My take-on with i3 window manager in Fedora Linux

Against all odds in graphical interface for keyboard junkies

urxvt in i3 window manager. Image by Fedora i3 SIG.

For minimalism and keyboard-driven workflow on a laptop, I love the i3 tiling window manager that is lightweight and splits windows vertically and horizontally by keybindings. i3 helps a simple way to work with documentation, web browsing, terminal and text editor.

For out-of-the-box experience without layering on desktop environment, I install Fedora i3 Spin. Here are a few settings tweaked to my preference;

• Install slick-greeter and xrdb
• Enable and restart lightdm (display manager) to relogin: login screen looks cool

Terminal emulators

I use GUI for basic settings. The terminal is for ssh, fine-tuning system, and advanced configuration.

I settled in with GNOME Terminal and urxvt. The latter comes with i3 Spin. It requires editing a text file in ~/.Xresources

GNOME Terminal

GNOME terminal reminds me of the age-old cliché: ‘it just works.’

A minimalist GNOME Terminal set-up is;
- Set custom keyboard shortcuts: ctrl + alt + t
- Pimp bash prompt with Powerline: Source from Fedora Magazine

sudo dnf install powerline powerline-fonts
sudo nano ~/.bashrc

Add the following lines to .bashrc

if [ -f `which powerline-daemon` ]; then
  powerline-daemon -q
  POWERLINE_BASH_CONTINUATION=1
  POWERLINE_BASH_SELECT=1
  . /usr/share/powerline/bash/powerline.sh
fi

- Custom font: Liberation mono 11
- Colours: Tango Dark
- Transparent background
- Solarized palette
- Hide menubar

GNOME terminal with Powerline theme

urxvt Terminal

If I’m on i3, I alternate between two colour themes for urxvt terminal.

Blue theme

Rather than reinventing the wheel, I used the configuration template from Fedora Pagure code hosting system. Get git repo from here. It’s freaking sweet. See below from i3 SIG.

Pink theme

I use pink themed urxvt config file downloaded from Github and reload Xresources.

Text editors pairing with terminal

A choice of text editors is a highly subjective and controversial field. There are no right default settings for text editors. My preference depends on what system I’m using locally and connecting remotely. But, I can’t deny I have a preference — gedit when I’m on local computer (GNOME desktop). If remote computers, vi (vim) all the way.

• gedit or mousepad: GUI-based. Usual copy and paste (ctrl+c, ctrl+v) muscle memory works.
• nano or vi: Command line editing. Managing files (merge, replace and more) with the fewest number of keystrokes. vi/vim may be the only option when you work with remote server and cloud VM.

That’s it for now. Thanks for browsing!