i3wm: Jump Start (1/3)

Alex Booker · 1.1M views · 2015-11-01 · 16:42

Open on YouTube ↗

If playback is restricted in your region, try opening the original video. Use Mark watched to add it to your marked videos.

Overview

First of a three-part tutorial series on the i3 tiling window manager for Linux. It explains what i3 is, how to install it on Ubuntu, and how to use it.

On Hacker News

HN commenters call it the best i3 tutorial on YouTube and recommend it for getting started thoroughly.

Recommended by 4 HN people across 4 months · HN mentions 2015–2020

Topics

Linux & open-source ecosystems Testing, debugging & developer tools

What people said

typenil · 2020-06 · Strong recommendation
Most of my productivity gains these days has come from aligning myself and my workstation. - i3wm ( [LINK] ) - particularly getting comfortable editing the .i3/config. It's the most significant productivity change I've had since switching to Linux from Windows. To get into it, I highly recommend this 3-part video series from Code Cast: [VIDEO] - yadm ( [LINK] ) - a dotfile manager. It's essentially a git wrapper, but it's allowed me tons of freedom tweaking my setup without worrying about persisting it. It supports encryption and switching file versions based on which system you're on.
Read the original HN comment ↗

santoriv · 2017-05 · Strong recommendation
I use Arch but if you are starting out I would recommend Ubuntu. It's probably got the most youtube videos, online articles, troubleshooting questions online. This make things a bit easier. For example, you mention i3 - probably the best i3 tutorial on youtube is running ubuntu. -> [VIDEO]
Read the original HN comment ↗

kentt · 2017-10 · Recommendation
i3wm. I thought it couldn't be that much better, it just a window manager. Now it's hard to imagine using anything else. If you want to get started the long exhaustive way, start here: [VIDEO] .
Read the original HN comment ↗

Sources

Video by Alex Booker, played through YouTube.

HN Library · Source license

Data and selection notes

HN summaries and labels may contain AI errors. HN dates refer to discussions, not video publication.

HN Library: HackerTube export (2026-10-31) and open-index/hacker-news. Upstream summaries and classifications may contain AI errors.

Views, duration and playback status refresh separately from the published catalog. When an update fails, existing data remains visible.

Selection checks

SaaS & AI candidates: Topic keywords do not match
Editor-approved picks: Editorial review is required

Rule matches identify candidates. They do not guarantee video quality or financial results.

About the library and its sources