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Arch Linux How to Install Bspwm

Bspwm is a tiling window manager. It is popular among Linux users. It is apparently especially popular among Arch users which makes a lot of sense. The first page that comes up when you search for ‘bspwm’ in google is the Arch Wiki. At the moment you are probably better off just following the instructions HERE.

To install bspwm on Arch Linux just run the following command:

pacman -S bspwm

You will also need X Windows before you can use bspwm. You can just follow the instructions from either our i3 gaps guide or our xfce install guide.

You can edit your xinitrc file to launch bspwm or you can install a display manager. To edit your xinitrc file run this:

nano /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc

Disable any other exec lines and add one that looks like this at the bottom of the file:

exec bspwm

Then use this to launch X Windows:

startx

Once bspwm initially launches you will see nothing except a black screen. It needs to be configured before you can really use it.

You can find instructions to build, install, and configure bspwm here:

References