I’ve spent about the past year using window managers on-and-off. I have, however, gained an amount of experience with i3 and Qtile. I shall attempt to make getting started with these two WMs a bit easier here.
Please do note that my configuration experience i3 and Qtile is nothing crazy. Everything in this article is just enough to begin getting around these WMs, something I had a bit of trouble with when I started out with this kind of desktop.
Any documentation referenced in this article will be linked below.
Contents
i3
Firstly, you’re going to have to install i3. I assume you can do whatever apt install or pacman -S or xbps-install you need to. Just in case, install Xterm too.
Exit your current session and log into your i3 session through your display manager or TTY. You’ll see a prompt asking you to generate a configuration. Press enter here. Then it’ll ask you which key you want as your modifier key. I would suggest choosing the <Win> option (it maps the modifier key to your keyboard’s windows/command/meta/super key). If you’re particularly crazy, choose <Alt>.
From this point, you’re going to have a black screen. The most important thing you need to access right now is your terminal. The default keybinding for that is your modifier key + enter.
The configuration is probably located in ~/.config/i3/
Getting function keys to work
Bu default, your brightness, volume and media keys are not going to work.
Brightness keys
Install a utility called brightnessctl. Test if its working in the terminal by executing a command like brightnessctl set 10%-. IF you don’t get a permissions error then you’re good to go. Otherwise, add your user to the video group as such: usermod -aG video $USER.
Next, let’s bind the appropriate keys.
1bindsym XF86MonBrightnessUp exec brightnessctl set +1
2bindsym XF86MonBrightnessDown exec brightnessctl set 1-You can change the increment amount by changing the integer at the end of the respective lines.
Volume keys
1bindsym XF86AudioRaiseVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +2%
2bindsym XF86AudioLowerVolume exec pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%
3bindsym XF86AudioMute exec pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggleThese commands function for pulseaudio, but I’m not aware of pipewire.
Media keys
Install a utility called playerctl. The basic commands we are going to use here are playerctl play-pause, playerctl next and playerctl previous.
1bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec playerctl play-pause
2bindsym XF86AudioNext exec playerctl next
3bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec playerctl previousIf you are a user of MPD, then install mpc.
1bindsym XF86AudioPlay exec mpc toggle
2bindsym XF86AudioNext exec mpc next
3bindsym XF86AudioPrev exec mpc prevModifier keys
There are 5 modifier keys available. The ones we’re probably going to deal with are:
mod1(left alt key)mod4(meta/super/command/windows key)
Creating keybindings
The syntax for creating a keybinding is as such: bindsym [key-combination] exec [action]. For example, to open Firefox, you would do something like bindsym $mod+w exec firefox.
If you want to use the shift or control keys in your keybindings, simply add it to the key combination, i.e. bindsym $mod+Shift+a exec [action] or bindsym $mod+Control+b exec [action].
i3bar
I have close to zero experience with i3bar. I generally use Polybar here instead.
Autostart
Simple add a line starting with exec followed by the command you want to execute: exec [action].
Conclusion
You should now have a somewhat functional configuration of i3. However, i3 does come with some pretty strange default keybindings, so I would recommend changing those. The i3 documentation is excellent. Have a go through that for guidance.
Qtile
Firstly, install Qtile. It’ll probably be available in your distribution’s repositories; if not you can build it from source. Just in case, also install Xterm.
Once you’ve logged into a Qtile session, press windows/command/super/meta + enter to bring up a terminal.
The default configuration file should be located in ~/.config/qtile/. If it isn’t, mkdir .config/qtile, cd .config/qtile, touch config.py. Copy the default configuration from here and paste it into config.py.
Keybindings
Keybindings are defined in the keys array towards the top of the file. They follow the syntax Key([modifier], "key", action).
Function keys
Function keys probably won’t work out of the box. Let’s configure them.
Brightness keys
Install brightnessctl. Make sure there are no issues with permissions, as detailed above.
1Key([], "XF86MonBrightnessUp", lazy.spawn("brightnessctl set +1")),
2Key([], "XF86MonBrightnessDown", lazy.spawn("brightnessctl set 1-")),Volume keys
1Key([], "XF86AudioRaiseVolume", lazy.spawn("pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ +2%")),
2Key([], "XF86AudioLowerVolume", lazy.spawn("pactl set-sink-volume @DEFAULT_SINK@ -2%")),
3Key([], "XF86AudioMute", lazy.spawn("pactl set-sink-mute @DEFAULT_SINK@ toggle")),Media keys
Install playerctl.
1Key([], "XF86AudioPlay", lazy.spawn("playerctl play-pause")),
2Key([], "XF86AudioNext", lazy.spawn("playerctl next")),
3Key([], "XF86AudioPrev", lazy.spawn("playerctl previous")),If you are a user of MPD,
1Key([], "XF86AudioPlay", lazy.spawn("mpc toggle")),
2Key([], "XF86AudioNext", lazy.spawn("mpc next")),
3Key([], "XF86AudioPrev", lazy.spawn("mpc prev")),Layouts
Absolutely take the time to go through the layouts in the documentation. Some of these are a bit fiddly, but the ones I found most usable were ‘MonadTall’, ‘MonadWide’ and ‘TreeTab’. Your milage will vary.
The bar
Qtile has a pretty capable bar. The built-in widgets are here.
Conclusion
You should have a somewhat functional system at this point. I would absolutely recommend checking out the documentation. It is very well written.
A few more things
You’re probably going to want to set a wallpaper. Nitrogen is a good utility for this.
For compositing, picom or xcompmgr. There are others, but these are the only ones I’ve used.
For tweaking GTK themes, lxappearance. QT theming is a bit more of a hassle. Install qt5ct and Kvantum-manager. Simply set the widget style to kvantum in qt5ct.