Trying to configure i3 and get a terminal emulator running

[ebon quartz]

running a minimal arch install and trying to get i3 working and also maybe trying to customize lightdm greeter

[robust crescent]

@ebon quartz is this in a vm?

[soft owl]

Yes virual box emu

[robust crescent]

try alacritty instead of gnome-terminal

[ebon quartz]

yeah i test everything out before doing it on hardware

[soft owl]

Use kitty

Then if you want more customization options switch to alacritty

[ebon quartz]

Okay

OK i mangaged to get a terminal open in i3

[soft owl]

Here's the package you're looking for.

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/i3-wm/

[ebon quartz]

kitty terminal

[soft owl]

Nice, I love kitty.

[ebon quartz]

im running i3 wm right now

[robust crescent]

@ebon quartz @soft owl stop right now

[ebon quartz]

i still get an error on the bottom right

[robust crescent]

you are running i3 as root

[soft owl]

Hyprland is my favorite.

[robust crescent]

don't ever do that

reboot

[soft owl]

I used to run i3 before hyprland

[robust crescent]

then login as your user

[ebon quartz]

Okay im rebooting

im in i3 as a user now

[rich pulsar]

could reccomend ghostty

[soft owl]

All you brotha, I like to stick to wayland natives

[robust crescent]

that's almost all of them

[ebon quartz]

i switched to user and now i cant open a terminal with mod + enter

oh it switched my modkey to alt alright i can open a terminal

[robust crescent]

did you make the config as root?

[ebon quartz]

yeah i clicked generate a config

[robust crescent]

remove that from ~/.config

[soft owl]

might wanna chown it chown user:user

[robust crescent]

and remove everything else you made as root

[robust crescent]

no

[ebon quartz]

can you first tell me how I can get german keyboard layout in kitty because idk how to type on english layout

[soft owl]

localectl list-keymaps

loadkeys keymap

Persisten

[robust crescent]

@ebon quartz how did you install arch?

[ebon quartz]

manually

i put the de keymap in /etc/vconsole.conf

[soft owl]

Persistent, /etc/vconsole.conf
KEYMAP=(GERMAN ABBREVIATION)

[ebon quartz]

and used loadkeys de

[soft owl]

Ok so KEYMAP=de

[robust crescent]

from this? https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Installation_guide

[ebon quartz]

idk how to type / on english keyboard

[ebon quartz]

yes

[robust crescent]

https://wiki.archlinux.de/title/Arch_Install_Scripts

[soft owl]

localectl set-keymap --no-convert keymap
This will also change the session variable and the /etc/vconsole.conf variable

[ebon quartz]

i did that and put "de" in it which is german abbreviation

[ebon quartz]

ran it but still have english layout in kitty

it works fine in bash though

[robust crescent]

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/I3#Configuration_wizard_and_alternative_keyboard_layouts

[ebon quartz]

i cant find the config in my home directory

[robust crescent]

make it

[true fulcrum]

Use de-de instead of de

[ebon quartz]

but it should have generate it i rebooted and told it to gen a config

[ebon quartz]

i did

[ebon quartz]

still doesnt work maybe i need to reboot though

[soft owl]

Perhaps remember, it's /home/USER/.config

~/.config

[ebon quartz]

yeah in my home/user i have no config or anything

[soft owl]

You're using the hidden directive right?

ls -a or ls -A

[ebon quartz]

oh yeah now i see it

the config is empty and my keyboard is still english

😦

[soft owl]

That's ok create the necessary directory and file

Once it exists i3 will use that as default

[ebon quartz]

oh config is a directory

oops

[soft owl]

it'll hold your config files

[ebon quartz]

im in the config now

[soft owl]

Ok make a directory

i3

Then nano a file there called config

[robust crescent]

or use your favorite editor

[ebon quartz]

omg i finally have the german keyboard with setxkbmap -layout

[soft owl]

Or that but from the sounds of it he's on a fresh install

[ebon quartz]

i nanoed it

[soft owl]

Perfect, good job!

[ebon quartz]

idk how to use another editor like vim im too noob

😂

[soft owl]

It's ok learn vim when you can, transition to neovim then DM for my current project using neovim, you'll enjoy it.

[ebon quartz]

Ok

[ebon quartz]

I still dont know how to configure i3 or get rid of the error here though

the bottom right error is still there

[soft owl]

You could honestly probably skip vim and go straight for neovim

[ebon quartz]

idk im not a programmer or anything

[soft owl]

Ahh, was gonna ask if you knew any Lua next

[robust crescent]

I do :v)

[soft owl]

You can easily remap keybindings and change the modes to your liking.

[soft owl]

Good =]

[ebon quartz]

can sb help my pls🥲

im really trying to do this on hardware so i can stop using windows

[soft owl]

What's the error

[robust crescent]

.s litany

[obtuse shell]

Please follow the Standard Litany when asking a question:
• What was your environment? What was your operating system, configuration?
• What did you do? What did you run or test? Where?
• What actually happened? What were the exact results, complete log contents, exact error messages?
• What did you expect? What were you aiming to achieve? What result were you looking for?

Vague or superficial questions will yield vague or superficial answers. False information leads to false solutions.

Also see this similar guide on how to ask smart questions.

[ebon quartz]

Error: status_command not found or is missing a library dependency (exit: 127)

[ebon quartz]

what is this

[ebon quartz]

this is the error

[soft owl]

No he's telling me to be formal.

Think all you need for that error is i3status

[ebon quartz]

is that a package?

[soft owl]

Yes sir,

Or ma'am

Maybe conky isn't installed either.

[ebon quartz]

conky?

[soft owl]

Can't remember if i3 defaults conky config or not

[ebon quartz]

i installed i3status

[robust crescent]

for?

[soft owl]

Yes it's a very nice status / customizable widget if you wanna call it that

System info, etc.

[robust crescent]

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/conky/

[ebon quartz]

error is still there and also when i try to mod + enter it open a terminal that is not kitty for some reason

[ebon quartz]

is that like htop?

[robust crescent]

no

and btop is preferred

[soft owl]

No, are you famaliar with like Windows desktop widgets for CPU usage, Memory, Disk, etc.?

[ebon quartz]

kinda

[soft owl]

Well it's like that, you can customize it 100%

[robust crescent]

one thing at a time

[soft owl]

Pick what you want to be monitored / displayed and you can set the heirarchy / overlay / layer

[ebon quartz]

thats really cool and all but id prefer to actually get i3 working rn

[soft owl]

Yeah yeah I was just saying i3status and conky could cause that error.

[ebon quartz]

Ok yeah its still there idk maybe if i reboot its gone

[soft owl]

Do you have a greeter?

Or you can just close all i3 instances and reload

Without reboot

[ebon quartz]

lightdm-gtk-greeter

[soft owl]

Perfect quit out of i3 and re-enter

[ebon quartz]

i just rebooted and guess who has a english keyboard layout

[soft owl]

exec --no-startup-id setxkbmap <layout>

in config?

i3-msg reload

or i3-msg restart

[robust crescent]

@ebon quartz

[ebon quartz]

i cant use that command

[soft owl]

sudo pacman -S xorg-setxkbmap

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Xorg/Keyboard_configuration

https://archlinux.org/packages/extra/x86_64/xorg-setxkbmap/

[ebon quartz]

added 0mb i already have it

[soft owl]

Try it standalone in terminal

setxkbmap de-de

It'll be temporary