Will not boot with plasma after botched i3 install

[chrisdel101]

I tried to install i3 but failed miserably (as has been my experience with pine book and manjaro so far).

The machine would not boot and freezes on login. I entered a TTY with alt-ctrl-f3 (I didn’t even know about TTYs b4 this).

I did pamac uninstall i3 and I removed the folder /.config/i3. But i3 is still hanging around. It prompts me to login with i3 still but obviously does not work.

I was using plasma before this. Not sure if i3 is a full desktop or just a window manager but I’d be happy to get back to plasma again.

Any attempt to install from pamac or pacman (like a fresh install of plasma) fails with failed to retrieve some files, as does ping an curl, so I don’t think I have internet in the TTY.

How can I restore my brickd machine to something that works?

[cscs]

[HowTo] Resolve an unbootable Manjaro (black screen, login failed, cant boot, etc)

When we have problems gaining access to our systems it is difficult to gather information, let alone fix any problems. Here we will cover common causes and solutions to ‘manjaro wont boot’. TTY If your desktop does not load properly then you might still be able to use most, if not all, functionality by dropping to a non-graphical TTY. By default your system will have multiple TTYs, with each corresponding to an Fx key. Your desktop is assigned to one as well - most often F1. You can change…

You might want to print your pacman log to see all of what you removed. ex:

less /var/log/pacman.log

Then you should be able to remove everything you need to and reinstall any removed packages, even without internet as they should still be in your local cache. ex:

sudo pacman -U /var/cache/pacman/pkg/plasma-desktop-5.20.2-1-x86_64.pkg.tar.zst

@chrisdel101

Not sure if i3 is a full desktop or just a window manager but I’d be happy to get back to plasma again.

i3 is a window manager (WM).

[chrisdel101]

It looks like when it installed i3 it removed plasma - thanks to the log file. I was able to reinstall it with the excellent advice you provided and now I am logged in! Wow.

I thought a window manager would work on top a desktop? I wanted something that would work with plasma, not in place of it. I tried kwin but none of the shortcuts worked (mostly I think b/c I don’t know what the meta key is). I guess i3 is not for me.

In fact I have no business using Manjaro at all. I’m going to have to install Ubuntu or Debian which is more at my level.

Thanks alot!!

[cscs]

@chrisdel101

I thought a window manager would work on top a desktop? I wanted something that would work with plasma, not in place of it.

I think you can use i3 with Plasma … but it depends on how you do it (I havent tried).

@chrisdel101

I tried kwin but none of the shortcuts worked (mostly I think b/c I don’t know what the meta key is)

The Meta key is usually the ‘windows’ key.

@chrisdel101

In fact I have no business using Manjaro at all. I’m going to have to install Ubuntu or Debian which is more at my level.

I am not sure any of the above has anything to do with Manjaro/Arch … well … the ease of recovery probably was thanks to superior package management . But Plasma is going to work like Plasma in whatever case. And the Meta key will still be the Meta key.

Manjaro happens to offer a rather wide range of DEs and WMs if Plasma is not your style.

Cheers and Good luck whatever you do.