But even then, I think we have rose-tinted glasses on when it comes to writing an X11 WM that actually works, because X11 does not actually give much for free. ICCCM is the glue that makes window management work, and it is a complete inversion of "mechanism, not policy" that defines the X11 protocol. It also comes in at 60-odd pages in PDF form: https://www.x.org/docs/ICCCM/icccm.pdf
For an example, X11 does not specify how copy-and-paste should work between applications; that's all ICCCM.
I have not tried mwm but use my own 100 line C window manager and I can copy and paste without issue.
Wayland will take 20 more years before it can dethrone X11. And even then we will mostly run X11 apps on XWayland.
An example that matters for window managers would be complex window reparenting policies or input grabs, but that's a little less descriptive of the core concept I was trying to get across.
https://tronche.com/gui/x/xlib/utilities/XRotateBuffers.html
And yet RedHat/Fedora and Ubuntu, as well as GNOME, are leading the charge to drop X support in the next release; KDE as of V7. It may take 20 years for Wayland to match X's capabilities, but it looks like the guillotine has already been rolled out.
A more conspiratorial person than I could be led to think that RedHat is actively working against the viability of a free software desktop, but of course that's nonsense, because they're helping the cause by forcing all resources to be focused on one target at the expense of near-term usability. And the XLibre crowd also aren't controlled opposition intended to weaponize the culture war and make people associate X with fascism, that's just nonsense some idiot cooked up to stir shit.
This might work for company-backed projects but not for OSS enthusiasts and power users - they will leave for greener pastures. For example, Linux Mint lives off the manpower that GNOME 3 drove away, Void and Alpine Linux live off the manpower that systemd drove away. There will be some ecosystem that will live off the manpower that Wayland drives away.
Window Manager Flames, by Don Hopkins
The ICCCM Sucks
The ICCCM, abbreviated I39L, sucks. I39L is a hash for the acronymic expansion of ICCCM for "Inter-Client Communication Conventions Manual". Please read it if you don't believe me that it sucks! It really does. However, we must live with it. But how???
[...]
Like what?
A few years ago I copied the wlroots example, simplified it to less than 1000 LoC and then did some of my own modifications and additions like workspaces. And this side-project was done in less than a week on my spare time.
The developers of Wayland (who are identical to the developers of Xorg) aspire to more of a Windows/Mac-like ecosystem for Linux, in which standardization, performance, and support for modern graphics hardware without hacks or workarounds are prioritized over proliferation of niche window managers and toolkits
I watch my colleagues on Mac OS and Windows during peer programming, and am flabbergasted as they fumble around trying to find the right window.
I am interacting with my computers interface for 10+ hours every single day. I do not stare at a single application, but am constantly jumping between windows and tasks. The one size fits all approach is the same as the lowest common denominator approach, and it hinders people who need to do real work.
Modern OSX does have always-on-top natively now btw.
Microsoft got the Start Button/taskbar bit right in 1998 with the addition of the quicklaunch bar, although they keep trying to screw it up. But their window management has been abysmal since the beginning. If you use a large monitor (so you don't need to maximize everything) it's really painful.
Is that why they arranged things to ensure that the Wayland world would always be split into GNOME, KDE, and everything else (in practice, wlroots)?
At least some ideas that were floated early on are deader than dead, like copy-paste as DBus Service
More of a Windows/Mac-like ecosystem for Linux sounds like an awful threat.