The Xterm Window Manager Homepage

Xterm Window Manager

Xterm Window Manager (XtermWM) is a desktop environment / window manager for the console. Its major features include:

• Tiled and windowed terminal shells with good Xterm/VT100 support, including mouse. Terminal shells will also resize correctly due to the included ptypipe utility.
• Virtual desktops and desktop pager widget.
• Cascading/overlapping/floating windows with mouse-draggable move and resizing.
• Tiled/paned windows with mouse selection and divider-draggable resizing.
• A plugin system for adding custom widgets, windows, screensavers, and other functions.
• The ability to run in both Xterm-like environments (Unix command line shells or over ssh) and as a Swing component for X11/Windows/Mac, with the same behavior and look-and-feel. The mouse can also work for the raw Linux console when GPM is installed and XtermWM is run inside LCXterm.
• Image support, for both Swing and Xterm. See here for a list of tested terminals and feature support.
• Detachable sessions and share-able session with read-only client support. Please see these notes about shared sessions, particularly the security section.

Here is an example: Installing XtermWM on a headless Linux machine.

XtermWM is expected to be helpful to the following kinds of people:

• Console users who want to have multiple windowed terminals, but not a full X11 desktop environment.
• Data center / system administrators who want a more capable physical console at the rack / head node, but will not (or cannot) install X11/Wayland.
• People who used the DOS-era "shells" like IBM DOS Shell, DESQview, WordPerfect Office, and Direct Access, and want similar features in their terminals without having to learn Emacs Lisp.

License

Xterm Window Manager is Copyrighted (c) 2020 Autumn Lamonte. It is made available to all under the MIT license.

The core TUI library that XtermWM is built out of is also available here under the MIT license.

Downloads

XtermWM can be downloaded here.

Development Status

This code is currently "alpha" quality, as in it "works for me". I have fixed all the bugs I know about, but there are surely more bugs and rough spots lurking. If you run across something, feel free to open an issue.

Though I can fix the bugs, I am sadly in no position to drive a real project forward with the "community" parts of open-source like forums, announcements, getting it into distros, etc. If you feel a passion toward becoming the public face of XtermWM, consider dropping in on Issue #1: Find Project Maintainer.

The main structure will not change much from here on out. The path forward is now making more plugins.

Obligatory: "Ugh, Why Java?!"

Why not? It's cross-platform, much faster and lighter than Electron, and many of the systems that XtermWM makes sense for (rackmount servers / cloud instances without X11, Raspberry PIs) already have Java installed for webby/backend stuff.

But for those who find Java utterly distasteful, check out the Jexer porting guide: it has pointers to where the key features of XtermWM's toolkit are, and a potential roadmap to liberate it into other languages.

There are also several text-based toolkits listed on the bottom of this page in some more hip languages that could be built up to meet or exceed the features of XtermWM/Jexer. Consider giving those projects some of your time, so that text user interfaces can get better for everyone.

Xterm Window Manager Project

Submit A New Bug Report
Latest README
GitLab XtermWM Project Page
SourceForge XtermWM Project Page

See Also

• K.Mandla's blog of Linux experiences - A blog that explores MANY amazing command-line / text-based programs.
• Jexer - The toolkit underlying XtermWM. Jexer is to XtermWM as Qt is to KDE, or GTK is to GNOME.
• LCXterm - A terminal emulator "helper" that can make GPM mouse on Linux console work with XtermWM.
• tmux - The famous terminal multiplexer that can has support for multiple "desktops" (windows) and "panels" (panes).
• zellij - A tiling terminal multiplexer / terminal workspace written in Rust, currently "beta" but under very active development. Includes layouts and a plugin system.
• dvtm - A small and fast tiling terminal multiplexer.
• mtm - A VERY small and fast tiling terminal multiplexer.
• Twin - A text mode window environment that can do cascaded/stacking text terminal windows.
• Monotty Desktopio (a.k.a. VTM) - A text mode window environment that can do cascaded/stacking text terminal windows with some really slick game-like aesthetic effects.