dwm-config.md (9570B) - raw
1 %% 2 title: "dwm: The dynamic window manager" 3 date: "23-Oct-2021" 4 %% 5 6 # dwm: The dynamic window manager 7 8 A window manager is a software that can manage the layout and appearance 9 of every window spawned in your desktop, most people confuse them with 10 desktop enviroments, which aren't the same since a desktop enviroment is 11 more like an ecosystem, they come with a more 'complete' set of tools, 12 like a basic web browser, a terminal emulator or a graphical calculator, an example 13 of desktop enviroment would be gnome, xfce or kde plasma; instead a 14 window manager is only the program that manages the windows spawned, 15 although there are window managers that come with a little more, like 16 docks or taskbars (openbox for example). 17 18 In my case I use dwm, which is a window manager written in C developed 19 by suckless software. The most relevant thing of this window manager is 20 that out of the box it comes with the most basic functionallity, and if 21 you want to extend it you need to patch it (I explain patching later). 22 23 By default dwm comes with 9 workspaces, in which you can open as many 24 windows as you please; to spawn a new window for example a web browser 25 you need to assign it a keybinding or use an application launcher like 26 [dmenu](https://tools.suckless.org/dmenu/) 27 28 [](screenshot.png "Screenshot of my dwm build") 29 30 ## Installing dwm 31 32 ### Requisites 33 34 - GNU/Linux or BSD based operating system 35 - A C library and a C compiler 36 - make utility installed 37 - X server installed 38 - dwm source code 39 40 As you can see above you can only install dwm on GNU/Linux or BSD based 41 distros, unfortunally dwm is not available for Windows users and I'm not 42 sure if there is an alternative. 43 44 ### Steps 45 46 In order to install dwm download the source code from [suckless.org/dwm](https://dwm.suckless.org/), 47 you can clone the repo from [git.suckless.org/dwm](https://git.suckless.org/dwm) or 48 download it as a tar file. 49 50 After you obtain the source code navigate to the root folder 51 of the source code and execute the following command 52 53 ```console 54 $ sudo make install 55 ``` 56 57 after that you can log out of you user account, if you use a display 58 manager, select dwm as window manager on it and log back in, if you 59 don't use a display manager, you need to edit your .xinitrc file located 60 at your home folder, so that when you start Xorg dwm gets launched, you 61 do this by adding `exec dwm` to the end of the .xinitrc 62 file, its *important* that you add it to the end of the file. 63 64 ```console 65 exec dwm 66 ``` 67 68 Then you can start the X server by executing `startx` on a tty and 69 dwm should start without any problems. 70 71 This is what vanilla dwm looks like: 72 73 [](vanilla.png "Vanilla dwm") 74 75 ## Customizing dwm 76 77 ### Setting a wallpaper 78 79 Before getting into dwm configuration, let's add a wallpaper to make things look 80 a little bit nicer. You can set a wallpaper from different ways, the simpler for 81 me is installing feh and the executing the following command 82 83 ```console 84 $ feh --bg-fill <image> 85 ``` 86 87 you can also avoid setting --bg-fill and chossing other feh options to set the wallpaper 88 (read man feh). 89 90 Then add `.fehbg &` to your .xinitrc so the wallpaper gets loaded when Xorg starts, it is important 91 that you add it before dwm gets executed, otherwise it will never be ran 92 93 ```console 94 $HOME/.fehbg & 95 96 exec dwm 97 ``` 98 99 A graphical way of setting a wallpaper is with nitrogen, just install nitrogen open it 100 with dmenu (MOD+p by default), include the folder where you have your wallpaper, select the 101 image you want and the apply. To make changes persistent on every startup 102 add this to you .xinirc file 103 104 ```console 105 nitrogen --restore 106 107 exec dwm 108 ``` 109 ### dwm configuration 110 111 Basically you configure dwm by editing its source code, there is a C header file, named 112 [config.h](https://github.com/mjkoeckner/dotfiles/blob/master/.config/dwm/config.def.h) 113 in the root folder of dwm, if you open it with a text editor you can see a 114 lot of variables, for example the line `static const int topbar = 0` 115 defines a variable named topbar which you can set to 1 or 0, to select 116 if the status bar should spawn in the top or bottom of the screen respectively. 117 You can also change the MOD key (by default its left alt), I like to remap 118 mine to left Super (windows key). 119 120 After every change you make to the source code you need to *recompile dwm*. 121 122 123 #### Show information on the status bar 124 125 dwm by default won't show any information on the status bar, this is 126 done by using the xsetroot utility, which sets the value of WM\_NAME enviroment 127 variable, the content of this variable is automatically displayed by dwm on the 128 right side of the statusbar. Lets assume you want to set the clock and date 129 on the status bar, well you could accomplish this by executing the following command 130 131 ```console 132 $ xsetroot -iname $(date) 133 ``` 134 135 and all the output of the command `date` would be stored on the WM\_NAME variable 136 causing dwm to print the date on the statusbar, this 137 makes dwm status bar highly scriptable, in fact there are a ton of status 138 bar implementations, the one that I use is called 139 [dwmblocks](https://github.com/torrinfail/dwmblocks) and its also 140 written in C and the configuration its pretty much the same as dwm, in 141 order to get information you need to have scripts that prints the 142 desired data to stdout, then you can include them on the config.h of 143 dwmblocks. It is important that the scripts are on your user's PATH, otherwise 144 it won't work. 145 146 #### Getting emoji support on dwm 147 148 dwm by default doesn't come with emoji support, if you want to render 149 an emoji in the status bar, it's going to either show it as a box or in 150 the worst case crash. 151 152 In order to get emoji support first make sure you have installed `libxft`, 153 then you need to get a font with emoji support, I'm using [JoyPixels® font](https://www.joypixels.com/) 154 you can also use [Google's noto font](https://fonts.google.com/noto), 155 or any other font that comes with emoji support, then open dwm `config.def.h` and 156 append to the fonts array the name of the font you want to use as fallback for the first font, 157 since the emojis are not being printed because the font used doesn't include emojis, my 158 config looks like this: 159 160 ```c 161 static const char *fonts[] = { "Source Code Pro:style=Regular:size=9", 162 "JoyPixels:style=Regular:size=8", 163 "DejaVu Sans" }; 164 ``` 165 166 I've also added `DejaVu Sans` to the fonts array because, sometimes, the emojis where being displayed 167 with a little box or square next to them, this was a quick solution. 168 169 After you setup the font you need to remove or comment a chunk of code 170 from drw.c, between lines 136-150 there is a function named `iscol`, you 171 need to remove it or comment it, since this causes dwm to crash. 172 173 ```c 174 /* Do not allow using color fonts. This is a workaround for a BadLength 175 * error from Xft with color glyphs. Modelled on the Xterm workaround. See 176 * https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=1498269 177 * https://lists.suckless.org/dev/1701/30932.html 178 * https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=916349 179 * and lots more all over the internet. 180 */ 181 FcBool iscol; 182 if(FcPatternGetBool(xfont->pattern, FC_COLOR, 0, &iscol) == FcResultMatch && iscol) { 183 XftFontClose(drw->dpy, xfont); 184 return NULL; 185 } 186 ``` 187 188 Finally you can recompile dwm and, if everything went fine, you will get emoji support. 189 190 #### Patching dwm 191 192 Since dwm is a simple program than doesn't include much features, if 193 you want to extend it, for example by adding a 194 [systray](https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/systray/) to the status bar, 195 you need to patch dwm. To do this first you need to download the patch 196 from [suckless.org/patches](https://dwm.suckless.org/patches/), then 197 make sure you got it 'patch' installed, although I think it comes with 198 most linux distributions by default nowdays. 199 200 To apply a patch navigate to dwm's root folder and execute this command 201 202 ```console 203 $ patch -p1 < <file.diff> 204 ``` 205 206 being `file.diff` the patch file downloaded previoulsy of course. 207 208 If you never patched dwm before then probably no errors would be 209 reported, but if you already have applied a ton of patches, (or sometimes just a couple) 210 then probably you would get a HUNK \## FAILED, in this case you need to get your hands 211 dirty, and manually patch all the files that failed, you do this by 212 opening the files with .rej extension (short for rejected), and the 213 corresponding file to be patched, for example dwm.c and dwm.c.rej, and 214 then you add all the chunks of code from the rejected file into the 215 corresponding place in the non rejected file, you know where you should 216 put the chunks of code because in the rej file you can see at the start 217 of every chunk there is a '@@' followed by a number of line; also 218 lines starting with plus means add, and minus means delete, if I'm not 219 clear you should google how to use diff and patch to modify a file. 220 221 ## More screenshots 222 223 #### Debugging [6502 emulator](https://github.com/mjkloeckner/6502) with dwm, vim and tmux 224 225 [](debugging.png "Debugging 6502 emulator") 226 227 228 229 #### Floating window manager? 230 231 [](floating.png "Floating show while raining") 232 233 ## Useful links 234 235 - [What is a window manager?](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Window_manager) 236 - Make sure to check the [suckless webiste](https://suckless.org/) 237 - [suckless dwm website](https://dwm.suckless.org/) 238 - [X server man page](https://www.x.org/releases/X11R7.7/doc/man/man1/Xserver.1.xhtml) 239 - [patch man page](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man1/patch.1.html)