[Tutorial] Easy Setup: Endeavour XFCE + i3 tiling window manager

Lounge EndeavourOS development
41

Very clear. Very well written. Easy to configure. It’s sweet!

I’m going to use this for a while. I really like the autotiling addition. That’s one of the reasons I was playing with BSPWM.

Thanks for sharing this. I’ve donated to the devs. This community is great.

5 Likes
42

@fbodymechanic 2 questions before i take on this Endeavour :smile:

  1. I can still use Whisker Menu IF i get lazy?
  2. I can still right click on desktop to change wallpaper ect ect… ?

Thanks!

2 Likes
43

Yes. It retains all of its functions as you are using the xfce bar as opposed to i3 bar.

Wallpaper is handled by nitrogen since you are using i3 as a window manager now. It is easy to set up just ping me if you need help.

2 Likes
44

Tip: you can use Alt+F1 for Whiskermenu, then use ksuperkey to bind individual presses of Super (not super+other key) to Alt+F1. Works perfectly.

45

ksuperkey? Isn’t that kwin? If you followed my tutorial, you should not have any keybindings outside of your i3 config file. I already added the tip to add the whisker menu to the i3 config.

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46

Ksuperkey fools X clients into thinking that a Super press is a press of some defined keypress, by default Alt+F1. It’s not related to Kwin; it has a K because it was originally for the plasma desktop (before they added in the feature natively), but what I’m saying is it lets you simply use the Super key for opening the menu, because you could say bindsym Mod1+F1 exec xfce4-popup-whiskermenu (or something like that, long time since I used i3).

47

Are you talking about this?: https://aur.archlinux.org/packages/ksuperkey

So what advantage is there to using this AUR package that hasn’t been updated since 2017, as opposed just adding the two lines to the i3 config file saving and restarting?

48

The point is if you wish to use the Super key itself for opening the menu, which i3 won’t let you do. Not
a combo involving super, as you show bindsym, but the Super key and only the super key.

the AUR package pulls in an old version. I doubt it matters. It’s only 576loc of simple C code, probably around 450sloc.

49

Will this break/affect all of the other key bindings in i3 that also involve the meta key? So if I have meta+enter will it still bring up terminal or will it open the whisker menu and then press enter on the first entry?

I also wouldn’t and try not to mix gtk/qt applications and settings and much as possible. That was why I decided to go with i3 in XFCE instead of something else.

50

Ksuperkey isn’t a qt application, it has no GUI at all, it’s just a X client that rebinds stuff for other X clients. No GUI or anything :wink:

No, it shouldn’t break anything; that’s the point of having it. Just set it to autostart, and if anything conflicts, of course you can easily rollback.

And as an aside, mixing Gtk and Qt applications is actually quite simple with a bit of work. But that’s unrelated here;

51

I couldn’t updated the original post and add it to the tips until I know for sure. I’d be afraid this would break all of the other meta keybindings. I’m away from my test computer for another week and a half or so, but it could be interesting. I’ll take a look. This isn’t something I’d realistically put in the tips and tricks though since it’s starting to create settings all over the place. I prefer to just keep my config settings together in one spot to modify, and this is supposed to be a very simple setup tutorial.

Thank you for your tip though. There’s tons of ways to accomplish the same thing.

1 Like
52

Ok all installed & everything went great!

But one thing, i can’t access my other nvme that i have saved files on it opens then i guess crashes(Dissappears like i never opened it, same for my 256gig usb that has all the same files.) It opens for a second, then boom gone… :thinking:

Any ideas? @BONK or @fbodymechanic

Edit: Could this be my issue as well? https://forum.endeavouros.com/t/thunar-crashes-since-today/13516/25

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53

I would try another kernel first. And pcmanfm. It could be the issue you posted though.

54

Boom! PCManFM works like a charm, thank you!

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55

I guess it’s the thunar issue then.

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56

if thunar crash try to downgrade gtk3 to 3.24.28-2

my thunar crash today ever time a open thunar
i downgrade gtk to to 3.24.28-2
and thunar work like a charm again

2 Likes
57

Set up this on a Fedora VM. It works pretty much flawlessly, except that xfdesktop still started. I had to add killall xfdesktop to startup. Thanks for the tutorial!

(edit: I spoke too soon. it didn’t work either, I don’t have an entry for xfdesktop in session / startup → current session. interesting.)

(edit 2: no, never mind, that was gnome flashback, I was trying i3-gnome first.)

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58

Is it possible setup Xfce and Bspwm ? following same procedure ? :slight_smile:

59

Not sure, I’m sure someone will answer though.

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60

It should be although because of how the community bspwm is setup differently in the install iso, it won’t be as simple. I would setup the endeavour bspwm normally. then after the complete install go into a tty or even in terminal within bspwm and install the xfce and xfce goodies packages like you were trying to change your DE. This way all of the endeavour config files go in the proper places initially. Then follow along the rest of the tutorial.

2 Likes