New to i3wm but some things not working

Lucas · April 7, 2023, 5:57pm

I switched to Endeavor a few months ago after running Manjaro for a few years. It was great, though I wanted to move more into a Window manager than a desktop environment so I reinstalled using i3.

Pretty cool in concept, bit it seems like a lot of basic things aren’t working as intended, or maybe I don’t understand how they are supposed to work.

The first one is mapping caps lock to left ctrl, in my .config/i3/config I have the line exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap -option 'ctrl:nocaps' and that doesn’t work (maybe it’s the wrong command?) the only thing I got to work is adding overrides to .Xmodmap, but then I need to run xmodmap .Xmodmap every time I log in. How do I persist these settings in i3?
The hotkeys for adjusting window size don’t seem to work, at least not the defaults. Hitting mod+r then arrow keys does not do it? Again could be wrong?
Dunst doesn’t seem to respect it’s config file, as it’s supposed to display in the upper-right but it displays in the lower right, no matter what the setting is.

Thanks for advance for any help, this distro as a whole is incredible and I am amazed at how friendly the community is.

elio-in3x · April 7, 2023, 8:14pm

Could you give us some more info (your i3 and dunst configs, dunst logs…) ?
Thank you.

joekamprad · April 7, 2023, 8:22pm

I bet user is talking about defaults
And:
Welcome here @Lucas

joekamprad · April 7, 2023, 8:26pm

github.com

endeavouros-team/endeavouros-i3wm-setup/blob/main/.config/dunst/dunstrc#L33


      
          
          
# dynamic width from 0 to 300
          # width = (0, 300)
          # constant width of 300
          width = 300
          
          
# The maximum height of a single notification, excluding the frame.
          height = 300
          
          
# Position the notification in the top right corner
          origin = bottom-right
          
          
# Offset from the origin
          offset = 30x40
          
          
# Scale factor. It is auto-detected if value is 0.
          scale = 0
          
          
# Maximum number of notification (0 means no limit)
          notification_limit = 5

It is indeed set to bottom right. You may changed the default systemwide config instead?

joekamprad · April 7, 2023, 8:32pm

This is commented by default .
But you should p.e. use mod and hold drag with the mouse and the i3 default should work.
https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#resizingconfig

Lucas · April 7, 2023, 8:52pm

Outside of creating an .Xmodmap, everything is default as installed by the EndeavorOS installer with the i3 box checked in “desktop environments”

Lucas · April 7, 2023, 9:01pm

This seems to allow me to move other windows into other containers, but not set the width of two windows (or containers?)

I might not be using the terminology right, but if I want one container (full of terminals) to take up 30% of the screen, and another container of the browser taking up 70%, is the Resize mode not the way to do it?

Lucas · April 7, 2023, 9:51pm

I figured one of them out, where I used

exec --no-startup-id xmodmap -e "keycode 66 = Control_L" within .config/i3/config instead of what I had

joekamprad · April 7, 2023, 10:10pm

Is pressing mod and press hold move right mouse button also not sizing Containers?

Lucas · April 7, 2023, 10:29pm

If I hold mod (win key for me) and then hold left mouse button on a window, it allows me to move the window to a different workspace, or split it out (but not change the sizes). If I hold right mouse button while holding mod key, nothing happens.