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Dynamic Window Manager(DWM)

3 min read

DWM is a dynamic Window Manager

Dwm setup

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Dwm

You configure dwm by copying its config.def.h file to config.h

I copy this guide:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31275672/how-to-install-dwm-in-arch-linux

my git fork

First thing I want to to is make a fork of dwm so I can customize it myself. It will go on my github.

What I need is:

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

Dwm is the main window manager

st is the simple terminal

dmenu is the menu for a lot of items. I think it Is the top menu with firefox and all that not too sure but its essential

and I didn’t take a screenshot of dmenu but it is created aswell

config setup

do some configurations of your configs in vscodium

I clone my first dwm repo inside vscodium

https://dwm.suckless.org/customisation/

dwm is configured at compile-time by editing some of its source files, specifically config.h

config.def.h is the one we want to edit first, because it has comments in it that help us.

This is config.def.h:

the source code doesn’t come with a config.h, we will copy the config.def.h to config.h when we are done configuring

don’t really need to edit config.mk. Its to help with the make file, but we will just install default after we configure config.def.h

you have a few things you can change:

  1. keybindings. Keybindings for launching windows, moving windows, etc.

  2. colors and appearance. Adjust colors, fonts, borders, text colors

  3. bars and status. what you want the status bar to show. CPU? RAM usage? You usually find 3rd party patches to do this.

  4. Layouts. Window behavior, how they are tiled, aranged, floating

  5. Rules. Always open a certain application, and idk

  6. Default applications. What u use as text editor and shit

Installing fonts

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Fonts

for all users to have the same font selection, put fonts in this directory:

/usr/local/share/fonts/

baby

you may need to make the directory first.

I want these fonts:

https://sourcefoundry.org/hack/

https://typeof.net/Iosevka/

I didn’t actually install any

Arch linux compiling

then follow this guide:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/31275672/how-to-install-dwm-in-arch-linux

and then go to home/``david directory and then vim .xinitrc

write exec dwm then :wq

finally type startx

it is all black right now, but this is the default dwm

![](file:///C:/Users/Digit/AppData/Local/Temp/lu17828v2iv72.tmp/lu17828v2ivr1_tmp_e2eb7341f5a19bf7.png)

Virtualbox guest additions

Things are getting fucked!

This is a virtual machine and I cant copy and paste in it.

https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/VirtualBox/Install_Arch_Linux_as_a_guest

so go into root

run the pacman -S virtualbox-guest-utils

den, rcvboxadd setup

then, this is the important step. Pacman update the guest and then update your virtualbox version on your host machine to the most recent version. the bugfix versions don’t matter like 7.08 → 7.0.10 no need. Its the slightly larger jumps in version like 7.0.0 → 7.1.0 that matter.

then type:

VBoxClient-all

also there is this service:

systemctl start vboxservice

does some cool things I guess.

Now put that VboxClient-all in the .xinitrc before anything else.

feel free to include a bg feh

DWM important files

A quick primer on the important files to keep note of in dwm.

config.def.h: this is a header file which is essentially a copy of config.h. just kept incase you need to revert back to the original config.h

config.h: this is a header file which is all the customization, coloring, of dwm

dwm.c: the main file that makes dwm

DWM Patches

apply some patches you swine

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