Arch Linux

cluelessnessarchuser

Member

Registered: 2022-10-22

Posts: 1

switching from kde to i3

Hello, i am trying to fully switch from kde to i3 and there arent really any resources i found on how to do this. the ones i did find were not that great which i tried
how would i go about doing this or pointing me to resources where i can find how

seth

Member

Registered: 2012-09-03

Posts: 60,922

Re: switching from kde to i3

i am trying to fully switch from kde to i3 and there arent really any resources i found on how to do this. the ones i did find were not that great which i tried how would i go about doing this or pointing me to resources where i can find how

So you want to do thing™ but you didn't find information how to do thing™ and the information on how to do thing™ were not great and you'd like to know where you can find information on how to do thing™

Start w/ the wiki and ask on if you get stuck:
https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3

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ewaller

Administrator

From: Pasadena, CA

Registered: 2009-07-13

Posts: 20,334

Re: switching from kde to i3

Also, your post is ambiguous.  Are you asking about how to remove Plasma and install i3wm?
Or, are you asking how do you do things in i3 that you used to use that were built in to Plasma?

If the former, be aware that Plasma and i3 can be installed side by side.  In fact, they can even run at the same time on different consoles.  Once you are comfortable with i3wm, you can remove i3wm.
The later is a case of leaning i3wm.

How do you start Plasma?  How do you plan to start i3wm?

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lfitzgerald

Member

Registered: 2021-07-16

Posts: 173

Re: switching from kde to i3

On my current Arch install, I had initially set up Plasma, so that I could configure hardware in an "easy" env. I then just ran "pacman -S i3-wm". The login screen now has a drop down where I can select i3 or KDE. I use SDDM, but they should all have this feature. So no special steps were necessary for i3 to work (and I didn't even need to remove KDE).

One caveat is that KDE is a *desktop environment*, while i3 is only a window manager. So KDE includes its own window manager, but also many more desktop applications (including things that run in the background). Some of these continue to be active in i3 when you run them side by side. For example I like kwallet for storing secrets, so even in i3 I have kwallet, akonadi etc. This sometimes does cause annoying issues like: https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php … 1#p2063201 On the whole though it's been pretty easy, these KDE-related issues are rare.

By the way, I think it's possible to run KDE, but tell it to use i3 as its window manager instead of the builtin KDE wm. That way you get all the KDE stuff like taskbar, sound, settings manager etc but your windows are in s3. I haven't tried it myself but it seems pretty well supported.