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" installer: 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
  • qutebrowser 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.btxx.org/open-suck
cd open-suck

Installing

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

TL;DR

# Install OpenBSD packages
doas sh ./install-dependencies.sh
# Install suckless tools
doas sh ./install.sh
# Apply .xinitrc
cp .xinitrc ~/.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.