Which, again, is exactly what you'd do on a consumer level distro with a consumer level desktop.

(nod)

I was talking about windows 10 IOT edition for raspberry pi.

Yeah, by 'desktop' I meant desktop environment. So Gnome or KDE or Unity or Cinnamon or Mate or Pantheon. As opposed to a niche tiling WM.

I forgive you only because you revealed i3 to me.

Seems to be much more what I want compared to awesome - at least based on the screens+docs on the website; dunno when I'll have time to get switched over. :(

Yes, but by Windows 10 IOT edition for raspberry pi I meant "hahaha wtf are Microsoft on? Do they seriously expect /anyone/ to ever use that heap of shit? I mean, they sent me an Intel galileo board f with a windows 8 build that runs on it, for /free/, and I didn't even have the deceny to boot it up before I formatted the SD card

I fucking love i3.

I'd tried to use tilers before, just to see why people like them so much, and never got on with them. I certainly never thought I'd switch to one, I was just curious. But i3 just instantly clicked for me.

I use it without any bar now (bar gradually seemed less useful), just keyboard based window management and dmenu (edit: just switched to rofi, it's pretty great) for launching.

Ahh, yes, I have used Windows 10 on a Pi briefly and it was fucking ridiculous.

I've got as far as creating the /.i3/config file, but when I drop in the text and try to save, I get [ Error writing /home/pi/.i3/config: No such file or directory ]  I've tried starting the line

nano ~/.i3/config

with 'sudo' in case it's a permissions thing, but no dice.  I can't see a folder '.i3' under /home/pi btw.

cd /.i3 returns 'no such file or directory'

in /home/pi run 

ls -a

-a shows hidden folders, which folders with a leading "." are hidden.

If it isn't there run

mkdir /home/pi/.i3

Thanks for that Ant.  I've managed to create the config file & rebooted.  It now reboots to the attached screen.  I'll go through Xen's procedure again & see if i can spot any mistakes in what I've done.

In the config file, should the address of the file be written as:

exec --no-startup-id xfce4-terminal -e "node /home/pi/index.js" --hide-menubar --hold

or:

exec --no-startup-id xfce4-terminal -e "node index.js" --hide-menubar --hold ?

I've stuck with the second of those lines.

I've ploughed through Xen's (very clear) instructions a couple of times and can't see any errors in what I've done.

I'm assuming that raspi-config should continue to be set to log me into the console, not the GUI?

That screenshot shows i3 running. So it's mostly there. The bottom bar is showing though - need to get rid of that. And the terminal doesn't seem to be running - need to fix that.

Either of those lines should work since index.js is right in your home folder (the canonical one's a bit 'better', it'll still work if i3 or node decide their current working directory is not home).

That screen is so cute  :-$

I'm going to test some things and then post again.