How to install polybar and use it on i3 and openbox

Very often I refer to the wiki of Arch Linux but in this case this will be our link to get to know polybar.

https://github.com/jaagr/polybar

Polybar is an alternative panel or bar to use instead of the bars of i3 or tint2 in Openbox. It provides us with an alternative bar to show information about our system like temperature, cpu usage, ram usage  and so on.

On the website of polybar you can see some images what can be achieved but just google polybar and ask for the images. Lots of very creative people make stunning desktops for this bar. Now it is up to you.

Polybar can become a good base for the coming window tiling managers we will explore in the future like bspwm or  xmonad and many others out there.

For now we are going to use it for i3 and openbox.

Installation of the application

Install polybar with your terminal

packer polybar

You need to build it yourself. It will never be included on the iso.

You can build it faster if you follow this article first.

We have provided a module in polybar for mpd and ncmpcpp BUT this software is not installed yet.

Together we will install mpd and ncmpcpp AFTER the installation of polybar. This means that you will need to reinstall polybar in order for these applications (mpd and ncmpcpp) to work in polybar.

Installation of the configuration

The polybar configuration comes from our standard ArcoLinux repo. Let us install it via

sudo pacman -S arcolinux-polybar-git

The version of this package will change over time.

The configuration of polybar is installed in /etc/skel/.config/polybar. Now it is up to you to copy/paste this folder polybar to your home folder like /home/erik/.config/polybar. If it is your first time, you can just copy/paste. If you have worked already on your configuration of polybar, I recommend you use meld to compare the differences.

Installation of polybar
takes a while
be patient