 | wm2 is a window manager for X. Using wm2,
you can: | | · | | move windows around the screen; |
| | · | | resize windows both horizontally and vertically;
| | | · | | hide windows; | | | · | | restore hidden windows; and | | | · | | delete windows. |
wm2 also adds a stylish frame to
each managed window.
wm2
does not provide: | | · | | icons; | | | · | | configurability; | | | · | | a virtual desktop; | | | · | |
extendable root menus; | | | · | |
toolbars - button panels - docking areas - &c. |
wm2 is therefore the ideal window manager
for today's elegant and ascetic programmer. Why? The briefest
contemplation of the modern window manager makes five points immediately
obvious: | | 1. | | Icons are crap. No existing window manager
manages them at all well. | | | 2. | |
Configurability is crap. It takes up so much time and can never truly
compensate for using the wrong design. | | | 3. | | Long
lists of useful applications on the root menu are crap. It doesn't matter
how much care you take to add all the applications you think you want:
you never actually get it right. | | | 4. | | The
click-to-focus versus focus-follows-pointer war is not really important. Most
people can get used to either. | | | 5. | |
Appearance is important. |
Armed with these certainties, therefore, I embarked upon a
spiritualist quest to write the perfect window manager. It has a lot of
faults - more faults than features, probably - but goddammit the faults
are perfect too. It looks like this,
and you can get it here. The distribution
is a gzipped tar file of sources only. No binaries are available;
you'll have to compile it yourself. You'll need Unix, X11R4 or newer
with the Shape extension, and a C++ compiler such as gcc. If you
want some more cool features - if you like the appearance of wm2,
but you're the kind of freak who expects their window manager to be
take care of things like multiple desktops for them - then you might
like to take a look at wmx, which looks the
same but follows a rather different design philosophy. Addendum: This page, and wm2 itself, were written in 1996. Other window managers are better now than they were then, and I'm older and less zealous.
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