Ming-wm is a keyboard-based, retro-themed window manager for Linux. It is neither for Wayland or the X Window System - it writes directly to the framebuffer. Inspirations include i3, Haiku, SerenityOS, and Windows98.

The Koxinga web browser can be separately installed.

Create a password.env file in the same directory as build.rs, otherwise the default password will be "password".

For best performance:

cargo build --release --all-features

The user may need to be added to the video group.

Exclude --all-features if the audio player window is not needed. To compile and use the audio player window, ALSA dev packages need to be installed (alsa-lib-dev on Alpine, libasound2-dev on Debian, alsa-lib-devl on Fedora, already included with alsa-lib on Arch).

After building, to properly install ming-wm, run the following to put the necessary binaries, font data, and bmp files into /usr/local/bin:

chmod +x ./install
sudo ./install

Alternatively, to move the binaries to ~/.local/bin (which probably needs to be added to PATH, run the following:

chmod +x local-install
sudo ./local-install

ming

Type in the password to unlock. Open the start menu by doing Alt+s, and use the j and k keys to move up and down (like Vim), and press the Enter key to select a category / open a window.

Usage for most of the included windows and window-likes are included in docs/window-likes, which can also be accessed from the "Help" entry in the start menu.

More or the less the same, but includes with an onscreen keyboard for touchscreens.

Currently, the touchscreen input device is assumed to be at /dev/input/by-path/first-touchscreen, but this is easily editable (see src/bin/wm.rs). For touchscreen support, the user running ming needs to have read permissions for that /dev/input/ file.

ming touch

Optionally, in landscape mode:

ming touch rotate

If key presses do nothing, that is, if on the lockscreen, despite key presses (physical or of the OSK), nothing happens (no asterisk characters show up), try adding the force-stdout arg. For example:

ming force-stdout

Or:

ming touch force-stdout

See /docs/philosophy.md for some hopefully interesting ramblings.

Windows (may be called apps in other window managers) can be developed in any language, though it is easiest to do so in Rust because the ming-wm-lib crate can be used.

The docs directory includes a brief introduction to writing windows, and (incomplete) documentation on the workings of ming-wm.

See koxinga or src/bin for examples.

A (very poorly written, and WIP) window is being written in Lisp Scheme: ming-flashcards.

Make sure the permissions of password.env are so other users cannot read or write to it. If there is no plan to recompile, just delete it.

Understand the implications of adding the user to the video group. And if the permissions of a /dev/input/ file was changed for touchscreen support, understand those implications too.

Obviously, don't run the executable with sudo or doas, or as the root user!

Licensed under the GPLv3. The font data in the bmps/shippori-mincho folder are covered by the OFL. The font was created by FONTDASU. The font data in bmps/nimbus-roman are licensed under the AGPL. This is a very slightly modified version of the font was created by URW Studio. The font data in bmps/nimbus-romono is also licensed under the AGPL. This is a slightly modified version of the Nimbus Roman font by URW Studio.