Motif Window Manager

Motif Window Manager

Motif Window Manager with iconized windows.
Developer(s)	The Open Group
Stable release	2.1.30 / May 15, 2002; 9 years ago (2002-05-15)
Operating system	Unix-like
Type	Window manager
License	The Open Group Public License
Website	www.opengroup.org/motif

In computing, the Motif Window Manager (MWM) is an X window manager based on the Motif toolkit.

MWM is a lightweight and, by today's standards, extremely minimalist window manager. MWM lacks support for desktop icons or virtual desktops. A plain text file is used to generate a root menu that the user can customize. Another plain text file controls the colors of MWM's GUI but little else.

Motif and MWM were created by the Open Software Foundation (Motif was sometimes even called OSF/Motif) but is nowadays owned by The Open Group.

Originally, MWM and Motif could only be purchased but now there is also Open Motif which is a release of the "original" Motif under more liberal licensing terms (though still not quite open source/free software[1]). Also, the LessTif project has been working hard to implement the Motif API under the LGPL license. The project includes a clone of MWM with support for virtual desktops.

Features

Features of the mwm window manage include:

• Stacking windows
• May be freely redistributed under the terms of the Open Group Public Licence
• Configurable root menu
• Window decorations include borders and titlebars
• Titlebars have buttons for menu, minimize and maximize
• multiple desktops (since Motif 2.0)
• No desktop wallpaper
• No desktop shortcut icons
• Supports the use of a configuration file
• Colours can be configured
• Navigation keys and mouse buttons can be configured

External links

• Motif homepage at Open Group
• Open Motif project page
• The Motif FAQ (Kenton Lee)
• Motif: Volumes 6A and 6B (O'Reilly and Associates, free PDF downloads)
• [2] Motif User's Guide