JWM - The featherweight Window manager

[viking60]

Joe's Window Manager is featherlight and is the base for snappy Distros like Puppy and Damn Small Linux.

Since Openbox has been moody lately I needed a new lightweight alternative so I gave JWM a go.

I installed it on my fresh Arch install that is already blistering fast with Lxqt.

The installation:
There was one program to install called jwm (not a big shock there )

Configuration:

JWM is configured in one file. To get a working sample we I had to copy it from /etc/system.jwmrc - like this;

Code: Select all

cp -i /etc/system.jwmrc ~/.jwmrc

That should be enough to have a first look at jwm so I logged out and found jwm as an alternative in my LightDM:


So far so good - logging in .... and there it is:

No wallpaper a panel with a nice JWM logo and a menu. All we need to adapt this to our own use...almost.

As mentioned; the config is done in ~/.jwmrc
This is where you can edit the menu and assign Keys. When I say "almost" i had a slight keyboard problem so the global æøåÆØÅ did not work and the "=" and "-" were in exotic places.

That is not a good basis for editing a config file so I did a:

Code: Select all

setxkbmap no

and that toke care of the keyboard for the session, To make it stick I needed to autostart this in the config file.
I tried something and logged out and in again and everything went black that is how I learned that I should check the config first

To check I did a

Code: Select all

jwm -p

if that comes up with nothing then everything is fine.

To load my keyboard on every startup I had to add this to my config file:

Code: Select all

<StartupCommand>
setxkbmap no
</StartupCommand>

After that the keyboard works on every login...

The big part here would be to edit the menu to your liking with all the entries that you have. So far I have not found any "auto-generating" menu function...

But before I get into that I will add a wallpaper because black is boring.

I installed nitrogen

Code: Select all

sudo pacman -S nitrogen

I opened it from the terminal and picked a the background directory where my wallpapers are...
and found "Background type" in ~/.jwmrc.
I changed it so it looked like this:

Code: Select all

<Background  type="command">nitrogen --restore</Background>

checked that the config was still OK with jwm -p and restarted jwm from the menu.....
Yeah this is more like it:



Now you can edit ~/.jwmrc manually and enter your own menu options - if you do have the same software all the time that is fine.
I tend to install stuff and delete it so I want a dynamic menu that presents the programs I have installed,

So time to install xdgmenumaker it is not in the official Arch repos but you can compile it from AUR.
No problem there so now we only have to integrate it with JWM:

At this point I have to admit that I had to read the man pages (manuals are for chickens - I know ) and there in the xdgmenu man pages there are instructions for integrating it in JWM
Monkey see and monkey do; so I copied this line as the last entry under RootMenu

Code: Select all

<Include>exec: xdgmenumaker -n -i -f jwm</Include>

..checked the config and oh wonder - it was good! Time to restart JWM and check the result......


Since I had added my line at the bottom of the existing menu it kept both the static menu, and gave me the dynamic menu I wanted - with icons!

It needs some cleaning up but I am ready to sum this up:

JWM is a charming blistering fast featherweight WM and it is very functional. If you are used to Openbox this is even easier to handle because there is only one XML config file.
I sure like that.
And it works!
I think I will replace all my Openbox installs with JWM.

Even if this is installed on Arch it should be just as simple to install in Debian and other distros.

[viking60]

Behold!
JWM - the movie!

Lousy quality but you get the idea.
Her you see the impact JWM has

That ain't to bad

With Firefox running it jumps up to about 340 MB RAM. Most people don't use the salt-minion so it will be even less. When you start using it the RAM will rise because Linux uses the memory - by design - so that is nothing to worry about.

Here I have come a bit further:

Good and fast this one. Openbox is history here, since it is part of Lxqt I simply use that instead.