Thank you for the comment! I've installed Arch Linux and i3 in VirtualBox and it is really fast. I don't mind the looks really—in fact, I like them much better than the flashy animations of OS X. It all feels much more focused.

I'm wondering, though, what terminal emulator do you use? I tried terminator first because it seemed the most featureful, but its central feature seems to be duplicating a lot of functionality that i3 already has. A few people have suggested gnome-terminal, which I like.