Setting up gnome-session + i3

asked 2013-09-14 20:15:24 +0000

ghibe gravatar image

hi, my goal was something like this: blog.hugochinchilla.net/2013/03/using-gnome-3-with-i3-window-manager/, setting i3 as window manager in gnome-session thus enabling the gnome-panel on top.

His setup didn't work at all, on logon i just got an error that the session couldn't be loaded. So i adapted this one: makandracards.com/makandra/1367-running-the-awesome-window-manager-within-gnome resulting in:

/usr/share/xsessions/gnome-i3.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Name=GNOME with i3
Comment=A GNOME fallback mode session using i3 as the window manager.
TryExec=gnome-session
Exec=gnome-session --session=i3

/usr/share/gnome-session/sessions/i3.session
[GNOME Session]
Name=i3
RequiredComponents=gnome-panel;gnome-settings-daemon;
RequiredProviders=windowmanager;
DefaultProvider-windowmanager=i3

/usr/share/applications/i3.desktop
[Desktop Entry]
Version=1.0
Type=Application
Name=i3
TryExec=i3
Exec=i3

the session works fine but the top gnome-panel is completely empty. I removed the tray icons from the i3status bar in the i3 config file in hope that the tray icons will show up in the gnome-panel but it didn't work.

I thought this would be the ideal setup on ubuntu for newbies and i was quite surprised that there was just one such article on the internet

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Comments

Re: removed the tray icons: can you edit your post to reflect how you did that? “tray_output none” should do the trick.

Michael gravatar imageMichael ( 2013-09-15 19:13:42 +0000 )edit

Re: ideal setup for newbies: i3’s target audience is advanced users and developers. Most of our users don’t use any desktop environment at all. I’m not surprised that there are not that many articles about such a setup out there.

Michael gravatar imageMichael ( 2013-09-15 19:14:14 +0000 )edit

"tray_output none" is exactly what i used. the tray icons dissapeared from the i3 bar but they didn't show up in the gnome-panel by the way i have ubuntu 12.04 and i3, gnome and gnome-session-fallback installed from the default repositories

ghibe gravatar imageghibe ( 2013-09-15 19:31:20 +0000 )edit

update: i added the ubuntu repository referenced in http://i3wm.org/docs/repositories.html and updated i3. Now the tray icons work right therefore the gnome bar isn't needed anymore and i'm going to use the simple i3 session. i'm really sorry for wasting your time.

ghibe gravatar imageghibe ( 2013-09-15 21:09:09 +0000 )edit

No worries. So as far as I can tell, we’ve had an XY problem here: you didn’t want to use gnome-session, but gnome-session was your workaround for an i3 bug :).

Michael gravatar imageMichael ( 2013-09-16 00:53:55 +0000 )edit