Qvwm is a

window manager A window manager is system software that controls the placement and appearance of window (computing), windows within a windowing system in a graphical user interface. Most window managers are designed to help provide a desktop environment. They ...

, intended as a reimplementation of the

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

interface for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

systems. Released in 1996 under the

GNU General Public License The GNU General Public Licenses (GNU GPL or simply GPL) are a series of widely used free software licenses, or ''copyleft'' licenses, that guarantee end users the freedom to run, study, share, or modify the software. The GPL was the first ...

. The project's name comes from wordplay references to Japanese words and Roman numbers. In 2000, ''

Linux Format ''Linux Format'' was the UK's first Linux-specific magazine, and as of 2013 was the best-selling Linux title in the UK. It was also exported to many countries worldwide. It was published by Future plc (which produces a number of other computer ma ...

'' called Qvwm "an unusually impressive imposter". Unlike Windows 95's registry, Qvwm uses a textual configuration file. Qvwm includes

virtual desktop In computing, a virtual desktop is a term used with respect to user interfaces, usually within the WIMP (computing), WIMP paradigm, to describe ways in which the virtual space of a computer's desktop environment is expanded beyond the physical ...

s, a feature lacking in Windows 95. One reviewer criticized this practice as "against qvwm's stated purpose." Apart from standard X libraries, the only

software library In computing, a library is a collection of resources that can be leveraged during software development to implement a computer program. Commonly, a library consists of executable code such as compiled functions and classes, or a library can ...

it depends on is

X PixMap X PixMap (XPM) is an Image file formats, image file format used by the X Window System, created in 1989 by Daniel Dardailler and Colas Nahaboo working at Groupe Bull, Bull Research Center at Sophia Antipolis, France, and later enhanced by Arnaud L ...

(libxpm). The developers had intended to develop a full class library called ''libqv'' but this never occurred. The original author of Qvwm, Kenichi Kourai, no longer maintains it, but in 2006 the project was picked up by Ivan Kurmanov, who applied patches made by the

Debian Debian () is a free and open-source software, free and open source Linux distribution, developed by the Debian Project, which was established by Ian Murdock in August 1993. Debian is one of the oldest operating systems based on the Linux kerne ...

project and added features of his own. Qvwm was included in Debian since 1999 but was removed in early 2009 because of the lack of updates as well as using

deprecated Deprecation is the discouragement of use of something human-made, such as a term, feature, design, or practice. Typically something is deprecated because it is claimed to be inferior compared to other options available. Something may be deprec ...

libraries. In 2020, the source code of Qvwm is available on

GitHub GitHub () is a Proprietary software, proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GitHub itself provides access control, bug trackin ...

(under the user Asveikau) so this window manager can be compile-install to Linux (

BSD The Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), also known as Berkeley Unix or BSD Unix, is a discontinued Unix operating system developed and distributed by the Computer Systems Research Group (CSRG) at the University of California, Berkeley, beginni ...

Minix MINIX is a Unix-like operating system based on a microkernel Software architecture, architecture, first released in 1987 and written by American-Dutch computer scientist Andrew S. Tanenbaum. It was designed as a clone of the Unix operating syste ...

, etc.) through "configure, make, install" method (or any method similar or better than this).

References

External links

* , project maintainer Ivan Kurmanov * , original Free software programmed in C++ Free X window managers Compatibility layers 1996 software {{free-software-stub