Motif Window Manager

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Motif Window Manager

Motif Window Manager with iconized windows.
Developed by The Open Group
Latest release 2.1.30 / May 15, 2002
OS Unix-like
Genre X window manager
License The Open Group Public License
Website [1]

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, 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[2]). 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.

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