https://github.com/user-attachments/assets/b725f8ec-2785-4c7b-aae8-f222e49de065

steppewm

Stacking small wlroots window manager

If you want windows that float and overlap, with titlebars and a taskbar like IceWM, there is not much to pick from.

That's steppewm. Stacking, small and themeable

Features

• Stacking window management, snapping, workspaces
• Taskbar and Alt-Tab switcher
• 25 classic IceWM pixmap themes included
• OSD for volume, brightness and keyboard layout
• Layer shell, session lock, multi-monitor
• System tray
• XWayland via xwayland-satellite (optional)
• Lua configuration

Install

On Arch, from the AUR:

git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/steppewm-git.git
cd steppewm-git
makepkg -si

Elsewhere, build it. wlroots 0.20, 0.19 and 0.18 all work, so whichever your distribution ships should be fine.

Required:

• Meson
• Ninja
• Make
• wlroots 0.20, 0.19 or 0.18
• wayland
• xkbcommon
• libinput
• lua 5.4
• pixman
• cairo

Optional:

• libpulse: volume things (taskbar and OSD)
• sdbus-c++: system tray (DBus)
• librsvg: svg icon rendering

% make configure
% make build
# make install

Configuration

steppewm is configured through config.lua, which is looked for at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/steppewm/config.lua (~/.config/steppewm/config.lua). A custom path can be passed with steppewm -c /path/to/config.lua

See the example config.lua for config options. The full reference, including theming and the IceWM theme converter, is in doc/steppewm.md.

Useful Stuff

• swaybg
• swayidle
• wlr-randr
• wlrctl
• wlopm
• xwayland-satellite