pekwm is a fast, functional, and flexible window manager which aims to be usable, even without a mouse.
Table of Contents
pekwm, a window manager written by Claes Nästén that was once based on the aewm++ window manager, but has since evolved enough that it no longer resembles aewm++ at all. It also has an expanded feature-set, including window grouping (similar to ion, pwm, or fluxbox), auto properties, Xinerama support and keygrabber that supports keychains, and much more.
"Why make another window manager?", some ask. This may confuse some people, but the best answer is "Why not?". There are arguments out there that it's better to have a single standard desktop environment, so that our mothers can find their way around, but in all honestly, if most of us wanted the same environment as our mothers, we probably wouldn't be reading this anyway. The same can also be applied to Your sister, your roommate, your wife, even your cat.
"Why should I use pekwm?", others ask. Nobody ever said you should. However, we use it. And you're welcome to as well. You should use the environment most suited to you. For a better answer to this question, Check out the pekwm Features section below.
Here's a short list of some of the features included in pekwm:
- Possibility to group windows in a single frame
- Configurable keygrabber that supports keychains
- Configurable mouse actions
- Configurable root- and window-menus and keybindings for all menus
- Dynamic menus that regenerate on every view from a script output
- Multi-screen support both via RandR and Xinerama
- Configurable window placement
- Theming support with images, shaping and configurable buttons.
- Autoproperties (Automatic properties such as a window's sticky state, etc.)
Now that you've decided to try it out, you need to get it. You're left with two options. The first is to download and compile the source, and the second is finding a pre-compiled package.
The source code is available from Github at https://github.com/pekdon/pekwm.
Release tabralls are named pekwm-0.2.0.tar.gz and pekwm-0.2.0.tar.bz2. Although it doesn't matter which you get, keep in mind that the .bz2 is smaller.
Generally pekwm from GIT is stable enough for everyday use and should in most cases be a safe bet to get all the latest functionality.
pekwm is available as a package on many Linux and BSD distributions, see your distribution for details.
This chapter will help you get pekwm compiled.
The first step to compiling pekwm is to unpack the archive. Unpacking it depends on which version you downloaded:
tar -zxvf pekwm-0.2.0.tar.gz
tar -zjvf pekwm-0.2.0.tar.bz2
The '-j' option works normally on most linux systems, and as of the current GNU tar development version, is part of GNU tar. If your system does not support the -j option, you can use two things: bzip2 -dc pekwm-0.2.0.tar.bz2 | tar -xvf - or bzip2 -d pekwm-0.2.0.tar.bz2 followed by tar -xvf pekwm-0.2.0.tar. This also works for the .tar.gz version using gzip -dc or gzip -d.
The 'v' options are optional, they show you the filenames as they're being extracted. at this point, you should have a pekwm-0.2.0 directory. Use cd pekwm-0.2.0 to get there.
Before building pekwm a C++ compiler with support for C++11 needs to be available on the system, the CMake build system and a set of X11 and image libraries.
The below sections details how to install the required packages for different OSes and Linux distributions.
Development tools using the GCC C++ compiler:
# apk add cmake g++ make
Build dependencies:
# apk add fontconfig-dev jpeg-dev libxext-dev libpng-dev libxft-dev libxpm-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev
Development tools using the GCC C++ compiler:
# apt install cmake g++ make
Build dependencies:
# apt install libfontconfig1-dev libjpeg-dev libxext-dev libpng-dev libxft-dev libxpm-dev libxrandr-dev libxinerama-dev
OpenBSD comes with X11 and a compatible C++ compiler. To add the required packages run:
# pkg_add cmake jpeg libiconv png
OS X does not come with a X11 installation by default so first XQuartz needs to be installed.
The development tools are not installed by default but can be installed using the following command:
xcode-select --install
Assuming homebrew is installed, the only package required to build pekwm after install XQuartz and the development tools is CMake:
$ brew install cmake
The first thing to do is to setup a build directory and configure pekwm using CMake:
mkdir build && cd build
cmake ..
Pekwm support a few configuration options, each option is specified on the cmake command line as:
-DOPTION=ON
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| CMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX | /usr/local | It may be useful to use a custom prefix to install the files. |
| CMAKE_INSTALL_SYSCONFDIR | /usr/etc/pekwm | It may be useful to use a custom prefix to install the config files. |
| CMAKE_BUILD_TYPE | Set to Debug to enable debug outputs and code | |
| DEBUG | OFF | Enable debug outputs and code |
| PEDANTIC | OFF | Turn on extra compiler warnings |
| TESTS | OFF | Enable compilation of unit test programs |
| Option | Default | Description |
|---|---|---|
| ENABLE_SHAPE | ON | Enables the use of the Xshape extension for non-rectangular windows. |
| ENABLE_XINERAMA | ON | Enables Xinerama multi screen support |
| ENABLE_RANDR | ON | Enables RandR multi screen support |
| ENABLE_XFT | ON | Enables Xft font support in pekwm (themes). |
| ENABLE_IMAGE_XPM | ON | XPM image support using libXpm. |
| ENABLE_IMAGE_JPEG | ON | JPEG image support using libjpeg. |
| ENABLE_IMAGE_PNG | ON | PNG image support using libpng. |
After running cmake with any configuration options you need, run make. This should only take a few minutes. After that, become root (unless you used a prefix in your home directory, such as -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/home/you/pkg) and type make install
Adding exec pekwm to ~/.xinitrc if you start X running startx or ~/.xsession if you use a display manager should usually be enough to get pekwm running.
That's it! pekwm is installed on your computer now. Next you should read the Getting Started chapter.