It looks like this (screenshot running chrome, watching some netflix, and working in urxvt): Note you don't have to be using manjaro-i3 to use this config. One of the beauties with i3 (and Linux in general) is that you can you modify your environment to suit how you like to work. The below is a guide mostly just for me and covers some setup notes for my Manjaro i3 systems. Add the following to your i3.conf file (I've found $mod+m works well for me): Quick demo of using the above bindsym to switch windows in master-stack layout: Note I no longer use these. I prefer natural scrolling with the touchpad, so let's modify 70-synaptics.conf to add this (note this is taken direclty from the official arch synaptics page): Note you'll need to reboot or restart X for the changes to take place. You can change theme by running the following from your terminal. First, let's disable picom's inactive-opacity setting. I've simply renamed the containers into something I understand; I have a container to my git related stuff (git clients and stuff), a container for several IDEs I use, another for apps I'm using to deploy applications to several web servers, and a container with stuff related to the latest javascript question/problem I'm figuring out. I usually also make modifications to the i3 status bar colours for the system stats. I wanted a very lightweight system and went about testing a ton of variants (Manjaro, Debian, Ubuntu, Sparky, MX Linux, Antix, Arch, Anarchy, Antergos, Archlabs, Bunsen Labs, and many more). You can override this behaviour  by set setting the --force-device-scale-factor flag. setup a live system i3, Cinnamon, and KDE are probably your best bets out of the 6 options considered. We can do even better though with i3. Thankfully, you can basically do all these steps and bind it to a single shortcut defined in you i3 config file. i3 makes this quite easy by providing a single config file where most changes can be made (~/.i3/config). Let's first enable the firewall (here we're using ufw): If you have an SSD, I'd suggest enabling the fstrim.timer service for TRIM. I also tested different desktop environments trying to find my right fit (Xfce, LXDE, Mate, LXqt, i3, openbox, fluxbox, jwm, and IceWM). This can be achieved with a single bindsym that uses zenity (so make sure you have the zenity package installed) to pop up an input window for you to enter a container name and then focuses on the window parent, renames the container and then focuses back on the child window. Even though i3 has a lot of customization power, after sometime I started feeling that all the keyboard shortcuts and workspaces were really unnecessary for my use cases. Behold: The two bindsyms will combine in a split container with the right adjacent window ($mod+x) or with the adjacent window on the left ($mod+Shift+x). This defines rules for NOT applying dim on window types. I've created a simple bindsym shortcut ($mod+Mod1+slash) to change the container title of a single (selected) container back to i3 default (e.g. Once installed you'll need to add the following to your i3 config: On one of my machines there was a very annoying "beep" sound that played whenever I did stuff (like hitting backspace too much in the terminal). What did work though was modifying the ~/.config/mimeapps.list and replacing the default userapp-Pale Moon.desktop reference with google-chrome.desktop. Note the visual changes in my config are chosen to go along with the numix gtk theme (install with sudo pacman -S numix-gtk-theme). and install Manjaro. conky config files (see following section). The below guide was written largely for me and covers some setup notes for my Manjaro i3 systems. It might not work directly on your system as it depends (somewhat) on other applications I install/use (these are also outlined in the the guide below). Finally check out our Manual and you are done, Enjoy. Or install it to your hard drive. Although I do like the way i3 approaches window switching - I do miss the speed of alt-tabbing for switching between the last focused application and the current application (and doing so often). I've also added three layouts (which can be loaded) I use most and have provided bindsyms for each in my i3 config file. We can however, simulate this basic concept with a bindsym which will move the focused "stack" window to the right (the "master" layout), focus up (to select the currently selected "master" window), move it right, and then focus on the (now new) master window. Edit the file using your preferred editor. You might notice I also have a shortcut (mod+alt+c) for picom, which will reset start/reset picom. You may run dmenuwith: You might need to experiment  to find a DPI value that works for you. Log into your account. To make these settings permanent, you can either add them to your .i3/config file, or set the options in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf. current network rate (download / upload); public ip address information (isp, city, country); currently connected network (wifi ssid and local ip address); move right app window left (which combines into container). $ sudo yum install i3 [On CentOS/RHEL] $ sudo dnf install i3 [On Fedora] $ sudo apt install i3 [On Debian/Ubuntu] 2. bspwm. your username. So, you can use the older arch synaptics driver instead of the newer libinput drivers. Get Khadas Vim 1 I3 20.10. However, it didn't quite match the colours of my current theme. This works to my liking. py3status gives more much control and provides some very cool modules. Here is my .dmenurc config file with colours that match my main i3 config: If you use rofi, as I do (see my .i3/config above), you can also change it's theme. These are my 10 things to do after installing Manjaro. For example look at the screenshot below of a normal workload for me (during development): Notice the container names at the top (stuff like T[filezilla putty H[chromium chromium]]...) I struggle to segregate and identify (remember) where I put that chromium or terminal window that I was working on. Create a live USB for Manjaro Linux, instructions here. The following approach replaces the default inactive window transparency with picom dim rules. The one thing that bothers is its look and feel which feel old. define mod_next at top of file: used throughout config, e.g. Manjaro Linux is ranked 3rd while ArcoLinux is ranked 9th. Now you can edit the new config files to suit your needs. § Prerequisites. not wakeup automatically). I did try to get used to two different configs (one at work and one at home) but my muscle memory didn't like that so I settled on the current config which I'm now used to. As such, Super+L locks the host windows machine (which behaviour I am not permitted to change). Including: Awesome, bspwm, Budgie, Cinnamon, Deepin, i3, LXDE, LXQt, MATE, and Openbox. Manjaro Linux is a Linux Distribution based on Arch Linux. You may want/need to change your DPI with i3. A collection of my weird web projects. With i3 my hands hardly leave the keyboard and almost never reach for the mouse. If you look through my dev branch you'll see many changes and things tried (and reverted) as I've slowly tried out things until I've found what works best for me. § Common directories I use the very cool (I think) terminator. Tiling window managers do have a fairly steep learning curve, but dang, in terms of efficiency and managing many windows and tasks at once, you just can't beat a tiling window manager (for me anyway). Ubuntu, on the other hand, is different. Thereafter when it woke it would, after about 10 seconds, sleep again ad infinitum. The appearance (colours etc.) Put these together (i3 + Manjaro) and you get Manjaro i3 (Community Edition): a very nice distro with a well implemented i3wm environment (by default). See my i3.conf bindsym below: You'll note that I define separate bash variables ($APP, $CLASS) here as the command to start Terminator is "terminator" but the WM_CLASS (window class) returned is "Terminator". Can also use vim style keys here; changes to container and splitting shortcuts; added "netflix" and "spotify" window settings (. My preferred DPI was a bit hard to see now in Chromium. I3 is an extremely lightweight tiling window manager, famous for its efficiency … I recently found this post on reddit that outlined a few ways to rename containers on the fly. I thought I would briefly explain the reason why: At work I'm in a rather peculiar environment where I usually have to work on a base windows environment (which I really only use for email) and then remote desktop into a variety of Linux desktops and dev environments (either running i3 or no gui at all). See below for screenshot of my current conky setup: My main i3 config file (see preceding section) expects these conky config files to be in ~/.config (you can place them anywhere really, you'll just need to update your i3 config file to point to them). disk format change (showing decimal %used / %total); added wlan ip address and ethernet ip address (these are hidden if not connected); added battery %remaining time (next to %percentage). Below I've embedded a modified version of the script into a single bindsym command: The above method can be used to default any container name to that of (for example) the currently selected window at the time of creating the container. If you don't have this installed, do: To activate it from i3wm, add this line to your i3 config: On one my laptops (Thinkpad e480) there was noticable screen tearing with picom enabled. These might work well for you though so give them a try! Note: for brevity I'm going to refer to my Manjaro i3 system as Mi3 below. After that first "wake-up" it will now sleep properly (i.e. Note, even with this, after first starting up and then (the first) sleep - my machine wakes up immediately (unless I close my lid, which makes it stay asleep). Download (somewhere) and copy my layouts above into the ~/.layouts folder, e.g. We'll also cover how modify dimming on a per window basis via a keyboard shortcuts (occasionally want to disable the default dimming on a window by window basis). Manjaro-Architect offers total customization on your Manjaro installation: choose which Manjaro kernels you want to use, or multiple kernels. to be based on the window title of the application selected at the time of container generation. After some research it appears to be an X11 session property which can be disabled by running the following from terminal: You can make this stick after reboot by editing /etc/xprofile or ~/.xprofile (user specific setting) and adding the above command to either file. On Arch the Compton composite manager was recently renamed to Picom. Using window transparencies effectively can make a big difference to the overall use and focus in managing lots of windows, especially when you might have a few sticky windows as well. Notice the rule ANTIDIM_FLAG@:8c, we'll use this to NOT applying dimming by window property (which we'll apply to selected windows via an i3 keyboard shortcut). However, there are still things you can do to make your user even better. I found that much of my time was spend combining two adjacent windows into a single container. Now, let's setup default dim settings. The package i3 is provided by the distribution you are using, just use the package manager to install it as shown. Manjaro is a Linux distribution inspired by Arch Linux. Edit /etc/pam.d/login and add the following two lines: After a restart (or logout/login) your gnome keyring should be unlocked. New theme format, which can have a configuration block. If it is running (and already on the scratchpad) pressing the shortcut will show/hide said application. More specifically, I have two "stacking" layouts (horizontally) side-by-side, like so: That is, I have a "master" stacking layout on the left and use a "stack" stacking (or splitv) layout on the right. Manjaro is a GNU/Linux distribution based on Arch. 4 ways to Customize Xfce desktop. It turned out that the i3 image have had some serious issues back then. pale-moon, firefox, chromium etc.). Manjaro ARM with the lightweight tiling window manager I3. Tomáš Báča wrote a neat script that makes this functionality much simpler to use. In other words YMMV - and expect to have to modify the below to suit your needs. Below is a copy of my config file that I usually implement to make the interface more appealing (to me). These are all much more recognisable to me and helps me avoid "too many obscure window titles" hell. Local configuration. Would still recommend though if you like the idea of predefining i3 layouts. It's in the AUR so once you've enabled AUR (and installed something like yay) you can do: You can customise the look of alttab by changing the background, foreground and frame colour. Create (or edit) the file ~/.config/chromium-flags.conf and add the following (with your preferred scaling factor): If you use Chrome credit (or edit) ~/config.chrome-flags.conf instead. Below is the settings that match my numix theme. Pick the ones you want to use and copy them to /home/user/(.config), then edit the options for conky's startup in i3's settings to use those instead. § Offline setup. Instead, we can set the DPI directly by editing (or creating) ~/.Xresources. The default session of Manjaro 17 (i3 edition) is using the files in /usr/share/conky/. It is kept up to date with upstream, adding a few additional features such as gaps between windows (see below for a complete list). If you use libinput To make these settings permanent, you can either add them to your.i3/config file, or set the options in /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf. That is, say I have four application windows all in a tabbed container, like so: Now, most of the time I just want to combine two windows (in this example, my browser window and the Atom window to the right) into a split h container. Try Manjaro without modifying your current operating system. I've also riced my Conky setup somewhat. Please note that these approaches might not work for you - and that's fine. My bindsym for KeeWeb (keepass cross-platform client): This is now removed from my current config. Now let's backup and then remove the current libinput touchpad conf file (which in my case was 30-touchpad.conf). My usage and window management approaches in i3 have evolved over time - and continue to evolve. : I wrote several scripts and integrated these directly in my i3.conf. your password Create or edit .Xresources your preferred DPI by adding the following (in this example I've set my DPI to 88 dots per inch): Recently Chromium appears to be respecting the Xft.dpi setting (which previously it didn't). Before you can use my py3status config file, you'll need to install font-awesome fonts (4.7) - I had issues with version 5, but works well with v4: Below is my config file, which looks like this: Along with the main i3 config file, there is also a config file dmenu (main application launcher in Mi3). This allows you to remap capslock (for example) to Mode_switch and use it for both: typing umlauts or special characters and having some comfortably reachable key bindings. To change the configuration of i3, copy /etc/i3/config to ~/.i3/config (or ~/.config/i3/config if you like the XDG directory scheme) and edit it with a text editor. All you have to do is ensure the system is up to date using the Pacman package manager, and you will always have the latest Manjaro version running on your PC. On i3... not so much. I would like to use Caps Lock as my mod key. Now notice the difference with the same workload but container names changed: Can you see the difference? Manjaro is Arch, so you get all the customizations that Arch allows. The i3 scratchpad is great holding area for application windows that you might want to keep hide from all workspaces until you need them. However, in my case, even setting my preferred browser to chrome (or chromium) didn't stick. The amount of customization that you get depends on the desktop environment that you go with. To change the default window transparency used for sticky windows you'll need to modify your picom config (~/.config/picom.conf) and make sure it contains. As such, I generally use my touchpad. Welcome! The i3 Window Manager is an extremely lightweight, fast, text-oriented alternative to the other Desktop Environments and Window Managers I have discussed so far. and want to just get back to something simple(r) - which can be surprisingly tedious. T[chromium]). See Enable periodic TRIM - including on a LUKS partition. There are currently four methods of setting configuration options: 1. Manjaro is a rolling release, which means updates are continuous, and users don’t necessarily need to download a new version of Manjaro every time. I often use the scratchpad for applications like my email client (which I don't want to see until an email arrives etc.) You can also modify the look of the system notifications. and one showing several keyboard shortcuts. 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