Vmware Installation of Gentoo Linux from scratch on an Encrypted partition Part 2: i3 windows manager installation
2 min readFeb 9, 2020
Part 2: Installation of the i3 Windows Manager
Before going through this tutorial please make sure you have gone through part one of the tutorial.
Part one showed the installation of the Gentoo Linux command line Operating System from scratch and I am building part two as a continuation of part one.
This part of the tutorial is sub-divided into three parts.
Part 1: This is the first part of the Gentoo i3 minimal windows manager installation guide. It involves emerging Xorg-server, xterm, creating .xinitrc file and creating a new user account.
Desktop environment:
If you are planning to install a graphical environment (eg. i3, lxde, gnome, ...), then you need to change your profile and enable the desktop one:
However, it's not mandatory for i3. Enabling it will enable some useful system wide USE flags:
# eselect profile listThe desktop profile is #20,
# eselect profile set 20
# env-update && source /etc/profile
# emerge --pretend --verbose --deep --newuse @worldIf you are using vmware, then set your kernel configuration accordingly as well as the /etc/portage/make.conf:
# nano /etc/portage/make.conf
VIDEO_CARDS="vmware"Start emerging the whole world system as your new environment:
# emerge --update --deep --newuse @world
To install i3 (more here https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/I3):
# emerge xorg-server x11-wm/i3 i3status i3lock dmenu terminatorMake D-Bus service start uppon boot so InterProcess Communication (IPC) can be acheived (useful for clipboard sharing, ...):
# rc-update add dbus default
To start i3 automatically at tty1 login of your user and open your .bash_profile for edition:
# nano .bash_profile
if shopt -q login_shell; then
[[ -t 0 && $(tty) == /dev/tty1 && ! $DISPLAY ]] && exec startx
fiThen edit your .xinitrc file to define which application to start when startx is run:
# nano .xinitrc
exec i3Display Managers:
Then login as john in the tty1 (ALT+F1) and you should have startx executed, then i3 loaded.
A minimal -vim like- file manager can be installed:
# emerge rangerVMWARE:
Install the vmware tools installed (enables screen resizing, clipboard sharing, ...):
Unmask the opem-vm-tools package:
# nano /etc/portage/packages.accept_keywords
app-emulation/open-vm-tools ~amd64 # emerge open-vm-tools Start it at boot:
# rc-update add vmware-tools default start it:
# /etc/init.d/vmware-tools start
Hope you enjoyed this tutorial