Introduction to i3wm

i3wm is a popular Linux tiling window manager that is lightweight and has a keyboard oriented interface, tiling window manager are not full fledged Desktop environments but they provide a windowing interface where windows are placed next to each other either horizontally, vertically or tabbed, they don’t allow windows to be placed on top of each other.

Here we can see how the windows are ‘tiled’ next to each other.

Tiling windows managers are helpful when you don’t to keep moving your mouse to display to focus another window. They are also extremely lightweight and are perfect for devices with little memory or low battery capacity as they consume little energy.

Installation

Installing i3 is fairly simple as all linux package managers have it their repositories.

Debian based systems (apt)

sudo apt install i3

Arch based systems (pacman)

sudo pacman -S i3

This should install i3 and you hop into it by logging out and choosing an i3wm session from your display-manager on the login page.

First Look

When you first boot into a session of i3, you will be greeted by a Dialog message where you are prompted to choose a modifier key, this modifier key is used in combination with other keys to issue window management commands. Choose the default option which is the windows key.

Next you will empty screen with a wallpaper and a small status bar where you can see the following information, time,RAM and disk usage,IP address, a network-manager applet and a network status.

To open up your favorite programs, use Home+D to open up the menu and type the name of your program and the enter, a window should open in full screen. If you open another window it will be opened in split mode where the windows are placed side by side.

Here are some of the other modes and their activation keys

1. Stacked Vertically: Home+s
2. Tabbed: Home+w
3. Split: Home+e

You can also have floating windows with Home+shift+space.

Configuration

To configure i3wm edit the configuration file at .config/i3/config, here you can edit the font, keybindings, screen-locker, status bar, work-spaces and much more. The full guide is located here https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html

Summary

I3wm is a fantastic window manager and it will be worth your time to familiarize yourself with it, It may not look user friendly but with small effort can easily master it. It offers a great new look and an escape from the mouse centered Desktop environments.