How to Run WindowMaker on Solaris 11.4 (with X11 + OpenCSW)

August 20, 2025 — by Giacomo Garoffoli

A quick and dirty guide to getting WindowMaker running on Solaris 11.4 (on VMware)

X11 Setup

Begin by preparing a working X11 environment. Install the core components with:

pkg install xorg xserver-common xinit xorg-video truetype/fonts-core

Then update the system with:

pkg update --accept

After the update, the text-mode terminal font rendering is completely borked, but keyboard and mouse functionality in X11 should be working now.

Add OpenCSW

OpenCSW is a community-driven repository for Solaris that provides precompiled software packages. Note: The “one-liner” installer from the OpenCSW website no longer works on Solaris 11 because pkgadd removed the ability to install directly from HTTP/HTTPS.

Instead, run the following manually:

wget http://get.opencsw.org/now
pkgadd -d now

This will set up access to the OpenCSW package collection.

Configure pkgutil

Edit /opt/csw/etc/pkgutil.conf and change the repository mirror setting from testing to unstable. This ensures you will have access to updated packages.

Install WindowMaker

Ensure that /opt/csw/bin is included in your $PATH. You can add it system-wide in /etc/profile or to your personal .bashrc. Then, as root, install WindowMaker with:

pkgutil -i windowmaker

Launch Configuration

To make WindowMaker the default window manager, edit /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc and add the appropriate commands. For example, to set the display resolution to 1080p, include:

xrandr -s 1920x1080

Finally, add:

wmaker

Troubleshooting Note

If startx fails because it cannot locate wmaker and you are using Bash, try running:

exec bash

Then run startx again.

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