JWM

Contents

  1. JWM
    1. Installation
    2. Initial Menu
    3. Menu Edit
    4. Restart
    5. Exit
    6. Screen Lock
    7. Background
    8. Office Example
    9. Menu Icons
    10. Summary

jwm is a very lightweight window manager. It does a few things very well and leaves the rest to you. If you are tight on memory and CPU - this may work better for you. No dbus, hald, cups, or pulseaudio required but you can add these as needed for other packages.

The downside is some hand configuration is required. Knowing XML syntax helps.

Installation

/!\ You must complete all the prerequisites in the Prerequisites page before proceeding.

These instructions will install jwm.

Log in as ordinary and run the following commands which install jwm and modify the .xinitrc configuration file to automatically run jwm when X is started. 

$ su -
(enter root password)
# pkg install xorg jwm xlockmore xfontsel
# pw groupmod video -m ordinary
# pw groupmod wheel -m ordinary
# pwd_mkdb -p /etc/master.passwd
(drop out of root)
# exit
$ echo 'exec jwm' >> ~/.xinitrc

Initial Menu

Make a copy of the default menu file. You can find it under /usr/local/etc. 

$ cp /usr/local/etc/system.jwmrc ~/.jwmrc

The example menu shipped with jwm assumes you have firefox, audacity, pidgin, and gimp installed. These menu selections won't do anything if the aforementioned apps aren't installed. Treat them as examples to be edited to suit your own needs.

You may want to instead use the example menu attached to this page.

.jwmrc

Be careful when editing. It is XML so all the usual "well formed" XML formatting rules apply.

The menu provided here includes an option to edit the menu file in your favorite editor. After saving your changes, the "Restart" option re-loads the menu file to pick up your changes. Do keep a backup in case you make a mess. 

$ startx

To see the menu, click the left mouse button.

As you customize your machine with more apps, you can hand edit the .jwmrc menu file to add menu selections to quickly run those apps.

The program entry lets you edit the .jwmrc menu file from your X session. This example uses 'vi'. You can instead use 'ee', 'micro', 'ape' or whatever editor you've installed from pkg or ports. 

        <Program icon="accessories-text-editor.png" label="Edit">xterm -e vi .jwmrc</Program>

Use Restart below to tell JWM to reload the menu.

Restart

This menu entry lets you restart JWM from within your X session. You don't need to completely exit X and jump back into X.

Exit

This menu entry exits JWM and your X session. 

        <Exit label="Exit" confirm="true" icon="process-stop.png"/>

Screen Lock

This Program entry takes advantage of xlockmore to lock your X session while you're away. 

        <Program icon="lockbutton.png" label="Lock">
            xlock -mode blank
        </Program>

Background

The taskbar at the bottom of the screen has four buttons numbered 1, 2, 3 and 4. These are "desktops". If you have too many open windows in one desktop, you can move some of those windows to other desktops. The default is four desktops but you can have more or less. The example below sets a solid (very dark) background for all four desktops. 

    <Desktops width="4" height="1">
        <Background type="solid">#101010</Background>
    </Desktops>

You can also specify wallpaper for each desktop. Notice the singular spelling of Desktop inside the Desktops group. This example sets wallpaper for the first desktop. 

    <Desktops width="4" height="1">
        <Desktop><Background type="scale">/path/to/sunrise.jpg</Background></Desktop>
    </Desktops>

Office Example

This menu group covers Apache Open Office. At this time of writing, 4.1.7 was the current version. After an Office upgrade, you will need to edit the paths below to point to the new location under the new version.

You can adapt this to instead use Libre Office. 

    <Menu icon="/usr/local/share/icons/Adwaita/16x16/categories/applications-office.png" label="Office" >
        <Program label="OpenOffice Math" icon="openoffice4-math.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -math</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Writer" icon="openoffice4-writer.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -writer</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Printer Administration" icon="openoffice4-printeradmin.png" >openoffice-4.1.7-printeradmin</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice" icon="openoffice4-main.png" >openoffice-4.1.7</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Quickstarter"icon="openoffice4-startcenter.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -quickstart -nologo -nodefault</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Calc" icon="openoffice4-calc.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -calc</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Draw" icon="openoffice4-draw.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -draw</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Impress" icon="openoffice4-impress.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -impress</Program>
        <Program label="OpenOffice Base" icon="openoffice4-base.png" >openoffice-4.1.7 -base</Program>
    </Menu>

The IconPath element specifies a directory of icon files. Most software places icons somewhere under /usr/local/share/icons. One approach is to gather all the relevant icon files into a local directory under your home directory. The other approach is to stack multiple IconPath entries to cover the directories.

IconPath does not understand the "~" tilde so use a full path. 

    <IconPath>/home/ordinary/.icons</IconPath>
    <IconPath>/usr/local/share/icons/gnome/16x16/apps/</IconPath>
    <IconPath>/usr/local/share/icons/Adwaita/16x16/categories</IconPath>
    <IconPath>/usr/local/share/icons/Adwaita/16x16/apps</IconPath>
    <IconPath>/usr/local/share/icons/Adwaita/16x16/places</IconPath>

For the example above, replace 'ordinary' with your user name. Use find to discover any icons buried under /usr/local/share. 

$ find /usr/local/share/icons '*.png'

Summary

Probably the next thing you will want to do is install a browser. There are so many. Pick the one you know best. You can install these from an xterm window in your X windows session. You don't need to exit your X session. 

$ su -
(enter the root password)
# pkg install firefox
# pkg install chromium
# pkg install iridium
# pkg install midori

You may want to look at installing and configuring 'doas' or 'sudo' in place of 'su' for these types of chores.

Oh but wait! Technically you have a working X environment but there's no acceleration. Let's fix that now. Exit your X-session (left mouse click anywhere on the desktop and select "Exit") and then skip ahead to Acceleration.

CategoryHowTo

unitrunker/JWM (last edited 2020-07-26T03:43:59+0000 by unitrunker)