Debian and Ubuntu repositories

Michael Stapelberg
<michael@i3wm.org>
February 2021

1. When should you use our repositories?

In general, you should use the repositories of your distribution. Adding third-party repositories to your /etc/sources.list has security implications and makes your apt-get update take longer.

If you are using Debian stable

The latest version of i3 will be in Debian testing quite soon. The version in Debian stable can be old, however (we cannot update it after stable has been released). The best way is to add Debian testing and tell apt to prefer Debian stable. You should not use our repository. Alternatively, you can also use stable-backports (e.g. wheezy-backports for Debian wheezy).

If you are using Ubuntu

Only a handful of packages are maintained by Ubuntu developers. The rest is synchronized periodically from Debian, every 6 months. Therefore, Ubuntu often includes old versions of i3. You should use our Ubuntu repository.

2. Ubuntu repository

2.1. Stable releases

This Ubuntu repository is provided by sur5r and contains the latest stable release of i3. To use it, run the following commands:

$ /usr/lib/apt/apt-helper download-file https://debian.sur5r.net/i3/pool/main/s/sur5r-keyring/sur5r-keyring_2025.03.09_all.deb keyring.deb SHA256:2c2601e6053d5c68c2c60bcd088fa9797acec5f285151d46de9c830aaba6173c
$ sudo apt install ./keyring.deb
$ echo "deb [signed-by=/usr/share/keyrings/sur5r-keyring.gpg] http://debian.sur5r.net/i3/ $(grep '^VERSION_CODENAME=' /etc/os-release | cut -f2 -d=) universe" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/sur5r-i3.list
$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt install i3

All Ubuntu versions which are currently supported by Ubuntu itself are also supported by this repository. See Ubuntu releases for details.

Packages for unsupported Ubuntu versions might exist but may disappear any time.

3. Debian repository

The previously used baltocdn repositories have been discontinued and the debian repositories are to be used instead; no nightly builds are offered currently.

If you have previously added any baltocdn repositories to your apt sources, do not continue using them.