Tried it briefly, I currently use i3 on ubuntu and found it to be much much slower than that, the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often. I much prefer the i3 style of just showing a blinking cursor on switching windows.
The grid layout is interesting but I found it strange that the all tabs are shown along the left side in split mode.
It would be interesting to see how the grid differs from the tree layout that i3 uses.
I did like their default hot keys and the side bar for switching work spaces.
Ultimately though if you don't like gnome this isn't going to change that.
But if you do prefer i3 and want a more nicer environment with all the gnome system management ui's consider using https://regolith-linux.org/
I Ctrl+F'ed in this thread for Regolith, this should be higher.
Zero setup, incredible keybindings.
You can install it on top of your existing Distro, as an apt package. And then log out + log back in using new DE.
I had never used a tiling WM before Regolith, i3 seemed too difficult to configure for someone who didn't truly didn't understand the point/benefit of using tiling WM's.
A day into using Regolith on Ubuntu I was hooked. Been using it for years now and it's the best decision I've ever made, productivity skyrocketed and it looks nice.
I tried Pop_OS shell's tiling WM, as I was hopeful, but the keybindings and behavior aren't as nice as Regolith. It does a "swap" animation when changing tile positioning that slows stuff down, and I could never get the gap borders to disappear completely.
I'm going through a distro hopping phase, so recently hopped to Fedora spins (am currently on KDE)...but had heard of regolith separately and really liked the idea. So i went to DistroTest[0] and took it for a spin, and it won me over. I still ant to finish my experiment with fedora spins, but right after, I'll be heading Regolith!
> Tried it briefly, I currently use i3 on ubuntu and found it to be much much slower than that, the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often. I much prefer the i3 style of just showing a blinking cursor on switching windows.
I've seen this complaint about GNOME in general before, so I want to mention that animations can be disabled or sped up in GNOME. There's a toggle to disable animations in GNOME completely (using the GNOME tweak tool, in the general setting). There are also add-ons to change their speed (I use Impatience [0]).
> […] the animations while pretty get pretty jarring once u start switching windows too often.
Agree. I have used i3 for several years, but tried GNOME again recently to experience with Pop_OS's tiling feature. It was OK-ish, but a bit slow when resizing windows when rearranging / opening / closing windows, even with animations disabled.
I have read about Material Shell before, but did not try it. Gave it a try today, and I am pleasantly surprised so far. The animations get old very quickly, so I do what I always do in GNOME – disable all animations in Tweak Tools. This made the experience as close to i3 as GNOME has ever been for me. I will keep using the Material Shell for a while and stress-test it a bit.
I'd actually somewhat given up trying to keep i3 working nicely and reverted to XFCE (which is at least far less obnoxious then Gnome 3) until I discovered Regolith and have been using it happily ever since.
The grid layout is interesting but I found it strange that the all tabs are shown along the left side in split mode. It would be interesting to see how the grid differs from the tree layout that i3 uses.
I did like their default hot keys and the side bar for switching work spaces. Ultimately though if you don't like gnome this isn't going to change that. But if you do prefer i3 and want a more nicer environment with all the gnome system management ui's consider using https://regolith-linux.org/