I just installed awesome wm and entered startx. The interface was brought up. I have the awesome background, the functional clock and tag list. but 'hotkey+enter' doesn't bring up a terminal window. Selecting the awesome logo in the top-left > 'open terminal' doesn't do anything either. Is there something else I need to install?
You probably don't have the default terminal installed. I believe it is xterm.
You can set the default terminal in the awesome WM config (rc.lua).