i3 VS awesome

👉 i3 window manager

I switched to the i3 tiling based window manager. Because it's a whole different environment and thinking, it was very different from what I was used to. The volume buttons were working on my keyboard, but I didn't get any visual feedback. Furthermore, the volume percentage could go down below zero and increase up to more than hundread percent. There were times when I was confused why the keys stopped working, but the actual hidden reason was that the volume's value was somehow -500 percent, so increasing it by 5 percent via my keys would have taken a little time.

While I believe Memory Saver was a great improvement, it only works if the tab is hidden or the window minimized. I recently learned the required state is not triggered if the tab is open but on another virtual desktop. At least this is the case with many of not all Linux window managers. Some of the many discussion threads on the topic:

https://github.com/i3/i3/issues/4353

This is partially why i use tools like i3 (/ sway). i like the tool; it works extremely well for me; the design has stayed the same for 20 years; there's no profit motive to come along and fuck everything up. it just works. it is boring in the best way possible.

I use MacBook Pro (Retina, 15-inch, Mid-2014) with Manjaro as OS using i3 as a window manager. It isn't perfect, but I'm thrilled with it. I have been a Mac OS user for the last 15 years and wouldn't change what I have now for a Mac OS because I don't need more than what I'm using for development.

Even though, we have moved the official i3 support channel to GitHub discussions, i3's biggest community is still on reddit and if things continue like that there is going to be a lot of helpful content on an increasingly closed platform.

I've used awesome for years. Love it, and never really looked at anything else since I found it. It's based on a fork of dwm I guess, so maybe I would like dwm also.

https://awesomewm.org/

While the argument of "I deal with X11-based WMs because it's fine when I don't care about security at all" may be valid in very narrow cases (such as air-gapped systems), the argument more generally is pretty weak.

Its not surpising that x11 based WMs, such as the almighty [awesomeWM](https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome), have more features implemented than, for instance, [jay](https://github.com/mahkoh/jay) due to the enormous time it has had to develop (though I am _very_ excited to see `jay` develop more fully, and expect it to be well used by the more tech-savy devs).

However, some WMs in the Wayland space are doing quite well on that front. I recently had some substantial problems arise in my system which (surprisingly to me, but perhaps some are getting used to this) would have been prevented by using a memory safety language for my WM, so I have made the switch to (for better or worse) only ever consider Wayland+Rust WMs. In this space, [niri](https://github.com/YaLTeR/niri) is actually quite good, and to the point - it is developing correctly _and very quickly_. So, any issues on some WM not implementing some desired feature are quickly disappearing.

IIRC, all the major 'gateway' linux distros, such as Ubuntu or Fedora, are all on Wayland by default now - so I don't imagine x11 will stay relevant much longer.

> Is there more advanced stuff that's more complex that I just haven't seen?

Yes? I mean, it even has a system to install plugins made with WASM, from what I saw in the docs. I guess you could just use the basics and be okay with it.

For me, after years of tinkering with apps like Vim, Emacs, and AwesomeWM [1], I've developed a bit of PTSD over the amount of time these kinds of tools can take to configure and master. Zellij feels like it belongs in this category of tools, and perhaps I'm overreacting or flinching. :-)

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1: https://awesomewm.org/

I used Lua for years to configure my awesomewm desktop environment. Then, I started using it to configure my Wezterm. Since I bumped into an Emacs bug (lsp-mode bug to be fair), I switched quickly to Neovim after 20 years of Emacs, and I am using Lua to configure my Neovim. Last but not least, OpenResty gives my Nginx superpowers with Lua.

My windows manager is awesome. No really, I mean it, it’s awesome. ↩

https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/issues/3132

i'm reading this issue and this thread as i'm looking into migrate to wayland, since sooner or later we'll apparently have (i know this won't be very soon, but wayland is more and more mainstream). I know "any update on this?" is very annoying, and that's why i'm not open an issue, but... Any update on this?

I guess, it's not supported at the moment or you'll have to do some hacks.. There is this issue (#3777) with the same problem.

This is the correction in awesome-git: https://github.com/awesomeWM/awesome/pull/3657/files