HOWTO PekWM

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

Nico's PekWM desktop, Theme: DIVERSITY

[edit] What is PekWM?

The Pek Window Manager is a window manager for X, based on aewm++, but it has evolved enough that it no longer resembles aewm++ at all. It has a much expanded feature-set, including window grouping (similar to ion, pwm, or fluxbox), autoproperties, xinerama, keygrabber that supports keychains, and much more.

For more information please visit the project page: [1]

[edit] Installation

Unmasking the latest version (do not forget to replace ~arch with your arch ie. ~x86)

echo "x11-wm/pekwm ~arch" >> /etc/portage/package.keywords

Installing is simple, just do

emerge pekwm

[edit] The first start

If you don't plan on using a graphical login manager such as gdm, you can configure the global /etc/rc.conf and change the line XSESSION="Xsession" to XSESSION="pekwm". Else, as per-user setting edit ~/.xinitrc to run it via startx:

exec pekwm

Please skip creating the pekwm.desktop file if you are using PekWM from devnull overlay!

If you are using a login manager, you should create a .desktop entry:

 [Desktop Entry]
 Encoding=UTF-8
 Name=PekWM
 Comment=Use PekWM as your window manager
 Exec=pekwm
 TryExec=pekwm
 # no icon yet, only the top three are currently used
 Icon=
 Type=Application

Now start it with startx or per login manager and play around a litte. The default theme is quite ugly but the gentoo ebuild contains some additional themes. If you don't like it change it: A right-click brings up the menu the menu, then navigate to "pekwm -> themes" and select another one.

[edit] Basic usage

Lets keep it really simple here, all the things are covered in the awesome documentation.

The important things are the right and the middle mouse button: The right mouse button brings up the menu and the middle one the "focus frame" menu (the window list).

[edit] Configuration

This part is covered in the documentation too.

[edit] Themes

You can obtain themes from hewphoria.com. I also created a theme ebuild with about 60 themes which is now in portage under x11-themes/pekwm-themes-hewphoria.

If a theme looks horribly broken, don't use it. This happens probably because the theme syntax has changed. (In x11-themes/pekwm-themes-hewphoria only working themes are included)

[edit] Final notes

Enjoy PekWM and read the documentation or vice versa.