Evilwm

Related articles
Window manager
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
evilwm
AUR
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 default
Ctrl+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 terminal
Escape
– Deletes current window
Insert
– Lowers current window
h
,
j
,
k
,
l
– Move window left, down, up, right 16 pixels
y
,
u
,
b
,
n
– Move window to top-left, top-right, bottom-left, bottom-right corner
i
– 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 window
Button 2
– Resize window
Button 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 desktop
Left
– Previous virtual desktop
Right
– Next virtual desktop
f
– 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 and 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
See also
Official website of evilwm