How to Switch from Gnome to i3wm on Debian (Bookworm)

i3wm is a tiling window manager and gnome is a desktop environment, so you have to keep some things in mind if you want to switch to i3wm.

You will need to add the functionality that a desktop environment provides on your own. Here is a list of those features

• notification center

• multimedia keys control

• brightness key control

• status bar

• autostarting programs

• keyring, gnome-keyring

• touchpad and keyboard settings

Touchpad settings

I use xorg display server not wayland. So to configure touchpad with the settings I need, I followed following steps:

• Create file - /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d/30-touchpad.conf

• Paste following contents into the file

    Section "InputClass"
        Identifier "touchpad overrides"
        Driver "libinput"
        MatchIsTouchpad "on"
        Option "Tapping" "on"
        Option "TappingButtonMap" "lrm"
        Option "TappingDrag" "on"
        Option "DisableWhileTyping" "off"
    EndSection
  

Here I suppose you are using libinput driver. Also for other option on this check xorg.conf(5) § INPUTCLASS_SECTION

Also check this libinput archo wiki article.

Keyring Issue

After lot of debugging, I was able to run chrome with gnome-keyring support.

First you have to add this to $HOME\.profile

case "$DESKTOP_SESSION" in
    i3)
        export $(gnome-keyring-daemon --start --components=secrets,ssh,pkcs1)
        ;;
esac

or you can add following to i3 config exec --no-startup-id gnome-keyring-daemon --start --components=secrets,ssh,pkcs1. I prefer the .profile method.

Now to run google chrome you have to use google-chrome --password-store=gnome-libsecret. Also you have to use gnome-libsecret for it to work. In google-chrome --help it shows gnome but that won't work.

--password-store=<basic|gnome|kwallet>
# this is wrong

Setting other xorg setting

• To turn of the beep sound when some error is made - xset b off

• For dip settings - xrandr --dpi 96

References

• https://confluence.jaytaala.com/display/TKB/My+Manjaro+i3+setup more details about customization.