uxwm

uxwm is a small X11 window manager written in C.

It is a dwm-style manager with:

• one tiling layout
• one floating mode
• one monocle layout
• 9 tags
• a simple Xft status bar
• mouse move/resize for floating windows
• Xinerama multi-monitor support

This repo is the window manager itself, not a full desktop environment.

What It Actually Supports

• tiling, floating, and monocle layouts
• master/stack resizing
• moving windows between tags and monitors
• fullscreen via EWMH and keybinding
• runtime gaps toggle
• root-window status text via xsetroot
• built-in clock when no external status text is set
• basic EWMH state for: _NET_ACTIVE_WINDOW, _NET_WM_STATE_FULLSCREEN, _NET_CURRENT_DESKTOP, _NET_WM_DESKTOP, _NET_CLIENT_LIST, _NET_CLIENT_LIST_STACKING

What It Does Not Try To Be

• not Wayland
• not a compositor
• not a panel system
• not a dynamic plugin system
• not runtime-configurable without rebuild

Current rough edges:

• config is edited in wm/config.h and requires rebuild
• default keybindings assume a few external tools exist
• no dock/strut handling yet
• no restart/reload command yet

Build Dependencies

Arch:

sudo pacman -S base-devel libx11 libxinerama libxft fontconfig dmenu

Debian / Ubuntu:

sudo apt install build-essential libx11-dev libxinerama-dev libxft-dev libfontconfig-dev suckless-tools

Build:

make
sudo make install

Installed binaries:

• uxwm
• ux-session
• uxmenu_run

Runtime Dependencies In The Default Config

The shipped wm/config.h uses:

• st
• dmenu_run
• firefox
• pamixer
• brightnessctl
• scrot

If you do not use those tools, change wm/config.h.

Start

Minimal:

echo 'exec uxwm' > ~/.xinitrc
startx

With the helper session script:

echo 'exec ux-session' > ~/.xinitrc
startx

ux-session optionally runs:

• ~/.config/uxwm/autostart
• ~/.config/uxwm/status.sh

Create a sample autostart file with:

./setup.sh

Test In Xephyr

Xephyr :1 -screen 1280x720 &
DISPLAY=:1 uxwm

Default Keys

• Super + Return: terminal
• Super + p: launcher
• Super + w: browser
• Super + j / k: focus next / previous
• Super + h / l: shrink / grow master
• Super + i / d: increase / decrease master count
• Super + t / f / m: tile / floating / monocle
• Super + Space: cycle layouts
• Super + g: toggle gaps
• Super + Shift + Space: toggle floating
• Super + Shift + f: toggle fullscreen
• Super + Shift + Return: move focused window to master
• Super + 1..9: view tag
• Super + Shift + 1..9: send window to tag
• Super + Tab: previous tag view
• Super + , / .: focus previous / next monitor
• Super + Shift + c: close focused window
• Super + Shift + q: quit

Mouse:

• Super + Button1: move window
• Super + Button2: toggle floating
• Super + Button3: resize window

More detail: docs/KEYBINDINGS.md

Configure

Edit wm/config.h, then rebuild:

make clean
make
sudo make install

Important defaults:

unsigned int borderpx = 2;
unsigned int gappx    = 10;
unsigned int snap     = 32;
const float  mfact    = 0.55;
const int    nmaster  = 1;

Status Bar

If you want external status text:

xsetroot -name " vol: 80%  Tue Mar 23  14:23 "

If root window name is empty, uxwm shows its own clock.

Source Layout

wm/
├── uxwm.c      main
├── x11.c       event loop and X11 lifecycle
├── wm.c        client management and bar logic
├── input.c     keybindings and mouse actions
├── layout.c    tile and monocle
├── drw.c/h     drawing helpers
├── util.c/h    small utilities
└── config.h    config

License

MIT