gwm_exec* files are precompiled gwm executables for some architectures to help installation. They are only on ftp at koala.inria.fr:/pub/gwm not to waste space on ftp.x.org and its mirrors. You must get the executable AND the associated release, e.g. gwm_exec_VERSION_ARCHI.gz and gwm-VERSION.tar.gz. Then decompress and copy the gwm_exec_VERSION_ARCHI somewhere in your PATH, naming it gwm and making it executable with chmod a+x. Then create a directory to hold the machine-independent lib files, e.g: GWMLIBDIR (recommended: /usr/local/lib/gwm), and decompress the source distrib and into it, do a: cp -p data/* data/.??* GWMLIBDIR (this not to forget the two dot-prefixed files in this dir!) and set an environment variable GWMPATH to point to it: export GWMPATH=$HOME/gwm:GWMLIBDIR or setenv GWMPATH $HOME/gwm:GWMLIBDIR NOTE: this last step is not necessary if GWMLIBDIR is set to the compiled-in one (/usr/local/lib/gwm), that you can saw as the last line printed by "gwm -h" ************************************ WARNING ********************************* GWM sends me an udp packet with just the value of "gethostname" for my private statistics on startup. You can disable this feature by recompiling with -DNO_GWM_LOG or -DNO_KOALA_SPY, or you can also set the shell environments NO_GWM_LOG or NO_KOALA_SPY to disable this feature without recompilation. ****************************************************************************** DOCUMENTATION: in the source distribution: * a tiny man page: gwm.man * a reference manual in LaTeX in doc/, with the postscript version as doc/gwm.ps (~ 120 pages) -- Colas Nahaboo, Koala, BULL @ INRIA Sophia, http://www.inria.fr/koala/colas