Why I use i3

My first ever experience with a computer was with the C64. Many of us might remember, that there was no desktop environment back in those days. We "Keyboard warriors" relied on the knowledge of the command line interface (CLI).

When I got my first PC, it had MS-DOS (don't remember the exact version), but I was happy since my knowledge transferred over.

I was happy until Windows 3.11 happened. Having such a UI was, lets say, uncomfortable to me. I played games that had UI's and I was familiar with using my mouse but it felt weird.

When I made something happen in CLI, it was there quite fast, but with the UI of Windows 3.11 (and later on Windows 95), I had to wait for something to happen. I wasn't a fan of it.

With Windows 98 (and a fast PC at that time) this became a bit better, but I missed doing everything in CLI since it still felt faster and more controlled.

With Windows 2000 and XP later on, I almost forgot about even having a CLI. Since I was playing games most of the time, I didn't really care anymore.

Fedora Core 1 brought me the first experience with a Linux desktop environment, called GNOME2. Since I was an IT-Technician apprentice, I got again more and more familiar with CLI and absolutely loved it.

The time came when I switched to Linux completely with Linux Mint and Arch later on. I was familiar with GNOME2, loved it and suddenly GNOME3 happened. To this day, I just can't befriend GNOME3 for a couple of reasons, so I switched to MATE.

I don't know why and when it happened, but one day I just couldn't take it anymore. From day 1 I navigated most of my things with the terminal (as I was used to it), but I didn't dive too far into what was possible. That changed drastically.

I started to replace Pidgin with Finch (which is basically Pidgin in CLI), I move my IRC from Pidgin to Weechat, and a whole lot more.

After I did switch to basically having everything in my Terminal, I thought that I just don't need X11 anymore besides for gaming.

With taking a journey into the world of Window Managers and testing around a bunch of them, I fell in love with i3.

Here are my personal reasons:

• The way workspaces are handled with multi-monitor setups
• The way i3bar just gives me what I need
• The way the config file is handled
• The way tiling is managed (including tabs mode)

It took me days to experiment with different ways of configuring my i3, but in the end, I was a happy Owl. Having a clear structure on how and where my windows are (if I need them) and being that fast let me stick to it for so many years now.

Even tho I only have my Terminal open (+Firefox cause some pages aren't CLI friendly), i3 just does everything I expect from it without getting in my way.

I test newer versions of desktop environments from time to time to see what goes on, but I find myself disabling and changing so much stuff in process that I instantly remember why I love i3 so much.