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Comment by fstephany | Hacker News Reader

Regolith [1] is the perfect i3+Ubuntu combo for me.

It comes with sensible default for a good i3 experience but you keep the Ubuntu "universality".

I cannot recommend this enough for those looking to dip their toes in tiling managers. I would have saved a lot of time and trouble if I'd gone to Regolith directly, which I only did after spending hours trying to get i3wm into a useful (for me) DE, and realizing that Regolith was what I'd been trying to do all along.

The good stuff from Ubuntu-gnome (easy-to-use common settings GUIs, utilities etc), + the good stuff from i3, well put together and simple to customize, i3-gaps by default, and easy to install.

It also led me to discover i3blocks/i3xrocks which I didn't know I needed.

here's an example of a i3xrocks script for bluetooth status in the tray.

    #!/bin/bash

    # how hard is it to find a bluetooth symbol in common fonts...
    # more icons at https://fontawesome.com/cheatsheet?from=io
    LABEL_ICON= #ᛒ # '' # #  # ᛒ
    LABEL_FONT="Material Design Icons"
    LABEL_COLOR=${label_color:-$(xrescat i3xrocks.label.color "#7B8394")}
    VALUE_COLOR=${color:-$(xrescat i3xrocks.value.color)}
    VALUE_FONT=${font:-$(xrescat i3xrocks.value.font)}

    PANGO_START="<span color=\"${LABEL_COLOR}\" font_desc=\"${LABEL_FONT}\">${LABEL_ICON}</span><span color=\"${VALUE_COLOR}\" font_desc=\"${VALUE_FONT}\">"
    PANGO_END="</span>"

    NCONNECTED=$(expr $(hcitool con | wc -l) - 1)
    echo ${PANGO_START}${NCONNECTED}${PANGO_END}

    if [ ! -z "$button" ]; then
        /usr/bin/i3-msg -q exec /usr/bin/gnome-control-center bluetooth
    fi

Long-time i3 user here, just getting ready to try Regolith when I upgrade to 20.04. Interested to see what I get from it, and what I need to override back to my current setup.

Any pointers for an i3 user moving to Regolith?

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