If you read this blog before, you probably know my perfect setup: Fedora Linux, the i3 window manager (or Sway), the terminal, Ranger, Vim and lot, lots of automation. I got to this setup after meticulously searching for tools that could improve my workflow so I could be more productive, doing less. However, during that journey I realized that the browsing experience - which takes a lot of our productive time - wasn't as optimal as it could be, so I started looking for ways to optimize it as well.
Turns out that Vimium is the key ingredient on that setup. On this post, let's learn what Vimium is, what it offers, how to use it, and how you too can be more productive, regardless of what your perfect setup might be.
About Vimium
So what's Vimium? Vimium's is a browser extension that provides keyboard shortcuts for navigating
and controlling your browser inspired by the Vim text editor.
But why use Vimium?
So why should you care for yet another browser extension? Because Vimium:
will increase your productivity: by allowing you navigate the web without using the mouse.
makes you work faster: when you get used with Vimium you'll be able to accomplish work faster.
is highly customizable: allowing you to set your own keyboard shortcuts
is simple to use: once you understand how it works, it'll be very intuitive
has Vim-like keybindings: this is what makes Vimium
helps reducing your fatigue: during the day, we do thousands of movements from the keyboard to the mouse. Keeping your hands centered on the keyboard will save you a lot of energy.
is an active open-source project: mature and healthy open-source projects are important as they guarantee you'll receive updates, fixes and improvements. You can find it's source code here.
Contrary to what you may have heard, Vim is a fantastic text editor. Vim emphasizes good typing practices by leveraging the keys located around the home row. The home row (F and J) is the most efficient place to place of your fingers causing less muscular stress and reduced arm movement. Vimium brings these concepts to the browser, transforming the traditional point-click browsing experience into productivity through the use of the keyboard.
Installing Vimium
Installing Vimium is very simple. Just open the app store for your browser and click Add extension (or equivalent) button on the extension page. Google Chrome users check this page, Firefox users can find Vimium here.
Installing Vimium on your browser should be as simple as navigating to the links above, clicking the Add extension button and confirming. No restart is necessary.
Using Vimium
With Vimium installed, let's start with the basics. The most essential shortcuts are:
f: pressing f will make Vimium highlight all hyperlinks. Entering the key opens the link on the same tab
F: same as f but opens on another tab
x: close the current tab
j: scroll down
k: scroll up
d: scroll down half a page
u: scroll up half a page
gg: scroll to top of the page
G: scroll to bottom of the page
H: go to the previous page
L: go the the next page
b: open a bookmark
/: search
Vimium does not run on all pages. If the V icon on your bar is grey, it's turned off. Vim also does not run by default on Private Mode but you can configure it to, on the extension settings page.
Managing Tabs
Vimium can also manage your tabs. The most used commands are:
x: close the current tab
F + link: opens link in another tab
J: previous tab
K: next tab
g<num>: goes to tab <num>
t: create new tab
yt: duplicate current tab
X: undo close tab
Getting Help
With Vimium installed, press ? to view the default shortcuts. You should see a screen like this:
A simple example
So let's do a simple example if possible, by just using the keyboard. With Vimium installed, open its GitHub page and press f. You should see:
As
you can realize, all the yellow boxes contain letters inside. Typing
them will tell the browser to click those links. For example, if I
pressed S, I'd be taken to the link that here points to on the same tab. Need to continue working? Just open a new tab and go from there. Change tabs with J or K (uppercase), close with x, rinse and repeat.
I used F instead of f, typing S next would open here in another tab.
Advanced Features
As previously said, Vimium is also highly configurable. Because it's out of the scope of this post, will simply point you to the official configuration. There's a lot more there and once you get used with the tool you'll probably want to explore and customize it to your needs.
Conclusion
On this post we explained why using Vimium may yield good results by increasing your productivity and reducing your fatigue. I hope you are excited to
try it out. If you want to learn other productivity hacks, check the Ranger file manager and the Vim text editor. Together with Vimium, these tools will make your workflow way more productive.
Understand what i3 is and how it can drastically change how you use your Linux desktop.
I've been using the i3 window manager for a couple of years and would like to share some thoughts about it. But first let's understand what i3 is and how it can drastically change how you use your Linux desktop.
a tilingwindow manager, completely written from scratch. The target platforms are
GNU/Linux and BSD operating systems, our code is Free and Open Source Software
(FOSS) under the BSD license. i3 is primarily targeted at advanced users and
developers.
But what's a tiling window manager?
Tiling Window Managers
A tiling window manager is a program that runs on top of your operating system's graphical user interface (GUI) that auto-manages your windows for you. The most common way users interact with their computers these days is via desktop mangers (GNOME, KDE, XFCE, etc). That same program includes tools to set wallpapers, login managers, drag and move windows around and interact with other running windows and services.
So what are the differences between a tiling window manager and a desktop manager? Many. For simplicity, tiling window managers:
are way simpler than full desktop managers
consume way less resources
require you to setup most things yourself
auto-place windows on the desktop
automatically split window space
do not allow dragging or moving windows around
always use 100% of the allocated space
are easily customizable
allow managing desktop applications using the keyboard
can be configured to pre-load specific configurations
Why i3
Working with i3 may be a radical shift in how we use our computers, so why should one switch from traditional desktop environments like Gnome, KDE, MATE, Cinnamon to i3? In summary, you should consider i3 because i3:
will make you more productive
is simple, concise
is lightweight
is fast, super fast
is not bloated, not fancy (but can be)
is extremely customizable allowing you to configure it the way you like
reduces context switching, saving you time and brain power since you will stop wasting time dragging and searching for windows around
allows you to manage your workspace entirely using the keyboard
has vim-like keybindings (yes, this is a plus!!)
has easy support for vertical and horizontal splits, and parent containers.
improves your battery life
can integrate with other tools of your system
will make you feel less tired after a day of work
will make you learn better the GNU/Linux operating system
will make you more the terminal and terminal-based tools
So let's review some of the main reasons to switch to i3.
A Beautiful Desktop
i3 will make your desktop beautiful. Through its simplicity you will discover a more uniform and elegant experience. For example, take a look at this beautiful Arch desktop running i3. See how all applications integrate seamlessly. No overridden windows, no pixels wasted.
My productivity increased significantly using i3. Why? Because it's keyboard-friendly nature made me stopped using the mouse significantly. Yes, I still have to use the it but now I try to keep that to a minimum. Today, 90% of my work can be easily accomplished via keystrokes.
On traditional desktop environments spend a lot of time dragging windows around and alt-tabbing between them. i3 saves hundreds of alt-tabs and hand-right-hand-leftmovements to reach the mouse. That's a lot of context switch saved, and a lot of efficiency gained!
Less Fatigue
i3 will also reduce your fatigue. Why? Arm right, Arm left, that involuntary movement we do thousands of times a day to reach the mouse adds a lot of fatigue to our body and it's one of the main reasons we feel exhausted after using the computer for a day. With i3, you'll keep your hands on the home row of my keyboard and move less your arms to achieve the tasks you need. You'll probably feel less tired after a day of work on my Fedora at home than after a couple of hours on Windows.
Highly Customizable
Unless you're super
minimalist, you will like customize your i3. There are a lot of
tutorials out there and I urge you pick some specific for your distro.
In general people add a different color
scheme, change icons, fonts, the toolbar, and the Gnome theme when applicable. Some examples can seen here.
The i3 configuration is simple to read, understand, share and modify. Don't like that keybinding? Change your ~/.config/i3/config file and do your changes. For example, here are some of my custom bindings:
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i3 is available on repositories for Fedora, Ubuntu, Arch and other major distros. That said, installation should be straightforward by using your package manager (see below). After you start i3 the first time, you are prompted for an initial configuration that will set the basics for you to get rolling.
After installation, you'll be prompted with this screen on your first login
Compatible with GNOME/KDE tools
Be assured that you will still use all your GUI applications with i3. Firefox, Chromium, Calculator, Nautilus, Gnome settings or Gimp, everything should be available and accessible trough the default dmenu.
You may not realize but once you memorize the commands and rely less on the mouse and on graphical applications which by design are less feature-rich, you will become more confident using your system, improve and accelerate your workflow. Then you learn more and repeat the cycle.
You will learn new tools
You will also learn new tools. And because you'll be using more and more the terminal, you will probably change your whole workflow and realize you'll be more productive using the terminal. For example, these are the tools I'm using more and more:
Vim - my main text editor. Adheres very well to the i3 workflow.
Mutt - not perfect but very decent email client for the terminal
Ranger - a fantastic file management for the terminal!
Computational performance is like free beer, we never say no =). GNOME was already fast on my notebook but i3 makes it even faster. Add to that less memory consumption (my system running i3 utilizes around 400Mb of memory, while GNOME consumes 1GB) and you realize how performant your machine be! And it gets even better with old hardware paired with XFCE, LXDE or LXQT.
You will learn more about Linux
Using i3 made me learn and know more about the Linux system and the GNU tools. Because I drastically shifted how I do my work on my Linux box to using tools such as grep, Vim, Tmux, ranger and mutt. I've also stopped and finally learned how to work well with sed, awk, systemd, firewalld, networkd, auditctl and lots of other system tools that I never bothered with.
Installing i3
If you sympathized with i3, let's see how to install it.
On your first login, you should be presented with this screen that will automatically generate a configuration for your user:
Next Steps
The best way to get started with i3 (and its sibling Sway) is of course, by using Fedora. The community has produced two spins with the basic setups called Fedora i3 Spin and Fedora Sway Spin. Please check those pages for more information.
Test it on a VM
Once you read the documentation, I'd recommend to install it on the VM hypervisor of your choice. (Hyper-V, VirtualBox or VMware workstation are the most popular). Please git yourself some time to familiarize yourself with the proposal before giving up.
Read the docs
The first thing you should do is read and understand well the documentation. i3's official documentation is also an excellent resource and very well documented. YouTube, GitHub and the i3wm community on Reddit are also great resources to get started and learn how to tweak your setup.
Get used
Once you're comfortable with the setup, consider doing some of these:
Get used to using the <mod>+enter to start your terminal
Map applications you use the most i3 bindings (see Customization above for some examples)
Configure your toolbar to add/remove information you need
Keep learning more about i3. Use it for some time before removing removing it if you're struggling.
Once you start getting comfortable with it, start replacing GUI-based applications for TUI-based applications (those that run on the terminal)
Consider changing your workflow to optimize repetitive actions (using aliases for example)
Continue learning and tweaking your config files until you're productivity goes up
Tweak
Next, feel free to tweak i3 as much as you need! In case the defaults don't appeal to you (probably they won't),
remember, you can always change. For example, it's simple to switch the
defaults to:
Let me be clear: i3 is not for everyone. If you're a
mouse person, if you don't like to spend time configuring your desktop,
learning new tools, using the terminal, don't bother with i3. Linux
desktop environments are amazing and have everything that a user already needs out of the box.
But, if you want to
be more productive, learn better your Linux system, configure your
system as you want, I would urge you to try i3. Set aside some time to
learn the default key bindings, learn how to configure it and use it for
a couple of weeks. Don't give up before that. Let your muscle memory
work 😉.
