OUR EXPERT
Mats Tage Axelsson keeps finding new ways of using Linux for everyday tasks. His desktop stays the same, despite trying – making the laptop dance is still some way off.
Plan specific sessions for testing new desktops – it takes time and is exhausting. It is also oddly addictive to try new ways of doing things.
SWAY AND I3 SHARES
Your biggest challenge will be keybindings – they tend to be the same on most systems. Being able to lock the keyboard input to the nested desktop is helpful.
DWL – COMPILE YOUR OWN.
OUR EXPERT
Even the default setting for Awesome has neat features, and it shows you all its apps in a dropdown menu. e all have a desktop on our computers and they have caused countless flame wars over the W years. Barring hardcore hackers who live in a terminal shell, most people want a nice graphical frontend to look at while they work or play.
Users of the i3 window manager should be aware that Sway is a clone of the first. It shares the configuration files, which is the main design goal of Sway. As you switch over from i3 under X, you can use the exact same configuration files. You may find some features that are not yet supported in Sway but the majority are already there.
As part of the Suckless (low-overhead design) tools, you can find dwm. This is a desktop environment that you compile yourself. Any changes and tweaks are set in the config.h file before compiling. No changes are made during execution and you have no configuration files during normal operation.
Mats Tage Axelsson keeps finding new ways of using Linux for everyday tasks. His desktop stays the same, despite trying – making the laptop dance is still some way off.
The two most common choices are Gnome and KDE, which work splendidly for most situations. In spite of this, there’s merit in trying other options. Apart from looks, you also have resource usage to consider. If your system is a Raspberry Pi or similar, you may want a more slimline binary.
Although not recommended, you can even point to your old i3 files for configuration and run Sway out of the box. This makes it easy to make a gradual switch. It also gives you the opportunity to use old shared configurations for new changes to your own setup.