Mwm – The smallest usable X11 window manager

Post by toast0 » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 6:37 PM UTC

jjrh wrote: post #18

90s_dev wrote: post #3

> Most software today is crappy. Do you really need all the bells and whistles? Probably not. I agree that most software today is bloated , but I wouldn't say crappy. There are legitimate reasons to choose bloat, for example using SDL or Electron to speed up development and have easier portability. But for some reason I do strongly enjoy writing and using minimalist software. That's why I removed C++, SDL and other l…

It's a shame no one has figured out how we can get the flexibility of html/css/js in a way that is fast.

Post by fmbb » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 6:56 PM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #27

ahlCVA wrote: post #23

While this leaves a lot to be desired as a window manager, it illustrates one of my main gripes about the Wayland ecosystem: By effectively bundling the window manager and X server, it makes it much harder for more niche/experimental window managers to come about and stay alive. Even with things like wlroots, you have to invest a lot more work to get even the basics working that X11 will give you for free.

True; but a counterargument is that the _display protocol_ is not the right abstraction layer for decoupling window management from the display server. There is nothing stopping someone from writing a batteries-included wlroots-like library where the only piece you need to write is the window management and input handling, or even an entire Wayland compositor that farms these pieces out to an embedded scripting runti…

Post by tadfisher » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 7:16 PM UTC

fmbb wrote: post #33

tadfisher wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True; but a counterargument is that the _display protocol_ is not the right abstraction layer for decoupling window management from the display server. There is nothing stopping someone from writing a batteries-included wlroots-like library where the only piece you need to write is the window management and input handling, or even an entire Wayland compositor that farms these pieces out to an embedded scripting runti…

Copy&paste between apps should work just fine using this window manager. I have not tried mwm but use my own 100 line C window manager and I can copy and paste without issue. Wayland will take 20 more years before it can dethrone X11. And even then we will mostly run X11 apps on XWayland.

Post by throwaway328 » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 8:25 PM UTC

supportengineer wrote: post #36

trollied wrote: post #28

I wish things were as easy as they were with X11. Being able to ssh into a box and “export DISPLAY=192.168.0.7:0.0” then start an app and have it show up locally is just magical.

We had a bright future in the past.

Post by DonHopkins » Thu, Jul 24, 2025, 8:33 PM UTC

tadfisher wrote: post #27

ahlCVA wrote: post #23

While this leaves a lot to be desired as a window manager, it illustrates one of my main gripes about the Wayland ecosystem: By effectively bundling the window manager and X server, it makes it much harder for more niche/experimental window managers to come about and stay alive. Even with things like wlroots, you have to invest a lot more work to get even the basics working that X11 will give you for free.

True; but a counterargument is that the _display protocol_ is not the right abstraction layer for decoupling window management from the display server. There is nothing stopping someone from writing a batteries-included wlroots-like library where the only piece you need to write is the window management and input handling, or even an entire Wayland compositor that farms these pieces out to an embedded scripting runti…