Show HN: SteppeWM – a stacking IceWM-like Wayland compositor

Aug 21, 2026 10:27 PM - 2 hours ago 1
steppewm-readme.mp4

Stacking mini wlroots model manager

If you want windows that float and overlap, pinch titlebars and a taskbar for illustration IceWM, location is not overmuch to prime from.

That's steppewm. Stacking, mini and themeable

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

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 each work, truthful whichever your distribution ships should beryllium fine.

Required:

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

Optional:

  • libpulse: measurement things (taskbar and OSD)
  • sdbus-c++: strategy tray (DBus)
  • librsvg: svg icon rendering
% make configure % make build # make install

steppewm is configured done config.lua, which is looked for at $XDG_CONFIG_HOME/steppewm/config.lua (~/.config/steppewm/config.lua). A civilization way tin beryllium passed pinch steppewm -c /path/to/config.lua

See the illustration config.lua for config options. The afloat reference, including theming and the IceWM taxable converter, is in doc/steppewm.md.

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