Installing i3 on an Arch base

This assumes a bare install of arch linux, a user created with sudo privileges and access to the AUR through yay

install base software

yay -S xorg lightdm lightdm-slick-greeter i3-wm i3status i3blocks dmenu rofi xfce4-terminal xfce4-thunar i3lock-color

• xorg is the
• lightdm is the display manager
• lightdm-slick-greeter is the login screen
• i3-wm, i3status, i3blocks and i3lock-color (aur) are the base i3 window manager
• dmenu, rofi, xfce4-terminal and xfce4-thunar are the base user interface software

display manger

becuase we’re fancy and using the slick greeter, we have to change the defaul in the lightdm config.

sudo vim /etc/lightdm/lightdm.conf
[Seat:*]
...
greeter-session=lightdm-slick-greeter
...

once thats done, enable the display manager (lightdm) to start at system start

sudo systemctl enable lightdm.service

start lightdm. this will load the display manager and present you with the login screen

sudo systemctl start lightdm.service

i3 first launch

login to your user account. i3 will prompt you with a series of popups to initialize the config. with that done, you are presented with a black, desolate desktop and i3bar at the bottom of the screen.

Congratulations, i3 is installed.