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Comment by Apreche | Hacker News Reader

It's going to be a tough battle if they want to win my heart away from i3.

Fear not, friend. There's a very active port of i3 to wayland: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway

I haven't personally tried it, but I have heard about it a few times, so I assume it's fairly good. This is the list of supported features, if you are interested: https://github.com/SirCmpwn/sway/issues/2

The problem for me is that i3 is only a part of the puzzle. I use sxhkd for a bunch of hotkeys; that has to be replaced. I use xdotool _a lot_, and I don't know if such functionality is even possible in wayland. I use scoot heavily, both as a way to screenshot from a hotkey (presumably easy to replace?) and as part of scripts; my script which locks the computer uses scrot, imagemagick and i3lock. There's probably a bunch of other small things in my system which will break by not having an X server too.

This is why I dislike Wayland. Forcing so much functionality through the WM means I can't just build my system out of small parts. I also do things that Wayland is specifically designed to break, like keylogging myself.

I agree with your first point against Wayland, but your second point isn't correct: Wayland's design is not meant to prevent keyloggers just to make them optional.

Same problem, really: now I have to find a window manager that natively supports key logging, rather than just running a small shell script in the background that listens for keyboard events.

Understandable. One of the reasons I haven't switched is because so far my system works pretty well and I haven't had the need to use Wayland. What hotkeys do you use sxhkd for? I vaguely remember sxhkd supporting chords while i3 not doing so, but I don't remember more than that.

I use i3wm's `bindsym` for stuff that's related to window management, like moving around windows, resizing them, moving windows or focus to workspaces, etc. Other stuff, like volume control, screenshots (print screen -> take screenshot, upload to a web server, put URL in clipboard), mouse movement (with xdotool), etc. is handled through sxhkd. There's no reason I couldn't just use bindsym for all of that, but now non-windowing hotkeys is not coupled with the WM, so I could choose to switch window manager and still have all non-WM hotkeys work.

Sounds interesting. Could you share your setup/workflow?

Here's my git repository with all dotfiles and such: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf

I use i3wm (well, i3-gaps) as the WM. Xdotool is just used to move the cursor with hotkeys: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/7c12d4215c703de0c6935..., scrot is used both for a print screen button (scrot takes the picture, then it's copied to my server with scp, and the URL is put in the clipboard: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/bin/mshot) and for i3lock (scrot takes the picture, imagemagick pixelates, i3lock shows it: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/bin/mlock).

I also have a project called dedaemon: https://github.com/mortie/dedaemon. That uses udev to listen to events, like displays or input devices being connected or disconnected, and does a preconfigured to them. I for example have these lines, which sets the resolution and frame rate to any connected monitor to the highest possible, and positions it to the left of the primary monitor: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/7c12d4215c703de0c6935.... I imagine porting that functionality to wayland would be really hard, and probalby require writing custom extensions to each window manager separately.

There's also this other project I have, which isn't really related to wayland, but which I still feel is relevant: mmenu - https://github.com/mortie/mmenu. It just makes dmenu work as a calculator, running the input through python if it doesn't match a program in your $PATH, plus some other features.

Thanks for sharing! I really appreciate it. Already "borrowed" the screen lock solution, and will look into other productivity enhancements :)

You sound like someone who'd like keynav http://www.semicomplete.com/projects/keynav

Since it wasn't linked last time I looked, code is also at https://github.com/jordansissel/keynav

Shameless plug: I maintain a fork at https://github.com/yjftsjthsd-g/keynav because the original author hasn't been active in a while.

Edit: wrong link :)

That looks pretty interesting. stole the idea and made something similar in bash: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/master/bin/mousetree, with hotkeys configured with sxhkd: https://github.com/mortie/nixConf/blob/d87f241963edc49a57171...

Not so shameless if you add a scroll functionality I tell you lol.

Actually even otherwise, it's not like you're earning money so no need to disclaim!

Heh, so I went to look and see how hard it would be to simulate mouse scrolling, and the answer is... none. Literally none. Because X11 "mouse scroll" events are represented as button presses. Mouse buttons are 1=left, 2=middle, 3=right, 4=scroll-up, 5=scroll-down. So you just stick the relevant lines in your keynavrc; ex.

   i click 4                                                                                                                             
   e click 5

That said, I may make an effort to document this better.

I saw, I came here to thank and noticed you replied :)

Hm. That would be useful. I might have to do that.

> I make unoriginal projects with better code than the thing they rip off.

Nice github tagline for SirCmpwn ;-)

I've checked the linked issue from time-to-time, looks like it's getting really close to feature complete now. Will probably explore Wayland + Sway after new laptop purchase later this year.

In other news, i3 has been at the very core of my computing experience for 5 years running, absolutely fantastic application.

i3 is my #1 reason for wanting to switch from MacOS to Linux. I love a good tiling window manager, and the workarounds to emulate a tiling WM in MacOS just aren’t close enough to the real thing.

Did you try [chunkwm](https://github.com/koekeishiya/chunkwm) yet? It's the successor of kwm which I have tried on macOS. Mainly I use i3 at Linux but for some work I have to use macOS as well. The only native apps which feel Linux like are iTerm and Emacs (the mac port) because it's possible to suppress the window decorations. Every other native app takes for a real tiling wm too much space with its Titel bar and other frames.

I did this recently for the same reason.

Do not wait and get a Linux system with i3 tomorrow. You will be so much faster and more structured in your daily workflow than with Alt-Tab.

A nice side effect: Apps feel much faster than on OSX. I don't know why but everything is snappier and just more resonsive despite a much weaker CPU and same hires screen on the Linux system. Especially the terminal rendering and application switching which is instant.

It might have to do with the transition animations in OSX. I found a long time ago that turning off the animations in Windows makes a system feel a while lot more responsive.

I switched from OSX to Linux specifically for i3. Linux is still a pretty annoying OS with lots of little to even big problems like NetworkManager flaking out, suspend/resume being flaky, trackpad annoyances, etc. But despite all of that, I still use Linux because i3 is that damn good. i3 has fundamentally made computing more enjoyable, and enables me to stay "in the flow" much more.

Have you tried out openbsd?

Not trying to start a flame war but once I managed to install it how I liked the entire system felt so cohesive and well designed. (Ifconfig handling wpa for instance) and it turned out to be so much lighter that my laptops battery life went up 20%.

It was an older thinkpad though. So I guess YMMV.

I like the BSDs in general and have used them in the past. But for my work I can only use OSX or Linux, as some of the stuff I need is only supported on those OSes. I could probably make a BSD work if I really wanted to, but it's easier to just go with the flow on some things.

You can run another window manager (i3) under Xquartz.

http://fanf.livejournal.com/142372.html

This isn't really helpful because the vast majority of OSX apps do not use X11.

Maybe Amethyst is your jam: https://ianyh.com/amethyst/

by workarounds did you mean amethyst?

As a long time awesomeWM (and other tiling WM) user, I've found it to be more than acceptable.

KDE managed to do that with me and it isn't even a tiling WM ... and I spent quite a lot of time on i3pystatus (and somewhat less time on j4-dmenu-desktop).

And for i3 on Wayland there's already Sway.

I feel the same way, although Wayland is a good perk. Will check it out.

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