pekwm

I’ve been using pekwm for only a few days, but it already feels like home.
As a long-time Slackware user, I’ve always preferred minimal and efficient setups like Fluxbox, IceWM and twm, and pekwm fits perfectly into that tradition.

What I enjoy the most is how simple, fast and predictable it is.
I use only my laptop (no external monitor), and pekwm gives me exactly what I want: a clean environment, flexible keybindings, mouse-friendly workflow and no unnecessary complexity.

I’m also using pekwm’s group/tab feature with rules like:

Property = "^Alacritty,^Alacritty,,.*" { ApplyOn = "New Start Reload"; Group = "netwin" { Size = "0" } }
Property = "^Navigator,^firefox,,.*" { ApplyOn = "New Start Reload"; Group = "netwin" { Size = "0" } }
Property = "^xterm,^XTerm" { ApplyOn = "New Start Reload"; Group = "netwin" { Size = "0" } }

This keeps my terminals and browser neatly tabbed together, which is great on a laptop screen.

It also reminds me of this classic article showing how developers desktops hardly changed over the years, always focused on minimal window managers and simple tools:

https://anders.unix.se/2015/12/10/screenshots-from-developers--2002-vs.-2015/

Pekwm has the same timeless Unix spirit.
Great work, and thanks for keeping this project alive!

#pekwm #slackware

I spent some time experimenting with pekwm and evilwm on my Slackware system, mostly out of curiosity.

Both are lightweight X11 window managers with very different philosophies:

• evilwm: extreme minimalism, very small codebase, written in C
• pekwm: still lightweight, but feature-rich (menus, grouping/tabs, rules), written in C++

I did a very simple, informal check of memory usage (RSS via ps) in a clean startx session: no compositor, no panel, one terminal. On my setup, both ended up in roughly the same memory range (a few MB).

At that scale, shared X11 libraries dominate anyway, so small differences aren’t very meaningful.

What mattered more to me was the trade-off:

• evilwm requires much more customization to reach basic comfort
• pekwm provides significantly more usability with essentially the same resource footprint

Conclusion (for me): pekwm hits a better balance between minimalism and usability.
evilwm is interesting as a learning exercise, but not worth the extra friction for daily use.

This isn’t a benchmark, just personal experimentation and preference.

#Slackware #X11 #WindowManager #pekwm #evilwm