i3wm: Jump Start (1/3)
Why Hacker News recommends it
HN commenters call it the best i3 tutorial on YouTube and recommend it for getting started thoroughly.
What it is
First of a three-part tutorial series on the i3 tiling window manager for Linux. It explains what i3 is, how to install it on Ubuntu, and how to use it.
Recommended by 4 HN commenters across 4 different months, 2015 to 2020.
What Hacker News said
Strong rec santoriv · 2017-05 · on “Ask HN: What linux distro should I start with?”
I use Arch but if you are starting out I would recommend Ubuntu. It's probably got the most youtube videos, online articles, troubleshooting questions online. This make things a bit easier. For example, you mention i3 - probably the best i3 tutorial on youtube is running ubuntu. -> [this video]
Strong rec typenil · 2020-06 · on “Ask HN: Which tools have made you a much better programmer?”
Most of my productivity gains these days has come from aligning myself and my workstation. - i3wm ( [LINK] ) - particularly getting comfortable editing the .i3/config. It's the most significant productivity change I've had since switching to Linux from Windows. To get into it, I highly recommend this 3-part video series from Code Cast: [this video] - yadm ( [LINK] ) - a dotfile manager. It's essentially a git wrapper, but it's allowed me tons of freedom tweaking my setup without worrying about persisting it. It supports encryption and switching file versions based on which system you're on.
Recommends jarboot · 2015-11 · on “Switching from OS X to FreeBSD – Both Desktop and Laptop”
For those of you that might be professionals or adults that don't spend much time on 4chan/reddit, you should know that i3 is pretty popular with 4chan.org/g/ or reddit's linux subreddits. It's a pretty effective path for us young nerds to get into the linux ecosystem. Beginners might learn vim to modify their ~/.i3/config, hex values for coloring their desktop, or basic CLI commands to add functionality to their keybindings. Maybe they want to add a customized weather applet to the bar at the bottom of the screen, so they write a shell script utilizing wget. Soon enough they're learning to install Arch Linux (because everybody else on that "Show off your desktop" thread is using it), and it
Recommends kentt · 2017-10 · on “Ask HN: What is your “I wish I did it sooner” moment?”
i3wm. I thought it couldn't be that much better, it just a window manager. Now it's hard to imagine using anything else. If you want to get started the long exhaustive way, start here: [this video] .