Most commands will need to be ran with super user permissions. Just prepend withsudo if any permissions errors occur.

Download CentOS 7

Download the preferred version of CentOS. I suggest the “Everything” version for this tutorial.

Install CentOS 7

Begin the installation process like any other Linux installation. Either through
USB or Virtual Machine.

Installation is rather simple. I suggest the following configuration when reaching theSoftware Selection screen:

Basic Web Server > Backup Client
                   Debugging Tools
                   Directory Client
                   Language Support
                   Security Tools
                   Any preferred languages

If one prefers not to have i3wm and would like to just use CentOS 7 with either KDE or Gnome from this point, they should feel free to selectDevelopment and Creative Workstation instead ofBasic Web Server in the first pane and choose their preferred GUI/Window Manager now. Otherwise, continue on for a simple i3wm quickstart guide.

After choosing software, continue the installation as normal. Set a root password, setup a new administrator user, and finish. Once rebooted and logged in as the new user, we can begin setting things up and installing i3wm.

Setup network

This is necessary to communicate with the outside world, which we need to do in order to install software packages. Follow instructions at krizna. The first
three steps underGUI Mode are all that are necessary.

Add Required Repositories

Run these commands in order to install the two extra package repositories we need.

EPEL 7 Repository:

$ su -c 'rpm -Uvh http://download.fedoraproject.org/pub/epel/7/x86_64/e/epel-release-7-9.noarch.rpm'

coprs Repository:

$ yum install -y dnf dnf-plugins-core
$ sudo dnf config-manager --add-repo https://copr.fedorainfracloud.org/coprs/admiralnemo/i3wm-el7/repo/epel-7/admiralnemo-i3wm-el7-epel-7.repo

Install Xorg

Usegroupinstall to ensure we get everything we need.

$ yum groupinstall "X Window System" "Desktop" "Desktop Platform"

Install lightdm

lightdm is a lightweight package that will allow for a login screen

$ yum install lightdm xorg-x11-xinit-session

Install i3wm

Install i3wm along withi3status andlilyterm just to get us started.
LilyTerm is a lightweight terminal emulator. i3 does not come
with one.

$ yum install dejavu-sans-fonts dejavu-sans-mono-fonts dejavu-serif-fonts i3 i3status lilyterm

Start GUI manually

Start the GUI manually from command line using the following command:

$ systemctl isolate graphical.target

You should be greeted with a login screen.

You may need to manually selecti3 from the settings menu in the top right before logging in.

Once logged in, i3 should be ready to go!

Start GUI automatically

All that needs to happen in order for the GUI to start automatically at startup is for this command to be ran:

$ systemctl set-default graphical.target

Optional packages for customizing i3wm

For more customization, I suggest installing the following packages.

py3status is used for customizing the status bar further.

$ yum install py3status

feh is used to customize
the background for i3wm.

$ yum install feh

CentOS 7 + i3wm Quickstart Guide