki!
The Arch Wiki page is pretty well written and gets you started with enough information to get it up and running. The docs page of i3wm is quite rich and provides all you need to know to fully configure your desktop. The only limit is your creativity!
Here’s what the setup looks like:
I would recommend using i3-gaps which is a fork of i3 with some enhancements like the gaps between windows.
What I have come to love about i3 is how fast I can navigate between windows. I hate using my touchpad unless absolutely necessary and that is exactly what i3 eliminated. I don’t have to even think about it and all work is done by my muscle memory. I have my key bindings close to Vim which makes the task even more easier.
I have put all the setup configuration here. Because I am never satisfied with a configuration (hehe), I will keep updating it till I don’t switch to another display manager.
-ut