How can I use i3 in Gnome 2 DE?

Michael
3081 ●13 ●28 ●50 http://i3wm.org/

Answering this question explicitly, since people might not even be opening questions that do not have an answer (plus search engines use this kind of information, too):

Set the windowmanager to i3 using gconf:

gconftool-2 -s /desktop/gnome/session/required_components/windowmanager i3 --type string

Disable nautilus’s desktop mode (causes problems with i3):

gconftool-2 -s /apps/nautilus/preferences/show_desktop false --type boolean

Also, make sure that you either use i3 >= v4.2 (which ships with /usr/share/applications/i3.desktop), or create ~/.local/share/applications/i3.desktop:

[Desktop Entry]
Type=Application
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=i3
Comment=improved dynamic tiling window manager
Exec=i3
X-GNOME-WMName=i3
X-GNOME-Autostart-Phase=WindowManager
X-GNOME-Provides=windowmanager
X-GNOME-Autostart-Notify=false

Comments

I am not sure why this fails on my gnome install. I'm able to run "awesome" wm following this setup, but i3 always fails with an error saying "Failed to load session "i3" " ... Any comments? I am not sure which log to look for errors regrading this.

ks (Nov 13 '12)edit

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How can I use i3 in Gnome 2 DE?

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