So, I have been tinkering.
Back in June, I installed Linux Mint 22, with the MATE desktop to an empty partition on my system and configured it to look like old-school GNOME 2. It’s a nice environment, something to have fun with, like using Compiz to turn my desktop into a cube and then spinning it around on the screen.
Two weeks ago I installed the i3 window manager alongside MATE. i3 is a tiling windo manager; the first window you open on a screen automatically goes fullscreen, then each subsequent window takes half. Neat, symmetric tiles.
Normally, i3 is run by itself, but I wondered—could MATE use i3 as its window manager? I found a guide, and I decided to give it a try.
i3 installed, I created a new user on the Mint MATE install— the user name is an unimaginative “i3″—and the configured MATE the way I had set it up before, in the GNOME 2 layoutmdash; panels top and bottom, with menus, quick launch icons, and status indicators top, window list and workspace switcher bottom. It looked and felt exactly like what I did in June—Mint-Y-Dark-Teal theme, and the Mint-Y icon set.
I later decided to vary it up and changed to a light theme—Mint-X-Teal— but still keeping the icon set. (The Mint-X icons are dated, imho.)
I followed the guide. I changed my window manager through the terminal to i3, logged out, and logged back in. It didn’t quite work. I got a black screen with the two panels. What I had to do was to start up an i3 session, which generates the configuration file, and then I could fire up MATE with i3 as its window manager. Once I was sure it worked—I opened up application after application, new applications tiling on the screen—I started to modify my configuration file.
While I have the Classic GNOME Menu at top&mash;Applications, Places, System—I also have MintMenu active on the bottom panel. It doesn’t appear to be there, but it’s next to the Show Desktop icon (which doesn’t actually do anything in i3, and it generates an error message when clicked). I have MintMenu set to have no icon. Since i3 uses the Windows/Super key for its keyboard shortcuts, it didn’t make sense for the MintMenu to launch with the Windows/Super key. Since I didn’t need dmenu, which was installed with i3 and is built into the configuration file, I uninstalled dmenu and set MintMenu to launch with dmenu’s keyboard shortcut‐Super-D.
With MATE handling the panels and the indications, I didn’t need i3-bar, so I disabled that in my configuration file, too. I also set up a color scheme for window borders that was consistent with the Mint-X-Teal color scheme.
Could I use my remote desktop at work in MATE-i3?
As a full screen single window, it works just fine. It’s even handy to have Xcalc, a Linux calculator application, “float” over the desktop. (The calculator shown in the image below is running on my local machine, not a Windows application on my remote system at work.)
But… what if I wanted to “split” the screen and have a Linux application running alongside the remote desktop? Could I do that? Would the remote desktop app—I use freerdp—work, and would it reize to fill the space as new applications are opened?
Yes, freerdp can be configured to reize the desktop to the available space. There’s a flag that needs to be set when it’s launched to make that happen. It can be tetchy. If there’s an application open on my remote desktop, it’s possible freerdp might crash and close, so I’ve found it’s best to minimize any open Windows applications. (I think reflowing things on the remote desktop to fit the new space, especially icons and windows, just overwhelms the remote desktop client. Reduce the workload, and it works better.)
And, for example…
On the left, I have a spreadsheet open on my local machine. On the right, I have open my remote desktop and an application I use frequently at work. (It’s the application in which I write the PREVIEWS catalog every month.) The spreadsheet is a list of the items in the current batch that I will be writing about. At the office, I would print it out and cross off items with a pen as I go. (This is what I did today at the office as I worked on two catalog sections.) In this set-up at home, I can have that spreadsheet open on my computer, and next to it the application I use to write the catalog. Finish an item on the right, highlight an item on the left.
Sure, I could resize windows and do this within a single remote desktop, but with MATE-i3, I don’t have to worry about resizing windows and placing them in relation to each other on the screen. i3 does that for me, automatically. The result is a solid and efficient workflow.
There are some quirks that I’m still working out. The big one is workspaces.
The way i3 is typically used, applications are set to launch full-screen on new workspaces. This is set up in the configuration file; one might have their browser open on workspace 2, LibreOffice on workspace 4, etc. MATE handles workspaces differently than i3, so opening on a new workspace doesn’t seem to work. The workspace switcher in my bottom panel does work, but as you leave a workspace with no applications, the workspace will disappear from the switcher.
I have the Window List applet in the bottom panel—this gives you Windows 95/98/XP-like window indicators in the panel—and having it set to “Show windows from all workspaces” and “Restore to native workspace” is useful. Even though the workspace switcher shows icons of what’s open, it’s helpful to see the application name at the bottom, and “native workspace” will take you to that application on its workspace if that’s now where you are.
There’s some cursor weirdness that I haven’t figured out.
I would recommend using the menu editor to turn off Desktop Settings from the Preferences->Look and Feel menu. Opening Desktop Settings will reset your window manager; when you start a new session, you’ll have to turn i3 back on. i3 technically doesn’t have a desktop, so the application is useless anyway.
That’s what I’ve been working on.
It’s not the most important thing in the world. Not even sure it’s useful. I don’t know that I would use this for daily use, but for my one specific use case it was definitely worth the experimentation.
And it plain looks nice. 🙂