How to switch from XFCE to i3? – #2 by ishaanbhimwal – Support

I installed the official Manjaro XFCE edition some weeks ago and want to switch to i3 now.

Side track (explaining why not doing a fresh install): I succesfully installed the community edition Manjaro i3 on another laptop (that had Ubuntu) a couple hours ago but for whatever reason I cannot boot from the same installation USB on this machine. Maybe the installation USB is somehow single-use (?? :D), i.e. it is modified during the install so that I cannot use it for multiple subsequent installs, or maybe the media is only bootable if Manjaro is not already installed, or maybe I just don’t know how to boot. I moved the USB to the top of the boot list and made sure secure boot was off. Anyway, I figured it may be easier to just switch the windowing system of my existing Manjaro installation rather than making sense of what’s wrong with the fresh install USB that I just used.

Question (TL;DR: i3 doesn’t start): I installed i3-wm with pamac which got i3 for me (version 4.20.1). As instructed in Arch Wiki, I tried running i3 with xinit, by issuing command xinit i3, to which the log was “Only console users are allowed to run the X server”. Then I googled to instead modify the .xinitrc file (that I had not ever opened before, i.e. it was presumably in the shape that it comes in the official Manjaro XFCE edition), replaced the only exec line with one that says exec i3 and rebooted. I got rebooted to XFCE still. Then I tried deleting all of whatever was in the .xinitrc, leaving only the line exec i3 and tried again, with the same result. So clearly .xinitrc in my home is not what determines which windowing system is used. Now I need more hints. What to do?

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