1. login as other user without exiting my i3wm session

    2. source

    The following (on any terminal) worked like a charm on Ubuntu 16.04 

    dm-tool switch-to-greeter
    … and it allowed me to start a Unity session, do some stuff I could only do there, and then logout and log back into my trusty old i3wm session (which was going on for 169 days at that time). lightdm is the default display manager in Ubuntu 16.04.

  2. how to show all icons in the Unity control center

    3. When running i3wm, if you launch the Unity control center with: 

    unity-control-center
    … you only see 3 icons: Language Support, Printers and Software & Updates.

    To see all icons (e.g. including sound, power management etc.) do: 

    unset XDG_CURRENT_DESKTOP; unity-control-center

  3. get rid of the Nautilus desktop window
    4. The solution given here does not work on Ubuntu 16.04. Instead I tried: 
    nautilus -q
    … suggested here. This produced good results (although when a new i3 window is opened the nautilus default background still appears - but at least the desktop was gone).
  4. make DbVisualizer appear in the dbmen_run bar that gets displayed when Meta+D is pressed
    5. I had installed DbVisualizer in ~/DbVisualizer. From a terminal I can simply type dbvis and start it as it is placed in the PATH by my .bashrc but i3wm is not responsible for sourcing .bashrc. However, in my .profile (which obviously gets taken into account) I add ~/.local/bin in the PATH so I simply created a symlink from ~/.local/bin to ~/DbVisualizer/dbvis.
  5. reload .i3/config configuration from bash

    6. i3-msg reload && i3-msg restart
    … or 
    $mod+Shift+r

  6. awesome video explaining the container tree data structure
    7. i3 screencast: containers and the tree data structure
    Main takeway is the focus-parent command which is by default bound to $mod+A.
  7. how to switch users without leaving the session open
    8. source 
    Ctrl+Alt+F{7,8}
  8. how to install the i3 window manager on Ubuntu
    9. source Execute the following in a sudo shell: 
    echo "deb http://debian.sur5r.net/i3/ $(lsb_release -c -s) universe" >> /etc/apt/sources.list
apt-get update
apt-get --allow-unauthenticated install sur5r-keyring
apt-get update
apt-get install i3
  9. Window shift focus not working with MOD+j k l ;
    10. source

    After verifying that unclutter was running, the following solved it for me in Ubuntu 12.04: 

    sudo apt-get purge unclutter
    ... followed by killing the process.