LIliveprogramming·Nov 3, 2021
This is a great article and I remember reading it numerous times while I was implementing my own window manager.
For someone interested in working on a really fun and rewarding hobby project a WM is a great one to look into since there are so many resources starting from really small implementations:
- https://github.com/mackstann/tinywm
- https://github.com/venam/2bwm
- https://github.com/dylanaraps/sowm
- https://github.com/dcat/swm
- https://github.com/JLErvin/berry
Which are great at introducing the concepts and allowing you to grok the required libraries.
To larger more full featured packed window managers which will introduce you to more advanced topics:
- https://github.com/baskerville/bspwm
- https://github.com/herbstluftwm/herbstluftwm
- https://www.nongnu.org/ratpoison/
- https://github.com/conformal/spectrwm
Gradually as you ge
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t more familiar with the ecosystem a few questions will come up:
Should I use X11 or XCB? - I personally used XCB and didn't find it too difficult to interface with, and there are a large number of implementations which use it (2bwm, bspwm, ratpoison, etc) so you shouldn't have an issue with learning more about it. But the documentation is pretty limited. If you are just wanting to write a toy WM than X11 is perfectly fine.
X or Wayland? - If you're wanting to write your first WM as a hobby project than I would recommend X over wayland just due to the much larger amount of reference material and documentation. You will have a much easier time getting your feet wet. Ignore the comments about X dying as it doesn't really matter for a hobby project, since the whole point is to have fun.
Feel free to check out my window manager which is an example of what just reading this blog post and getting inspired can result in: https://github.com/cfrank/natwm