Dwm

dwm is an extremely fast, small, and dynamic window manager for X. It manages windows in tiled, monocle and floating layouts. This page provides instructions for installing dwm both from binary packages and from source along with dependencies.

Prerequisites

• Internet connectivity, unless the packages have been pre-fetched into a local cache.
• Install appropriate Graphics driver drivers for your hardware. Without graphics drivers, errors are likely to occur when starting your desktop.
• A non-root user account.
• The community repository must be enabled.
• Set up eudev.
• Install and enable D-Bus. Without D-Bus, icons and keyboard shortcuts may be missing.
• Install Xorg

Installation

The dbus-x11 package is needed for the dbus system as it enables Firefox running in dwm to open in a tile.The packages adwaita-icon-theme and font-dejavu are optional, but recommended for a nicer looking firefox. Install them before proceeding:

# apk add dbus-x11 adwaita-icon-theme font-dejavu firefox-esr

Installing binary packages

Alpine Linux provides binary packages for dwm (dynamic window manager), dmenu (dynamic menu) and st (simple terminal). This allows new users to experience dwm quickly without compiling the source code. To install the binary packages, issue the command:

# apk add dwm dmenu st

Proceed to Starting dwm section to start using dwm with default settings. If you are new to dwm, refer to the official dwm tutorial.

To customize dwm, refer Installing from source.

Installing from source

To customize dwm, the source code written in c language must be edited, compiled and installed everytime for the changes to take effect, which usuaully takes less than a minute.

If you have installed the binary packages, remove them first before proceeding: # apk del dwm dmenu st

Install the necessary packages to compile dwm:

# apk add git make gcc g++ libx11-dev libxft-dev libxinerama-dev ncurses

The following instructions downloads the sources for dwm, dmenu and st in /usr/src/suckless, compiles the source(make) and installs the binaries in /usr/local/bin. If you do not want to keep the sources, use /tmp for downloading the sources.

1. Create a directory /usr/src/suckless using the command:

   # mkdir -p /usr/src/suckless

2. Change to the /usr/src/suckless directory:

   $ cd /usr/src/suckless

3. Download the dwm sources:

   # git clone https://git.suckless.org/dwm

4. Once downloaded, go to the dwm directory:

   # cd dwm

5. To install dwm, issue the command:

   # make clean install

6. Next, go up one directory level

   # cd ..

7. Download and install dmenu launcher:

   # git clone https://git.suckless.org/dmenu # cd dmenu # make clean install

8. Finally, go up one more directory level:

   # cd ..

9. Download and install st terminal:

   # git clone https://git.suckless.org/st # cd st # make clean install

Configuration

The configuration of dwm and other suckless tools are done by editing the config.h file. If not already done, complete Installing from source before proceeding.

The make command will create config.h file from config.def.h. If the file config.h already exists, make won't overwrite it and instead use it. Based on above instructions, for customizing dwm, edit the file /usr/src/suckless/dwm/config.h.

All changes related to keybindings, colors, fonts, patches, etc. are to be made to the config.h file and (re)compile the source code by issuing the command # make clean install.

Starting dwm

Create or edit ~/.xinitrc with at least the following:

Contents of ~/.xinitrc

#!/bin/sh # Start D-Bus session if [ -z "$DBUS_SESSION_BUS_ADDRESS" ]; then eval $(dbus-launch --sh-syntax --exit-with-session) fi exec dwm

To prevent X from attempting to launch dwm every time your shell is called with the login flag, make launching `startx` conditional by creating or editing .profile as follows:

Contents of ~/.profile

if [ -z $DISPLAY ] && [ $(tty) = /dev/tty1 ]; then startx fi

Log out or reboot. dwm will run the next time you log in.

Press Alt+p to launch dmenu. Type firefox then press enter. Firefox will load and run in tile 9.

Troubleshooting

unable to connect to X server: Connection refused

If you receive above error message on hitting "startx" with Xorg.0.log showing errors like

Xorg.(EE) Failed to load module "driver_name" Fatal server error: no screens found

The issue might be due to the user not in the video group. Adding video group for the user will solve the issue.

See also

• official dwm tutorial
• Alpine Suck Desktop installer for Alpine Linux based on the suckless philosophy
• Gentoo wiki page on dwm
• Archwiki page on dwm
• Raspberry Pi 3 - Browser Client - A guide which omits dwm, but uses similar steps to install firefox in a diskless install on ARM. dwm is not used on the RPI3, due to tmpfs limitations.