larswm
More info
- Creator
- Lars Bernhardsson
- Released
- Type
- Tiling window manager for X11
- Predecessor
- 9wm
A tiling window manager from 1999, built on 9wm, that put the active window large on the left and stacked the rest in a narrow column on the right — the master/stack layout seven years before dwm.
Lars Bernhardsson started from David Hogan's 9wm, one of the smallest window managers in existence, and added what 9wm lacked: automatic placement. Every new window is tiled without the user doing anything; the one with focus gets the big area on the left, the others share a column on the right, and a click or a keystroke changes which one is big. Windows that don't tile well, like dialog boxes and xeyes, could be marked floating per class. Virtual desktops were included, and everything was driven from a resource file in Xresources syntax.
Ion arrived the following year with a different answer to the same question, and between them the two defined what tiling window managers could be before dwm, xmonad and i3 took the idea over. larswm was updated to version 7.5.3 in 2004 and then stopped, but the layout it chose — one big window, a stack of small ones — is the one dwm later named master and stack and which is now the genre's default.