The move from Gnome to i3... Help needed

So on my laptop I currently run Fedora 23 Gnome 3.18, On the Fedora Magazine page they recommended a download of i3, I took the plunge. It works great on my laptop, and from what I've noticed I perfer i3 since I mostly use my laptop on the go, so it's typically on my lap or on a desk where I don't have a mouse, I want to keep Fedora 23 and will not budge on that, but I want to remove Gnome 3.18 since I'[ve noticed that the 2 DE's are clashing with certain functionality.

My Q: What should I retain from Gnome that I would need in i3 as far as a network manager etc? Has anyone attempted this?

Cool, fellow i3 user!

on topic: What functionality is clashing? I've got gnome, cinnamon, i3, kde on my desktop running Arch. I'd be happy to help you with any of the issues you've got.

Technically, you don't need any gnome related packages, but some programs that you'll probably want require GTK 2 or 3.

You don't really need network manager, as systemd-network can handle networking just fine.

I haven't removed this stuff, but i3 was the first DE I installed on this computer and it worked great out of the box.

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I can't get the desktop background to stay even after editing : nano .config/i3/config with
feh --bg-scale /home/myuser/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg
That was a bit frustrating, petty but frustrating.
Screen tearing is BAD !!!!! even on my desktop with Nvidia gpu...

VPN does not work? I had to log out of i3, log in to Gnome, turn on VPN then log out--> back in to i3.
That is a lot of work to just get VPN going, especially if I'm on the go.

So no nautilus? I use evolution and evince a bunch, so this is kind of important. Kind of intergrated them into my work flow, even though evince is replaceable...

That's what I think is my problem. I have Fedora 23 Workstation and it came with Gnome. I still love gnome, just that on a laptop, i3 works very well.

Any suggestions?

I can't get the desktop background to stay even after editing : nano .config/i3/config with
feh --bg-scale /home/myuser/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg

does the line in your ~/.config/i3/config look like this?

exec feh --bg-scale /home/myuser/Pictures/wallpaper.jpg

If you don't have the exec in front, it may not work. I'm not 100% on that, but that's a potential issue.

Screen tearing is BAD !!!!! even on my desktop with Nvidia gpu...

That's an issue I've got (occasionally) as well. It's happening on Cinnamon as well as i3 though, so I think it's a driver issue rather than i3 specific. Are you running compton? If so, try using the --vsync option. The arch wiki used to have something about this, but it's not there anymore for some reason...

VPN does not work? I had to log out of i3, log in to Gnome, turn on VPN then log out--> back in to i3.
That is a lot of work to just get VPN going, especially if I'm on the go.

I don't use a vpn often, I just handle it through the command line. You can use network manager within i3 though. open up dmenu and type network. it should be in the list. (I'm using rofi, so I had to open gnome-settings, then go to networking, but it may be different for you)

So no nautilus? I use evolution and evince a bunch, so this is kind of important. Kind of intergrated them into my work flow, even though evince is replaceable...

I wouldn't use nautilus. It has issues... I use thunar which is similar, but doesn't include a "desktop" feature.

That's what I think is my problem. I have Fedora 23 Workstation and it came with Gnome. I still love gnome, just that on a laptop, i3 works very well.

Nothing wrong with having gnome on there. I'd look at a guide for uninstalling gnome from fedora workstation if you're looking to remove it though.

Also, I love i3. I can't believe it took me so long to start working with it.

exec always feh --bg-scale
is what I typed. saw it in a youtube video from code cast.

earlier today I went to gnome-control-center and tried to turn on VPN... didn't work. I need to be super efficient and that was time consuming as hell !

I didn't like thunar, but i'll give it another try...

This is my new project since manjaro i3 in a VM is not working out too well... But I might get another iso. still perfer Fedora & dnf.

Do you have any special "gaps" or the like? I saw some cool things on /r/unixporn

exec always feh --bg-scale
is what I typed. saw it in a youtube video from code cast.

exec always

or

exec_always

emphasis on the _

earlier today I went to gnome-control-center and tried to turn on VPN... didn't work. I need to be super efficient and that was time consuming as hell !

I get that. Unfortunately, I don't have any experience with VPN, so I can't help you there.

I didn't like thunar, but i'll give it another try...

What about it didn't you like? I'm not that familiar with Nautilus, as I use Cinnamon most of the time, so it's Nemo for me. You don't have to use the programs I recommend if you don't want to. I'm not apple, I don't tell you what you need.

Here's a screenshot of my setup. It's pretty damn basic, but it works for me.

This is what my system looks like. I'm not big on gaps, but I'll probably be doing some unixporn worthy stuff soon but for now, I'm happy with what I've got.

1x AMH a40u (3840x2160@60)
1x Acer x223w (1680x1050@60)
The 4k monitor is actually the reason I switched to i3.

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Thunar is in KDE right? Well that didn't go well for me when I first came over to Linux which is why I wouldn't mind trying it again.

That was my first experience with Linux, on Mint Cinnamon. Loved it for 2 weeks, then I thought I was back on Windows, so I ditched it and been on Gnome since. Which is cool, but my laptop is getting long in the tooth and i3 looks and feels like efficiency at the max. [ if i can describe efficiency that way lol ]

Thank the maker ! Lol !

That's what I need in my life ! sorry I haven't mentioned it but thanks for the time ! I'm sure to get back on this thread with questions.

I mentioned this in another post, but helping people out with their linux problems is sort of an addiction for me. I guess that because I don't have the skill to do any development work, I can give back to the community by helping others out with problems they're having and answering questions when they occur.

Thunar is in KDE right? Well that didn't go well for me when I first came over to Linux which is why I wouldn't mind trying it again.

I'm not sure what it's part of. here's the first link from duckduckgo. It appears to be part of the XFCE desktop environment. I found that thunar currently has feature parity with Nemo, so it satisfied my needs.

If I were, I'd want you to kill me.

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everyone has a niche. Thanks. I removed all the DE's from the laptop, just running around in the tty2 right now. I'm going to go i3 all the way on the laptop now from scratch !

Alright! If you need a hand, definitely post here, should be fun and educational. I found that lightdm works best as a login manager, if you want to use one. You probably had gdm installed.

That was my next Q I just installed : sudo dnf install i3 i3status i3lock xbacklight and i guess I need a login manager... I will try lightdm right now, do I need any more xorg stuff too?

you'll need the xorg server, probably xorg utils, xorg server utils and a few others. I don't know the exact packages for fedora, but I'm sure they're probably pretty easy to find.

you'll need to enable the lightdm service as well. I don't know if DNF will do that on it's own.

you can always start i3 manually by configuring your ~/.xinitrc to have:

exec i3

and running

startx

Which requires the xinit package. This is if you don't want a login manager though,

I installed lightdm, and I reviewed the gdm packages just to see what it has to install in comparison. I rebooted, and I'm on the desktop, With a Background !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! (default Fedora 23 desktop somehow Lol ) it all seemed too simple really... Considering I ripped out both DE's and in less than an hour Im back on the DE. Too cool !

stupid question but I could use gdm if I wanted on this config right?

Hmmm I wonder if the default ~/.config/i3/config has a feh setting.

You could. I use lightdm because gdm has some minor issues in rare cases, and I fall into one of them, but if you wanted to, sudo dnf install gdm; sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service; sudo systemctl enable gdm.service; sudo reboot;

Glad you're up and running in X now. I'm probably heading off for the night, I'll catch up tomorrow.

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FYI, it should be

sudo dnf install gdm && sudo systemctl disable lightdm.service && sudo systemctl enable gdm.service && sudo reboot

That way it only moves onto the next step if the previous completed successfully. Otherwise you might end up without a display manager on the reboot. Not that that is hard to work around, it's just a good practice to use && where appropriate.

When I uninstalled Gnome, I basically went to TTY2 and uninstalled both. Played around for a while, shutdown, rebooted then installed i3 and lightdm.

Thanks for the tip, @ibreakthings Are you on i3 aswell?

Using Gnome 3.18 right now out of sheer laziness, but i3 is my preferred WM, especially on laptops.

On laptops i3 is a dream come true. I love Gnome, but my i5-3370u is getting long in the tooth... What do you do for battery, Network management, vpn? right now I'm tethered to my cell phone for internet.

My wifi is not working, yet I install NetworkManager? Any tips, do I need to add something to i3 config?

@SgtAwesomesauce @ibreakthings

@ibreakthings good catch, this is what I get for drinking while I'm doing support.

@Miguel_Sensacion Have you installed network-manager-applet?

If you haven't installed it, do that and use it. Should show up on the i3bar. if that doesn't help, let me know and we can go through a more robust guide.

By the way, I'm using the i3-cinnamon script for arch right now, which basically allows me to run i3 on top of a base cinnamon-session. It works beautifully and gives me the tiny bit of functionality I was missing.