How-to: i3 window manager?

WetGeek

Is anyone here using it? If so, how? The forum search offers nothing about it, and I've not been able to find out anything from i3 --help that actually helps me. I can start a TTL prompt and try to launch it from there, but I just get an error telling me that another window manager is running. How can I switch, to try out i3?

I'm able to install i3 from the repository using eopkg, so I assumed that there would be a way for us to use it.

Staudey

https://getsol.us/articles/software/desktop-environments/en/#i3

You'd select it at the login screen, like other desktop environments.

WetGeek

Staudey You'd select it at the login screen, like other desktop environments.

Thanks, but ... those instructions say not to install it if running Plasma as a DE. I do use Plasma. So am I totally out of luck, or has anything changed since that article was created?

WetGeek

Staudey You'd select it at the login screen, like other desktop environments.

Thanks. I popped the Budgie SSD into my Travelmate laptop, and that worked as advertised. It's pretty sparse, though, in place of a DE. I found that some of the commands work as they do in Snal Linux, such as Super+ enter to start a terminal, but few others that I could remember.

My curiosity is satisfied for now. Thanks again.

tomscharbach

WetGeek Thanks, but ... those instructions say not to install it if running Plasma as a DE. I do use Plasma. So am I totally out of luck, or has anything changed since that article was created?

Plasma is an entirely different animal than the other DE's, and is not compatible with them. Use one of your Solus VM's -- Budgie, Gnome, MATE -- to do i3.

WetGeek

tomscharbach Use one of your Solus VM's -- Budgie, Gnome, MATE -- to do i3.

Thanks. I wish I'd thought of that before I changed SSDs in my Travelmate laptop.

WetGeek

tomscharbach Plasma is an entirely different animal than the other DE's

I'm not so sure that's a bad thing. 😆

WetGeek

WetGeek I wish I'd thought of that before I changed SSDs in my Travelmate laptop.

Coming to you now from my Budgie VM, logged in with i3. I've had a chance to play with this for a while now, and I've figured out a lot of it. Used Super+enter to start a terminal and did some configuration there, then Super+d to start Vivaldi, and back in the terminal used Super+Shift+Backspace to slose that window, and use Vivaldi full-screen. I just need to memorize some more of the i3 Super+ commands.

The only thing I'm missing is a menu. I need to remember the names of everything I might want to run, but I think I could get used to that after a while. And the only thing that's not working is my mouse wheel to scroll stuff. I have had a number of other VMs running other distros where this happens, too. Maybe related? But where scrolling is needed, there's usually a vertical scroll bar I can use to do that, so it's not really a big deal, just an inconvenience.

This is fun,anyway,and I'm glad Tom suggested using a VM to experiment with i3. My network was connected automatically, so I'm going to launch Dolphin now, and see if it can access my NAS shares. I suspect it can.

WetGeek

WetGeek I'm going to launch Dolphin now, and see if it can access my NAS shares.

It can. I needed to install Dolphin first, and its 61 dependencies, but in the end it worked admirably. It even respected the symlinks I'd put in place when I was running Budgie on this VM. In other words, my /home folder called Documents showed the contents of the Documents share on my NAS, and so on for Pictures, Music, and etc.

It's a strange look for Dolphin - all text and no icons, even though the Icons link in the caption bar is selected by default. Maybe a theming thing? Can themes be applied to i3? It all works, though. Folders are in bold text, so it's easy to tell them from files.

The ultimate test for me will be to see how Thunderbird looks in i3. That's next.

WetGeek

WetGeek The ultimate test for me will be to see how Thunderbird looks in i3

Well, that was quick. It works perfectly, and didn't need to be installed first, unlike Dolphin. Everything about it looks exactly the way it does on Plasma. I even read some mail while I was there.

The very last thing I need to do is figure out if any scaling is available with i3. I suspect it's not, as that seems to vary according to the DE that's in use. That would make this a lot easier to use, though. Expecially on a laptop with a HD screen.

mpiekp

Use xrandr from config file to change DPII, that will help eg exec xrandr --dpi 220 in /.config/i3/config
read the sample config file or do a spot of google, theres not much i3wm can't do without a bit of editing.
As I know you like a tinker with differnt distros, take arch-craft for a spin, it is a good showcase of how minimal window managers dont need to be minmal