Third Time the Charm With i3

I had three topics in mind that I could have worked out and presented here, but instead, I created an i3 config to prove to myself that I still love dwm.

The improved improved improved window manager always bugged me, and I’ve tried to fall for it twice already. As I mentioned, I have one true love among window managers, but I think now I finally understand i3.

There are some benefits to using i3: it’s widely accessible, easy to configure, and has very good documentation. One important thing to understand is that although new windows take up the most space on the screen, this is still a manual tiler. Instead of having a set layout, you manage it on the fly. This is the most distinct feature of i3, and it’s also the one I like the least. It’s common practice to make i3 an auto-tiler with scripts, but I did not want to go that route. I just want to use it as it’s meant to be by design. And honestly, I can use any kind of tiling because usually, I have only one or two windows per workspace.

As you can guess, I did not change much visually—mostly kept the default colors and reduced the information on the i3status bar.

The most time-consuming part was setting up the keybindings because I already had a lot of expectations in that area. I use sxhkd with dwm, but I made my i3 config simpler, so I said goodbye to it.

My intention is for this to be my fast and dirty graphical environment when needed, so it is missing some features that I have in dwm. For example, there are no keybindings for a clipboard manager, which I don’t use in i3.

Another driving force was that the only Wayland compositor that looks good to me and seems to be stable is sway. When I want to jump, it would be easier to switch to it if I already have a working i3 config.

So, fifteen years late to the party, but here is my config .