Not able to use i3 mod key shortcut

Support
1

I see that manjaro comes with i3 tiling manager installed by default. I got a new pc recently with a 42’’ 4K monitor so it has become mandatory to rely on a proper tiling manager. So far I have been relying on manually resizing and position the windows , currently I use a setup of 6 window, 3 taking 25% of my screen space each , and another 3 taking around 8% of screen space. Of course I prefer to automate this completely.

The mod key suppose to be the super key , aka windows key, it does work as a key because it opens the “start” (?) menu but when I try any of the shortcuts like for instance mod+enter which suppose to open a new terminal window as documented at

https://i3wm.org/docs/userguide.html#_default_keybindings

nothing happens.

How I can make this work for me ? I dont need anything spectacular just typical arrangement and resizing features

My specs are

OS: Manjaro XFCE latest version upgraded
CPU: 12 core 3900X AMD
GPU: NVIDIA 2070 Super
SSD: Kingnston 1TB NVMe M2
RAM: 32GB 3200Mhz

Full system specs

System:
  Kernel: 5.8.18-1-MANJARO x86_64 bits: 64 compiler: gcc v: 10.2.0 
  Desktop: Xfce 4.14.3 Distro: Manjaro Linux 
Machine:
  Type: Desktop Mobo: Micro-Star model: MAG B550 TOMAHAWK (MS-7C91) v: 2.0 
  serial: <filter> UEFI: American Megatrends v: A.10 date: 07/01/2020 
CPU:
  Info: 12-Core model: AMD Ryzen 9 3900X bits: 64 type: MT MCP arch: Zen 2 
  L2 cache: 6144 KiB 
  flags: avx avx2 lm nx pae sse sse2 sse3 sse4_1 sse4_2 sse4a ssse3 svm 
  bogomips: 182458 
  Speed: 2199 MHz min/max: 2200/3800 MHz boost: enabled Core speeds (MHz): 1: 2781 
  2: 2025 3: 2201 4: 2200 5: 2870 6: 2092 7: 2176 8: 2200 9: 2199 10: 2198 11: 2200 
  12: 2200 13: 2145 14: 2200 15: 2200 16: 2197 17: 2199 18: 2200 19: 2200 20: 2200 
  21: 2200 22: 2199 23: 2200 24: 2199 
Graphics:
  Device-1: NVIDIA TU104 [GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER] vendor: Micro-Star MSI 
  driver: nvidia v: 455.45.01 bus ID: 2b:00.0 
  Display: x11 server: X.Org 1.20.10 driver: nvidia resolution: 3840x2160~60Hz 
  OpenGL: renderer: GeForce RTX 2070 SUPER/PCIe/SSE2 v: 4.6.0 NVIDIA 455.45.01 
  direct render: Yes 
Audio:
  Device-1: NVIDIA TU104 HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: snd_hda_intel 
  v: kernel bus ID: 2b:00.1 
  Device-2: AMD Starship/Matisse HD Audio vendor: Micro-Star MSI 
  driver: snd_hda_intel v: kernel bus ID: 2d:00.4 
  Device-3: Logitech C922 Pro Stream Webcam type: USB driver: snd-usb-audio,uvcvideo 
  bus ID: 5-4:3 
  Sound Server: ALSA v: k5.8.18-1-MANJARO 
Network:
  Device-1: Realtek RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet 
  vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: r8169 v: kernel port: e000 bus ID: 28:00.0 
  IF: enp40s0 state: down mac: <filter> 
  Device-2: Realtek RTL8125 2.5GbE vendor: Micro-Star MSI driver: N/A port: d000 
  bus ID: 2a:00.0 
  Device-3: TP-Link TL-WN722N v2/v3 [Realtek RTL8188EUS] type: USB driver: r8188eu 
  bus ID: 1-3:3 
  IF: wlp2s0f0u3 state: up mac: <filter> 
Drives:
  Local Storage: total: 2.73 TiB used: 351.14 GiB (12.6%) 
  ID-1: /dev/nvme0n1 vendor: Kingston model: SA2000M81000G size: 931.51 GiB 
  ID-2: /dev/sda type: USB vendor: Seagate model: ST2000DL001-9VT156 size: 1.82 TiB 
Partition:
  ID-1: / size: 576.09 GiB used: 351.11 GiB (60.9%) fs: ext4 dev: /dev/nvme0n1p5 
Swap:
  Alert: No Swap data was found. 
Sensors:
  System Temperatures: cpu: 49.2 C mobo: N/A gpu: nvidia temp: 41 C 
  Fan Speeds (RPM): N/A gpu: nvidia fan: 0% 
Info:
  Processes: 415 Uptime: 2h 43m Memory: 31.35 GiB used: 5.09 GiB (16.3%) 
  Init: systemd Compilers: gcc: 10.2.0 clang: 11.0.0 Packages: 1467 Shell: Bash 
  v: 5.0.18 inxi: 3.1.08
2

Take a look at your i3 config file, it’s located at ~/.i3/config

There you can see what your super key and other key bindings are.

3

Only the i3 iso …

Not sure if you are equivocating something or is something else, but XFCE uses the xfwm4 as Window Manager and not i3, nor uses picom (old compton) as compositor. You have to set that manually if you installed i3 after default XFCE … Have you don all those settings?

1 Like
4

even though the i3-wm package is installed i dont have such folder

hmm i dont remember installing i3 afterall i did not even know what it was until today. But I did find the xfwm4 settings and it does have tiling shortcuts , so i will play around with them and see if they get the job done :slight_smile:

EDIT: I can now tile my windows via shortcuts using xfwm , thanks

6

it may be possible that it was installed when i installed something else but yeah that seems to be the verdict.

7

Nope, i3 isn’t a dependency of anything. For example, i3 depends on perl. On a clean Arch system, insttalling perl will not install i3.

8

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