Wanted to create a new user to choose from when I log in and have i3wm in that new user with no desktop environment

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I am currently having KDE but want to create a new user to choose to log in with only i3wm and no desktop environment.

OS: Manjaro 5.22.4
DE: KDE
Kernel Version: 5.13.12 (64 bit)
CPU: i3 7100U (2.4 GHz quad core)
GPU: Mesa Intel HD Graphics 620 (KBL GT2)
Device: Dell 5378
RAM: 4GB DDR4 (Expandable up to 16 GB)

I went through the forum and found these commands for XFCE:
sudo pacman -R manjaro-xfce-settings
sudo pacman -S manjaro-i3-settings
cp /etc/skel/* ~/

I don’t know whether they will do exactly what I want. Will these commands do the work for me ?
I use KDE so I suppose I have to replace xfce with kde in 1st command. Or is these anything else I have to do.
I also want to keep my current KDE account along side a new i3 account in case I mess up with i3wm as I am going to use i3wm for 1st time (always use GUI before). Thanks for your efforts😊

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You’d want to install the i3 settings:

and
after having created the new user account
log in as that user in a terminal:
su - new_user
and copy those files to that new users account:
cp /etc/skel/* ~/
or, alternatively:
cp /etc/skel/* /home/new_user

Then you can log out of your KDE session and should be able to log in as the new_user into the i3 session.
You’ll probably also have to select that session from the login screen somewhere - I’m not familiar with SDDM which you are probably using since you have installed the KDE variant of Manjaro.

Without logging in as the new user, this:

would copy these defaults to your current user account - where you don’t need it.

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After installing i3, would KDE be still there in my previous account ?

4

This just installs the Manjaro default settings for i3 to /etc/skel.
To use them you have to copy them to the user account you want to use i3 with.
The command I wrote will copy all of the contents of /etc/skel to your new_user account - including all the KDE default stuff, which also resides there.

This shouldn’t be a problem, but to only have the i3 settings in the new_user account you’d need to look at /etc/skel and only use/copy what is required for i3.
You could look into the i3 settings package to see what’s in there, what got installed.
It will be in the pacman cache (don’t know whether pamac has it’s own cache).

Your KDE is not affected by this - nothing there is changed by installing the i3 settings.

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I ran that command and at the end, got these error ststements:

:: Proceed with installation? [Y/n] Y
(44/44) checking keys in keyring [##############################] 100%
(44/44) checking package integrity [##############################] 100%
(44/44) loading package files [##############################] 100%
(44/44) checking for file conflicts [##############################] 100%
error: failed to commit transaction (conflicting files)
manjaro-i3-settings: /etc/skel/.config/gtk-3.0/gtk.css exists in filesystem (owned by manjaro
-kde-settings)
manjaro-i3-settings: /etc/skel/.config/gtk-3.0/settings.ini exists in filesystem (owned by ma
njaro-kde-settings)
manjaro-i3-settings: /etc/skel/.gtkrc-2.0 exists in filesystem (owned by manjaro-kde-settings
)
manjaro-i3-settings: /etc/skel/.xinitrc exists in filesystem (owned by manjaro-kde-settings)
Errors occurred, no packages were upgraded.

Are these just normal/OK or is there anything causing trouble ? I went through forum but found nothing similar.

Upon running the command above, I got this error. I am not getting what’s the issue.
su: user new_user does not exist or the user entry does not contain all the required field

6

These errors include the reason - one or more identically named files are already installed in /etc/skel - as part of the kde settings package.

You could likely fix this by first removing the manjaro kde settings package and then installing the i3 settings package.

That was an example - use the user name of the account you created.

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