I never even considered mixing Gnome desktop with i3wm. But that’s what Regolith Linux has done and its a fantastic hybrid experience. Gnome provides a modern system integration while i3wm provides a smartly configured tiling window manager.
Admittedly Regolith Linux is just as heavy on RAM as any other Gnome desktop. But, at some point we got to admit that Gnome provides a ton of features. Necessary things like configuring wifi, tap to click trackpad support, monitor settings etc. I have 16GB on this device so its not like I can’t spare a few hundred MB to enhance my workflow.
Gnome works very well at fixing many of the user experience issues that crop up with some of the lightweight destktop environments. I’ll keep this installed for a bit. Its a lot of fun.