I looked up how to run i3 inside xfce4-DE. If you want to do the same, simply follow these steps.
pacman -S xfce4 xfce4-goodies human-icon-theme i3
cp /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc ~/.xinitrc
// .xinitrc /
exec startxfce4
startx
- Runs the xfce4 DE - you can immediately logout again.
This step is required to init the xfce-config files for your user (~/.config/xfce4)
Replace the content of the file ~/.config/xfce4/xfconf/xfce-perchannel-xml/xfce4-session.xml
with this:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<channel name="xfce4-session" version="1.0">
<property name="general" type="empty">
<property name="FailsafeSessionName" type="string" value="Failsafe"/>
<property name="LockCommand" type="string" value=""/>
<property name="SessionName" type="string" value="Default"/>
<!-- disable session saving -->
<property name="SaveOnExit" type="bool" value="false"/>
</property>
<property name="sessions" type="empty">
<property name="Failsafe" type="empty">
<property name="IsFailsafe" type="bool" value="true"/>
<property name="Count" type="int" value="5"/>
<property name="Client0_Command" type="array">
<!-- use i3 as WM -->
<value type="string" value="i3"/>
</property>
<property name="Client0_Priority" type="int" value="15"/>
<property name="Client0_PerScreen" type="bool" value="false"/>
<property name="Client1_Command" type="array">
<value type="string" value="xfsettingsd"/>
</property>
<property name="Client1_Priority" type="int" value="20"/>
<property name="Client1_PerScreen" type="bool" value="false"/>
<property name="Client2_Command" type="array">
<value type="string" value="xfce4-panel"/>
</property>
<property name="Client2_Priority" type="int" value="25"/>
<property name="Client2_PerScreen" type="bool" value="false"/>
<property name="Client3_Command" type="array">
<value type="string" value="Thunar"/>
<value type="string" value="--daemon"/>
</property>
<property name="Client3_Priority" type="int" value="30"/>
<property name="Client3_PerScreen" type="bool" value="false"/>
<property name="Client4_Command" type="array">
<!-- empty value, we wont xfdesktop to start -->
<value type="string" value=""/>
</property>
<property name="Client4_Priority" type="int" value="35"/>
<property name="Client4_PerScreen" type="bool" value="false"/>
</property>
</property>
</channel>
rm -rf ~/.cache/*
- Reboot your system
startx
- After a few seconds you should see something like this: