Installing dwm

This page picks up after booting into the system.

Quick reminder update with:

sudo pacman -Syu

Installing xorg

The first step is to install Xorg, which provides an implementation of the X Window System. This is the most popular display server. X provides the basic framework for a GUI environment: drawing and moving windows on the display device and interacting with a mouse and keyboard. X does not mandate the user interface – this is handled by individual programs. X uses a client–server model: an X server communicates with various client programs. The server accepts requests for graphical output (windows) and sends back user input (from keyboard, mouse, or touchscreen).

Xorg can be installed with the xorg-server package. However, some packages from the xorg-apps group are necessary for certain configuration tasks. One installation option for dwm can be running the following:

sudo pacman -S xorg-server xorg-xinit xorg-xrandr xorg-xsetroot

It should be noted that the xorg package group is also available, which includes Xorg server packages, packages from the xorg-apps group and fonts. Simply run:

sudo pacman -S xorg

Config files

Configuration files can be found under the /etc/X11 directory. Here the directories /etc/X11/xinit and /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d are found. You can add your own configuration files, ending in .conf under /etc/X11/xorg.conf.d. This will be used to configure the monitor setup or change mouse or keyboard behaviour.

DMPS

DPMS (Display Power Management Signaling) enables power saving behaviour of monitors when the computer is not in use. I personally do not want monitors to turn off. DPMS and screensaver settings can be modified using the xset command. To disable screen saver blanking run.

xset s 0 0 &
xset s off

To turn off DPMS:

xset -dmps

Before installing DWM

Install git

Totally necessary step and basic tool needed for breathing.

sudo pacman -S git

Install a browser

Why not?

sudo pacman -S firefox

Create a config directory

If neofetch or htop were installed, the directory ~/.config might already exist. This directory is used to save user-specific application configuration. If it does not exist, run:

mkdir ~/.config

Install DWM

Now it is time to install the suckless tools: dwm, st and dmenu. DWM being the dynamic window manager, st the simple terminal and dmenu the dynamic menu designed for dwm.

This will just install the software. Configuration comes later.

git clone git://git.suckless.org/dwm ~/.config/dwm
git clone git://git.suckless.org/st ~/.config/st
git clone git://git.suckless.org/dmenu ~/.config/dmenu

cd ~/.config/dwm && sudo make install
cd ~/.config/st && sudo make install
cd ~/.config/dmenu && sudo make install

Installing a display manager

A display manager, or login manager, is typically a graphical user interface that is displayed at the end of the boot process. LightDM will be installed:

sudo pacman -S lightdm

Additionally lightdm-gtk-greeter has to be installed. This is the default greeter LightDM attepts to use.

sudo pacman -S lightdm-gtk-greeter
sudo pacman -S lightdm-gtk-greeter-settings

Finally, the service must be enabled:

sudo systemctl enable lightdm

Adding an entry for DWM in the DM

Create the directory:

mkdir /usr/share/xsessions

And open the file:

vim /usr/share/xsessions/dwm.desktop

The file content should be:

[Desktop Entry]
Encoding=UTF-8
Name=Dwm
Comment=Dynamic Window Manager
Exec=dwm
Icon=dwm
Type=XSession

Now, after rebooting and logging in, you should be into DWM.