PWM is a simplistic tiling window manager written in python 3.

Package names on Arch Linux:

• extra/python3
• aur/python-cffi
• extra/libxcb
• extra/xcb-util
• extra/cairo

There is an AUR package available for Arch Linux.

Alternative installation from source:

git checkout git://github.com/mibitzi/pwm.git
cd pwm
python setup.py install

In both cases the ~/.xinitrc file will have to be edited to include a line like:

exec pwm

In pwm windows can in one of three different states: tiling (default), floating or fullscreen. Tiling windows will be arranged in a column-based layout in which all windows can be resized freely.

---------------------
|        |          |
|________|          |
|        |          |
|        |__________|
|________|          |
|        |          |
---------------------

There can be a variable number of columns and every column can have variable amount of rows. Changing the size of a column will cause the other columns to resize accordingly, same goes with rows.

Unless the config file already exists the default configuration will be copied to ~/.config/pwm/pwmrc.py.

Shortcuts are all defined in the config file. To get started, some important default shortcuts:

• Mod4-p to show the menu to start other applications
• Mod4-q close the focused window
• Mod4-Return start urxvt
• Mod4-shift-q Quit pwm
• Mod4-shift-r Restart pwm
• ...

For testing it is convenient to use Xephyr to create a new X display:

Xephyr :1 -screen 1024x768

Then pwm can be run in this screen by setting the environment variable:

DISPLAY=":1" pwm