Awesome is a highly configurable, next generation framework window manager for X.

After extracting the dist tarball or cloning the repository, run:

make
sudo make install

This will

1. create a build directory at ./build,
2. run cmake,
3. build Awesome and
4. install it to the default prefix path /usr/local.

Alternatively to the above, you can generate a .deb or .rpm package, for easy installation management:

make package

sudo dpkg -i awesome-x.y.z.deb
# or
sudo rpm -Uvh awesome-x.y.z.rpm

A full list of dependencies, more advanced build options, as well as instructions on how to use the test suite can be found here.

sudo pacman -S --needed base-devel git
git clone https://aur.archlinux.org/awesome-git.git
cd awesome-git
makepkg -fsri

sudo apt build-dep awesome
git clone https://github.com/awesomewm/awesome
cd awesome
make package
cd build
sudo apt install ./*.deb

You can directly select Awesome from your display manager. If not, you can add the following line to your .xinitrc to start Awesome using startx or to .xsession to start Awesome using your display manager:

exec awesome

In order to connect Awesome to a specific display, make sure that the DISPLAY environment variable is set correctly, e.g.:

DISPLAY=foo.bar:1 exec awesome

(This will start Awesome on display :1 of the host foo.bar.)

The configuration of Awesome is done by creating a $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/awesome/rc.lua file, typically ~/.config/awesome/rc.lua.

An example configuration named awesomerc.lua is provided in the source.

On most systems any message printed by Awesome (including warnings and errors) is written to ~/.xsession-errors.

If Awesome does not start or the configuration file is not producing the desired results the user should examine this file to gain insight into the problem.

You can call awesome with gdb like this:

DISPLAY=:2 gdb awesome

Then in gdb set any arguments and run it:

(gdb) set args --replace
(gdb) run

You can join us in the #awesome channel on the OFTC IRC network.

IRC Webchat

You can ask questions on Stack Overflow.

We also have an awesome subreddit where you can share your work and ask questions.

Please report any issues you may find on our bugtracker.

You can submit pull requests on the GitHub repository. Please read the contributing guide for any coding, documentation or patch guidelines.

Online documentation is available here.

The project is licensed under GNU General Public License v2 or later. You can read it online at (v2 or v3).