Setting Up a Desktop Environment for OpenBSD

This page covers the initial setup for installing and configuring dwm as a desktop environment on OpenBSD. Everything posted here relies on my personal “Open Suck” project: Open Suck

Show Don’t Tell

Screenshot of OpenBSD 7.5 running dwm — Open Suck: OpenBSD 7.5 running dwm on my X220

What You Get

The Open Suck installer gives you the absolute barebones desktop experience:

dwm for window management
firefox as your core web browser
aerc for your terminal-based mail client
slock for screen locking
scrot/slop for simple screenshot utilities
dunst for notifications

Required Packages

Before we begin setting things up, you will need to install git, vim, bash:

pkg_add git vim bash

Cloning the Project

Clone the main installer project and navigate instead the directory:

git clone https://git.sr.ht/~bt/open-suck-installer
cd open-suck-installer

Installing

Install dependencies by running ./install-dependencies.sh. The script will simply read required packages from dependencies.txt and run pkg_add.
Compile and install suckless software by running the ./install.sh

TL;DR

cd open-suck-installer # CD into this repository
doas sh ./install-dependencies.sh # Install OpenBSD packages
doas sh ./install.sh # Install suckless tools
cp .xinitrc ~/.xinitrc # Apply .xinitrc

Reboot the machine. Log in as your main user. Run:

startx

That’s it! You now have a fully functional desktop environment built on top of dwm.