 One of my favorite desktop environments is Xfce and one of my favorite window managers is i3 and One of the coolest things that you can do is put those two together together. They make a really neat Environment and it's actually fairly simple to do So what I wanted to do today was take you through the process of using i3 window manager as the window manager for Xfce Now there are a few things that you should know going in first off the process that I'm going to show you today Should and I quote should work with most window managers now There are going to be a few exceptions to the process and I'll point those out as we go along but Theoretically you could do this with BSPWM with Qtile Maybe with DWM. I'm not actually sure about that, but you with most other window managers This process should work, but certain parts of it might not go exactly the same So just keep that in mind. The only window manager that I've tried this on is i3 So I can't say 100% positively that it will work, but it should Theoretically so just putting that out there another thing that you should keep in mind is that I'm going to be doing this on Arch Linux so the packages that I install today will be named for Arch Linux I will leave a link in the video description below to a tutorial for doing this on Ubuntu So if you want to do this on an Ubuntu based distribution or a Debian based distribution You can find those instructions with the link I provide below. So let's go ahead and get started So here we are in just standard XFC. This is the XFC version provided by Endeavor OS But it really doesn't matter what distro you're on The only thing that's going to change like I said before is going to be the package names or the things that we install But that's going to be just kind of beside the point So the first thing we need to do is install a couple packages So we're going to open up the terminal here and then we're going to install a Couple things from the AUR now if you're on Ubuntu like I said The package names are going to be different and you'll probably have to use a PPA in order to do this for Anybody who's on Arch they'll come from the AUR So we're going to use a AUR helper and we're going to search for i3 IPC and the one that we're looking for is Number two here the GLIB which is GLIB, right? That's the one that we're going to want so I'll press 2 Enter my password. Yes, and wait for that to install. It won't take very long Once that's done, you'll want to do the same thing but instead of i3 IPC We're going to search for i3 Dash workspaces now basically you don't actually have to install this if you're not planning on putting the workspaces in XFC panel But I'm going to do that. So We're going to need this package here. So there's only one package there that it's searched for. Yes, again, it will install that Shouldn't take very long at all and it's done the third and final package that you'll want to install is a Wallpaper setter now you could use something like Faye or you could try to set it up So that the XFC desktop settings would actually work But I found that nitrogen actually works the best so we're going to install nitrogen Like so and then we're all done installing packages now. Oh, actually Completely forgot now and the reason why I completely forgot is because on this system I already have i3 installed if you do not have i3 install You'll want to do pseudo pac-man like so dash s and then i3 just like that All you that's you'll have to that you'll get gaps and everything just by installing that package if you're on arch If you're on Ubuntu, you may need to find the i3 gaps package if you want gaps If not just install i3 It's probably going to be easier for you if you just do the i3 package instead of trying to build i3 gaps I'm not sure what the version is on Ubuntu yet Eventually on Ubuntu you'll get the new i3 if you haven't already and that includes gaps But anyways if you don't have i3 installed you'll want to install that I already do so I don't need to do this now the next thing that you'll want to do is Find the i3 configuration default config file and the easiest way to do that is by searching through Google So if you open up a terminal and search for i3 default Config you'll find that something that looks like this you'll copy this and the only changes you'll need to make is to scroll all the way to the bottom and Comment out these three lines So if we zoom in here just a little bit so you can actually see what you'll want to do is just comment out These three lines because when you reboot into Xfce you're not going to want the default i3 bar You're going to want to use Xfce panel. Otherwise, you're going to be diluting the Xfce Ness of your system if that makes sense so copy this entire file All I did was click on the raw raw to get this part here to get out of the get lab get lab thing or get hub Thing so I copied all this control C and then opened up a terminal So you'll want to do you want to CD to dot config i3 if this doesn't exist You'll want to do make directory dash p and then dot config i3 just like so seeing as how I already have it I'm going to CD into dot config i3 and if I do an alice here You'll see that I already have a configuration file in here If but if you have created just created the file or this directory it won't be here So you'll need to nano into your new file so config and it will be blank But for me it won't there's a whole bunch of stuff here if you go to the bottom There will be those three lines that I just showed you here at the bottom So these three lines right here you'll want to comment those out or delete them It doesn't really matter which probably just deleting them will work just fine Because you're not going to be using the i3 built-in bar So just delete those three lines and then control X to get out of nano and if it will ask you if you want to save hit Enter a couple times and you'll be good to go. Yes. I'm using now. Yes I'm utterly miserable because it's just day one, but that's beyond the point anyways Once you have the config file all set up and ready to go The next thing you'll want to do is make sure that i3 starts so we're going to close these things here We want to make sure that we have no windows open whatsoever We're going to open up the whisker menu or the applications menu What whatever menu that you're using and you're going to want to type in startup like so It's going to be this application here You don't want to go to current session. Excuse me. You want to find two entries here XFW M4 This one here an XF desktop both of these need to change from immediately to never Okay, so this one here also to never and then you want to hit save session Okay, and then the next thing you want to do is go into application auto start hit add Type in the name i3 type in the description. This can be anything window Manager and then type in i3 now This is what reason why I said you probably don't want to use the i3 gaps package if you're on a boon too Simply because the command is going to be different here And I'm not sure how it would be different. It might be i3 dash gaps. It still might be i3 I don't actually know but if you're just using the i3 package the command here is just i3 You want to make sure the trigger is on on login because you want i3 to start in when you log in Okay, and then you're done now I'm going to reiterate this just real quick just so you see what we did We turned off the window manager the XFC uses by default along with the XFC desktop We made sure those things never start up. Okay, and then we added i3 down here at the bottom and Ensured that that starts up on login You also want to once you've saved that thing that we just did come down here to the bottom make sure that the blue check mark Is checked if it's not just give it a check just like so and then we hit close now the next thing we want to do is Click panel and then panel preferences now This is going to be different for you if your panel is different than mine Okay If you have already an XFC desktop setup and you have the workspace switcher set up like I do down here at the Bottom you'll want to remove that so click this oops Make sure you click the right one here remove here remove again And then when we come back what we'll do is add the i3 workspaces plug-in that we installed earlier So we'll hit close we're gonna go down here hit this button here hit Restart we're gonna wait for it to reboot and if we didn't forget anything We should be booting back into XFC using i3 window manager as the window manager. It should be pretty cool So we're booting in here TLC is the password. I just gave that away to everybody And then yeah, you see we have i3 window manager and XFC now yours is gonna look a little bit different than mine because I Accidentally forgot and did not get rid of poly bar. So I'm gonna open up a terminal here We're gonna cd into .config i3 we're gonna nano into yes, I even changed my alias so that I made sure I don't cheat So I'm gonna nano into config go to go down to the bottom We can't just use G. We have to use that and I'm gonna go up go here I'm going to comment this line out here so that poly bar does not launch and while I'm here I'm going to do exec underscore always Dash-no start up ID and then nitrogen dash-restore now This is not going to do anything yet because we have not installed nitrogen and we have not set nitrogen up So that's not going to do anything yet. So we're gonna hit ctrl X. We'll hit yes and enter That's gonna save our configuration file. I'm not gonna restart i3 yet instead. I'm going to install nitrogen Actually, we might have already done that and I just forgot. Yeah, I did actually do that already Wow, okay completely forgot that I did that. Anyway, it's things how we already did install nitrogen I'm going to search for nitrogen here. We will close this one here And now we need to add some wallpapers So add matte pictures walls other walls hit select and hit okay This will take a little bit because I have something like 10,000 wallpapers So it's going to take a little bit for all the wallpapers to start loading. It should very quickly do so. Yeah, there we go Nitrogen is actually pretty quick given the fact that like I said, there's a ton of wallpapers in that folder So we'll just find a random wallpaper do-do-do-do-do-do-do look at there. I found some duplicates I probably have a lot of those we'll choose this one I'm gonna go down here to zoom fill because that's the best one hit apply And now if I close this the wallpaper has been set now the best thing I want to do next is what I want to log out and see if everything worked just the way I wanted it to and It did not of course did not poly bars not there, but it did not. Oh, why didn't no nitrogen actually work? That should have worked. Hmm. Well, seeing as how we're using Xfce You can also use The Xfce tools to do startups. So we're gonna do add nitrogen like so Wallpaper and do nitrogen Rogin oops, gotta actually spell it right. Maybe that's why I did wrong nitrogen dash dash restore And okay, just go down to the bottom make sure it was checked hit close We're gonna log back out and log back in see if it actually fixed it Log out enter that super secret password again, and there we go now the wallpaper work just fine Now the next thing I want to do and next thing I want to show you is to add that final package to the bar So we're gonna hit panel preferences. We're gonna go to items We're gonna add and we're going to find the i3 Workspaces plug-in. We'll hit add down here at the bottom We can close that we can move this to the place where we want it to be so scroll up and we want this to be right there Okay, and then the cool thing about the i3 workspaces plug-in is that you can customize The colors right here from the GUI now you can change the focused Workspace color the normal workspace color all that stuff You can strip out the workspace numbers if you're using the default configuration file Which includes those you can auto-detect the outputs outputs So that the numbers only appear on a bar if you have two two bars for that particular workspace And of course you can customize the entire CSS right here from the GUI so you can customize those things to your heart's content So I'm gonna change this to I don't know purple doesn't really matter And then the focus workspace can be I don't know orange and again It doesn't really matter but close and you can see now if I go to another workspace I have access to all this stuff now as you can see here. We're in i3 window manager But we're not we're actually if I close some of these. Oh, I did forget one other thing. We'll have to do this I'm sorry. There's one of the things that we have to do. I'll do that in just a minute Let me show you a new fetch See if we can actually see that we're in XFC 4.18 we can close this now The last thing we want to do that you should do before you get into XFC into i3 I apologize for not doing this. So if you're having some issues, you probably followed along in the order that I gave this Stuff to you, but I forgot this part. So I apologize So if you're having issues it might be because your key but key bindings are being duplicated So in your whisker menu or in your XFC menu, you'll want to search for keyboard Go down go to application shortcuts select one hit control a hit remove get rid of all of them use i3 to manage your keyboard shortcuts I'm telling you that right now. It's the best thing to do That way you have full access via your your config file to your keyboard shortcuts And I an XFC is not going to manage any of them It's just easier to do it this way than have two different competing Basically hotkey demons managing your key bindings choose one and it's better to choose the i3 one It just seems to work better. So again, you should do this before you log into XFC and i3 for the first time I apologize for not doing that in the right order. I completely forgot All right. Anyway, so that is i3 and as you can see we even still have the XFC notifications up here You know, we have the task bar that still works perfectly fine You can move the panel around if you want to so you go to display and then lock panel You drag you can just drag it right on up there if you want and then lock panel again And it's now at the top or if you wanted to drag it to the side Lock panel do this here. I actually got to change it to vertical just like so and you can see it Kind of messes things up if you if you do it that way, but you can still you probably could figure out how to do it if you panel panel preferences and Yeah, okay, the vertical one doesn't really work all that well I guess getting it back to where it needs to go. I'm not actually You know, it's because it's actually showing it as full screen So if I wonder if I went to if I even if I go to another workspace All right, so that's not gonna work. That's just showing me my Qtel desktop underneath So you have vertical workspace vertical bar doesn't seem to work all that well. Let me Pause the video see if I can't fix this real quick one eternity later Okay That took a little while I ended up having to go into the XFC configuration Files and delete the XFC for panel config and as you can see I actually have reverted to the default XFC for panel Set up has the bar at the bottom and the bar at the top And if I wanted to do any more configuration I have to go through and reconfigure that but just to show you that I did manage to fix my mistake Here we are XFC for with I3 working just fine as you can see so we'll close some of those and prove once again that we're in XFC for or XFC 4.18 Yep, and there you go So that is how you go about doing this without the extraneous nonsense there at the end It is Astonishingly easy to do this and like I said you should be able to do this with any window manager The only things that are going to change that I can see are the two packages that you that I had you install first the I3 IPC glib library and The I3 workspaces plug-in those two things obviously won't work with other window managers So getting a workspace switcher to work in XFC panel for other Window managers may or may not be possible. I don't know I haven't actually looked into that So that's definitely going to be something that will change the good news Is I know for sure that BSPWM will do the same thing in basically the same process You'll probably or you should probably go hunt out a tutorial for that specifically because I'm assuming that there are probably other Packages that you have to install in order to get that to work So depending on when the manager you're actually trying to do this on Go to Google search for a tutorial just to be safe Don't just assume that my way of doing this is going to be the way that will work across the board It's just gonna be mostly similar. I just wanted to put that out there So yeah, that is it for this video if you have thoughts on I3 and XFC together leave those in the comments Actually below. I think it's pretty cool and I Made up trying to do this with Qtile because Qtile is my favorite window manager as of right now It's the one that I've been using on my personal desktop environment for a long time or my personal computer for a long time So I may try to do this with Qtile and see how it actually goes I'm not sure how successful I'll be maybe I'll make a video on that if you're interested Subscribe if you are so that's it for this video comments in the comment section below You can follow me on Mastodon or Odyssey those links to be in the video description You can support me on patreon at patreon.com slash the Linux cast links for libera pay and YouTube will be in the video description as well Thanks to everybody who does support me on patreon YouTube. You guys are all absolutely amazing without two of the channels We're not me anywhere near where it is right now. So thank you very very much for your support. I truly do appreciate it Seriously guys. Thank you. Thanks everybody for watching. I'll see you next time