In order to use qvwm as your window manager, you must change your .xinitrc or .xsession appropriately and add a line similar to the following: exec ${PREFIX}/bin/qvwm The default configuration and icons are stored in ${PREFIX}/share/qvwm. To use your own configuration, copy ${PREFIX}/share/qvwm/system.qvwmrc to ~/.qvwmrc and edit as appropriate.