Evilwm
evilwm is a minimalist window manager for the X Window system. It is minimalist in that it omits unnecessary stuff like window decorations and icons. But it is very usable in that it provides good keyboard control with repositioning and maximize toggles, solid window drags, snap-to-border support, and virtual desktops. Its installed binary size is only 0.07 MB.
Installation
Install the evilwmAUR package.
Starting
Run evilwm
with xinit.
evilwm does not control the desktop background or mouse cursor, so you may want to use xsetroot(1).
Startup options
evilwm can read options via command line switches. Some examples:
-fg color
(Frame color of currently active window)-bw n
(Width of window borders in pixels)-term term
(Specifies a program to run when spawning a new terminal; default is xterm)-snap n
(enables snap-to-border support and specifies the proximity in pixels to snap to)-mask1 modifier
(override the defaultCtrl+Alt
keyboard modifiers)-nosoliddrag
(draw a window outline while moving or resizing, rather than drawing the entire window)
A full list of the evilwm options can be found in evilwm(1) § OPTIONS.
By default, evilwm draws a one pixel gold border around the currenly active window. An example of the use of switches to change this would be a ~/.xinitrc
file such as:
exec evilwm -snap 10 -bw 2 -fg red
This would enable
- snapping to a border within 10 pixels,
- a border width of 2 pixels,
- red for the currently active window border.
From evilwm(1) § OPTIONS:
- evilwm will also read options, one per line, from a file called
.evilwmrc
in the user's home directory. Options listed in a configuration file should omit the leading dash. Options specified on the command line override those found in the configuration file.
Using evilwm
After starting evilwm you will see nothing but a mouse cursor and a black background (or other background if you specified it as above). To open a terminal, use the key combination Ctrl+Alt+Enter
. Programs can then be run from the terminal using executable &
.
Keyboard controls
Using the keyboard combination of Ctrl+Alt
plus a third key gives you these functions:
Enter
– spawns new terminalEscape
– Deletes current windowInsert
– Lowers current windowh
,j
,k
,l
– Move window left, down, up, right 16 pixelsy
,u
,b
,n
– Move window to top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right corneri
– Show information about current window=
– Maximize current window vertically (toggle)x
– Maximize current window full-screen (toggle)
Mouse controls
By holding down the Alt
key, you can perform these functions with the mouse:
Button 1
– Move windowButton 2
– Resize windowButton 3
– Lower window
Virtual desktops
Using the keyboard combination of Ctrl+Alt
plus a third key gives you these virtual desktop functions:
1
–8
– Switch virtual desktopLeft
– Previous virtual desktopRight
– Next virtual desktopf
– Fix or unfix current window
To move a window from one virtual desktop to another, fix it, switch desktop, then unfix it. Alt+Tab
can also be used to cycle through windows on the current desktop.
Tips & Tricks
Horizontal window maximize
The key combination of Ctrl+Alt+=
will maximize a window vertically. To maximize a window horizontally, use Ctrl+Alt+=
to maximize it vertically, then Ctrl+Alt+x
to maximize it horizontally (as opposed to just using Ctrl+Alt+x
to maximize it full-screen).
Exit evilwm by ending a program
By default, evilwm has no quit option. To exit, simply kill X with Ctrl+Alt+Backspace. If you wish, you can exit evilwm by closing a specific program. Instead of using exec evilwm
in your ~/.xinitrc
file, you can transfer exec to another program. Killing this program will then exit evilwm. For example:
~/.xinitrc
#!/bin/sh evilwm -snap 10 -bw 2 -fg red & exec xclock
Resize windows using the keyboard
Although not mentioned in the man-page, you can resize windows with the keyboard as well as the mouse. Using the same key-combinations for moving a window, just add the Shift
key to the mix to resize a window.
Ctrl+Alt+Shift
: h
,j
,k
,l
- Resize window smaller horizontally, larger vertically, smaller vertically, larger horizontally
Keybindings
You can make life easier by using xbindkeys to run commands in evilwm. See Xbindkeys for more details.
Troubleshooting
evilwm does not start
When you run evilwm, Xorg presents error messages in the log file and/or on the screen and exits. The messages may vary from system to system. Commonly, xorg-fonts-100dpi or xorg-fonts-75dpi is missing. Install either font to solve the problem.
See the following forum thread.
Missing fonts.dir
If the default /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc
successfully starts Twm but your ~/.xinitrc
fails to start evilwm and .local/share/xorg/Xorg.0.log
contains a warning about a missing or invalid file fonts.dir
in /usr/share/fonts/misc/
, follow the advice below the warning and run
$ mkfontdir /usr/share/fonts/misc/
to create that file.
See also Fonts#Older applications