Setting Up SXWM on Ubuntu Server

Instead of the usual rambling, I’ll make a guide for something that I find really fun: setting up a graphical interface on an OS that does not have one. For this, I usually use Debian without a desktop environment. We’ll check this out on an Ubuntu Server because the word “server” emphasizes that it should not have a GUI. But it will!

This guide was created for Ubuntu 25.04, and the tools we use are subject to change. The steps may change as time passes!

Preparing Ubuntu

If you expected that I would guide you through the installation, you will be disappointed. Download the server ISO, install it on a machine or a VM—I will use the latter. Finish the installation, and do not install any additional packages that could be handy for a server; we won’t need them. Do an update and upgrade, and you should see something like this when you find out who and where you are:

Yes, my user is me, because me is me. Makes sense.

Without starting any religious war, we will remove snap. There are a couple of reasons: I don’t like it, we don’t need it, and I don’t like it. I’m not against universal package managers, but for me, snap does not feel so snappy. If you like it, don’t dismiss it.

Luckily, in Ubuntu Server this is very easy—it will bite back, but that is part of the fun. You can check how many snap packages you have with: snap list. If you did not install any extra packages, this should be zero, which is great; snap can be removed. We will remove it and hold it back:

sudo apt remove --purge snapd
sudo apt-mark hold snapd

No snappy snap snaps after this.

Display Server

We will install X11, also known as the X Window System, which is a protocol and system that provides the basic framework for a graphical user interface for Unix-like operating systems. It is important to state that Wayland is another protocol, and most desktop environments are migrating to that. Both have their ups and downs; choosing X11 is not a statement, it’s just the dependency of the window manager we will use.

The easiest way to install it is to install xinit. Maybe you can guess what that is by the name, but from Wikipedia:

The xinit program allows a user to manually start an Xorg display server. The startx script is a front-end for xinit.

This means we’ll have a configurable entry point, a command called: startx

sudo apt install xinit

If you run startx, you will see a graphical terminal emulator called xterm. You can exit or pkill xinit if you’re an animal.

Window Manager

At this point, you could install i3 with apt and add a line to .xinitrc:

exec i3

Without knowing the key bindings, you may have a “vim” experience exiting from it.

But we’re going to do something much more interesting: building one ourselves, and it’s not going to be dwm. Crazy!

We’re going to use sxwm, a newborn—at the time when I’m writing this, it’s 2 weeks old. The reason it caught my eye is its layout is very similar to dwm, but it has a very short and simple config file and it has hot reload. And it mostly does everything that I patched into dwm. Check out the repository , star it if you like it, it’s really impressive.

Some general lessons about building software:

• Read the README

Thank you for your attention. But jokes aside, we’re looking for the build dependencies and build steps, and we’re lucky both are documented. It needs libX11 and Xinerama, and a C compiler as well. Let’s use gcc.

sudo apt install gcc libx11-dev libxinerama-dev

The build steps are make and sudo make install; it will first build and then copy the binary to /usr/local/bin. But something happens when we try to run make.

In these cases, you can surf through the interwebz for answers, but I have a better solution. There is a tool called apt-file for cases like that. Run the following commands to find out what we’re missing.

sudo apt install apt-file
sudo apt-file update
apt-file search X11/Xcursor/Xcursor.h

Now we see that the libxcursor-dev package needs to be installed. Do that. Run make and sudo make install so sxwm is built and installed.

Add the following line to .xinitrc:

exec sxwm

Run the command startx, and congratulations—you see a black screen. I will spare your time; you can exit with Super+Shift+e.

By default, this window manager has some bindings to suckless tools. We can install them just for trying it out.

sudo apt install suckless-tools stterm

To get a terminal, press Super+Enter; to show a runner, Super+p.

This picture is called Two terminals one runner.

Ricing!

As much as I love dmenu, just to spice things up we’re going to use rofi. Since it’s available in Ubuntu repositories, go ahead and install it. Test it with the following command:

rofi -show run -theme purple

This theme will be our base. We will need to configure sxwm, but before that, let’s install some more programs.

For the terminal, install alacritty, which is in the repositories. The only reason why we use it is that I really like it and it’s widely available.

For the browser, let’s install Firefox because that is not a controversial browser in 2025 . Be so brave and run:

sudo apt install firefox

And if you did everything right, you should see:

I did say removing snap will bite back! Since we’re holding it with apt-mark and it is a dependency for Firefox, we cannot install it. But we can use the Mozilla PPA.

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mozillateam/ppa
sudo apt install firefox-esr

The configuration of sxwm will happen in the following file: $HOME/.config/sxwmrc. The default config can be found in the git repository; it’s default_sxrc.

Let’s change what applications are launched with the keybindings:

bind : mod + Return : "alacritty"
bind : mod + b : "firefox-esr"
bind : mod + p : "rofi -show run -theme purple"

And change colors to match rofi, and change border width:

border_width:            : 2

focused_border_colour    : #815ba4
unfocused_border_colour  : #b4b4b4
swap_border_colour       : #ef6155

Pressing Super+r will apply the changes in the current session—remember, hot reload.

Adding a wallpaper would be nice as well, so install ubuntu-wallpapers and feh. We will use it soon!

The last thing I want is a status bar. Luckily for us, the creator of sxwm created sxbar. Clone the repository and run make && sudo make install in it.

If you want to change the appearance of the bar, you need to edit a header file src/config.h:

#define BAR_COLOR_BG		"#2e1d2e"
#define BAR_COLOR_FG		"#b4b4b4"
#define BAR_COLOR_BORDER	"#815ba4"

#define BAR_FONT			"8x13bold"

#define BAR_WS_HIGHLIGHT_LEFT	""
#define BAR_WS_HIGHLIGHT_RIGHT	"*"

This will change the colors to again match rofi and change how highlight is visualized and the font as well. Rebuild it with: sudo make clean install.

For all our work to come alive, we need to edit the .xinitrc file:

feh --bg-fill /usr/share/backgrounds/Ubuntu_tide_by_lost-cause-light.png
sxbar&
sxwm

This will set the background, start sxbar in the background, and start sxwm.

The Result

Let me present to you the fruit of our hard work!

In this image I’m running this site locally with Docker while inspecting logs and opening the runner:

If you made it to the end, let me congratulate you. I hope you enjoyed this computering™ adventure very much.