How to install the latest version on Ubuntu/Mint?

[dusanbrankov]

I just can't figure out how to install the latest stable version of i3 on Linux Mint. I first installed it via apt and got version 4.20.1, which doesn't seem to contain i3-gaps.

Now I have downloaded the current version i3-4.23.tar.xz from the official website, but there is no config file, so how do I install it?

Usually I'm running

./config
make
sudo make install

Searching the internet didn't bring me any further either.

Thanks.

P.S. I'm also not able to install i3-gaps separately because of lack of jammy support...

[okraits]

You can also have a look at https://i3wm.org/docs/repositories.html

[dusanbrankov]

Thanks for the reply. I already tried that, it doesnt install or update anything, it just says

i3 is already the newest version (4.20.1-1)

I think the most straightforward way should be to install from source, but I can't find any instruction on how to install without a configure executable.

[okraits]

You can find instructions on how to build i3 from source in the following places:

https://i3wm.org/docs/hacking-howto.html#_building_i3
https://github.com/Airblader/i3/wiki/Building-from-source

[dusanbrankov]

Ok, I installed Mason and ran:

mkdir build && meson setup $_

But I got the following error:

meson.build:305:0: ERROR: Dependency "libstartup-notification-1.0" not found, tried pkgconfig

There is no such package on apt, only libstartup-notification0 which I have already installed.

I don't understand why they make things so fucking complicated. All I want is some pixels of gap around my windows, but I will leave it as is and search for an alternative.

Thanks anyway, appreciate your help.

[orestisfl]

Please prefer to use your package manager instead of building software from source. I've never used Mint but I found this https://forums.linuxmint.com/viewtopic.php?t=388673:

I followed the instructions on https://i3wm.org/docs/repositories.html for using i3's Ubuntu repositories.

I edited the generated /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sur5r-i3.list to change 'vera' to 'jammy'.

From there all went fine, did sudo apt upgrade to bump i3 4.20 to 4.22.

[dusanbrankov]

@orestisfl It works, thank you very much.

[lovestaco]

Hi how did you get the 4.23 installed?
I updated using package manager and it still says 4.22.

Not able to add gaps

[dusanbrankov]

@lovestaco I actually upgraded from 4.20 to 4.22, but you can follow the same steps as I did to upgrade to the current version, following the instructions at https://i3wm.org/docs/repositories.html, as already mentioned by @orestisfl.

$ /usr/lib/apt/apt-helper download-file https://debian.sur5r.net/i3/pool/main/s/sur5r-keyring/sur5r-keyring_2024.03.04_all.deb keyring.deb SHA256:f9bb4340b5ce0ded29b7e014ee9ce788006e9bbfe31e96c09b2118ab91fca734
$ sudo apt install ./keyring.deb
$ echo "deb http://debian.sur5r.net/i3/ $(grep '^DISTRIB_CODENAME=' /etc/lsb-release | cut -f2 -d=) universe" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sur5r-i3.list
$ sudo apt update

You should then be able to upgrade i3 to the latest version (I just did the same):

$ apt list --upgradable
i3-wm/unknown 4.23-1~~jammy1 amd64 [upgradable from: 4.22-2~~jammy1]
i3/unknown 4.23-1~~jammy1 amd64 [upgradable from: 4.22-2~~jammy1]

$ sudo apt upgrade
$ i3 -v
i3 version 4.23 (2023-10-29) © 2009 Michael Stapelberg and contributors