I’m reaching out to the SIG about the future of the Fedora i3 Spin as we work through the Fedora Linux 45 release cycle.
As some of you know, I was involved with the i3 SIG as a maintainer in its earlier days, and I care a lot about the work this community has built together. But I want to be honest about where things stand: active maintenance of the Spin has been light in recent release cycles. We need to determine if there are people ready to carry this forward, or if it’s time to make a graceful exit.
What needs to happen
The Fedora i3 Spin needs active maintainers to keep shipping. That maintenance work includes:
fedora-comps: Keeping the i3 package group up to date with the right set of default and optional packages for each release.
Bug reports & feature requests: Triaging and responding to issues from the community.
Package Integration: Improving the integration between i3wm and Fedora Linux base packages in the official RPM repositories.
Documentation: The i3 SIG docs site on Pagure must be migrated or archived before the Pagure.io shutdown deadline of 31 July 2026.
What’s possible
This doesn’t have to be the end of the road. There are exciting directions we could take:
Fedora i3 Atomic Desktop: The Sway SIG has an interesting model here. They ship both a traditional RPM-based Spin and a Fedora Atomic Desktop variant. There’s no reason we couldn’t do the same for i3, and it could renew interest in the i3 Spin.
Sway as a sister project: i3 and Sway share a lot of DNA. Closer collaboration with the Sway SIG could benefit both communities, especially around shared documentation and onboarding.
Fresh energy: Sometimes all a project needs is one or two people with enthusiasm and a bit of time. If that’s you, we want to hear from you.
The timeline
We need a clear picture by the end of July 2026. That gives us enough time before the Fedora 45 release cycle ramps up to do one of the following:
Confirm we have enough maintainers to keep shipping the Spin, or
Make a responsible decision to retire it, providing users with proper notice.
If we don’t hear from enough folks willing to step up, I’ll work with the @amoloney, the Fedora Operations Architect, to begin retiring the Fedora i3 Spin for F45. I’d rather see new folks rally and keep it going, but I’d also rather make a clean, honest decision than let the Spin ship without anyone intently looking after it.
How to get involved
If you’re interested in helping maintain the Fedora i3 Spin, please reply to this thread.
Yes, this is the status quo. Retiring the Spin doesn’t mean the i3 packages are going away. It just means there will not be a pre-curated ISO image for i3 users on launch day. As long as @defolos, @cicku, @fale, @runcom, and @pjgeorg have an interest in maintaining the i3 package in Fedora, it will continue to be an installable package.
I will continue maintaining the i3 packages, as long as they don’t do some crazy thing that will require outrageous amount of work (currently it’s all really smooth sailing), but I honestly don’t see myself investing a lot into the spin itself, as I have more or less completely migrated to sway and niri.
While @defolos will continue with the packaging, I will continue with the comps and the bug tracker. I’m a little behind of tasks, but I’m working in:
Moving to forgejo: I know I’m late on this, but the moving looks pretty simple, I hope I will finish this today. In this topic Docs are pretty important to finish ASAP
Packaging remontoire: I’m working upstream with remontoire developers to package it into Fedora. I already submit my first attempt to add it into our repositories and then add it to the Spin.
Code a new “Welcome” app: Since I’m not a proficient developer, this is taking a lot more time than expected, I hope to have for F45 or maximum F46.
If X11 stack is in the repositories, I will continue shipping the i3 Spin. No need to mail or forum threads to ask for it. I answer the ping every Fedora release, I didn’t know that we have to proof that we are working on it to keep it rolling.
Awesome, @defolos and @x3mboy! Happy to have both of you onboard to pull the weight to make it happen.
@leigh123linux, your comment does not take into account that open source volunteering is largely scratching itches. If someone does not have the itch to scratch of a well-maintained i3 Spin, then we shouldn’t produce a Spin without someone taking care of it and ensuring we are shipping an experience worth using. You are welcome to help and engage in the issue trackers if you want to contribute.
However, with @defolos on the packaging side and @x3mboy as the i3 SIG steward, there does seem to be a path forward here. I already noticed some operational tasks underway
Forgejo migration: Migrating from Pagure is one of the best experiences in the Forgejo Importer tool. If private issues are not needed, you can simply take the public HTTPS link for the Pagure repo and have Forgejo import everything. Happy to assist too if helpful.
Fedora Docs: This was the timely task, as @pbokoc and the rest of the Docs Team are trying to find a final resting home for all published Fedora Docs with sources still on Pagure. The target is the end of the month for getting off Pagure. So, there is a tight timeline for this migration, but the Fedora Forge org request ticket should cover that:
fedora-comps: Has anyone reviewed or audited the Fedora i3 package groups we configure in the releng/fedora-comps repo? It would be a good opportunity to proof-check our RPM package groups match the expected user experience in July 2026.
“Welcome” app: It is not urgent, but when you are ready to share it as a new inclusion in Fedora, I suggest submitting a Self-Contained Change in that Fedora Linux release cycle to make a bigger splash.
Sorry if it felt like I jumped the gun. I did react partially out of guilt, because I was involved with the Fedora Docs Team when we were discussing Fedora Docs repos still on Pagure. This was one of the last ones left, and I knew that I still have my name on a lot of things. As part of this process with the Fedora Docs repos, we are doing some “keepalive” sort of work on our existing Fedora Docs content to discover teams and groups which are defunct, and teams which just needed some help to make the move.
We can drive the conversation forward in the forge/forge ticket, but I am happy to help out for the migration work from Pagure, including the Fedora Docs site, as a SIG member. But after the migrations are finished, I would then like to formally step back from the SIG as a member. It is hard when you want to do so many fun things in Fedora
I’m working on this too, I just cloned the repo and I’m checking. It looks like volumeicon is failing, as an example. I’m testing it with a VM with F44 i3 spin. I’ll have results of this tomorrow
