ncwm

ncwm – a tiling/floating window manager that runs entirely in text-mode, making it a lightweight replacement for desktop environments such as KDE or LXQt when you want to work directly on a Linux virtual terminal (tty1, tty2, …) without an X server or Wayland compositor.

Each window runs a real shell (or any programme) through a pseudo-terminal (PTY) and renders its output through a built-in VT100 / xterm terminal emulator.

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Features

• Multiple floating windows, each hosting a full terminal session
• VT100/ANSI emulation: SGR colours & attributes, cursor movement, erase, scroll regions, insert/delete lines/chars, alternate screen (vim, htop, nano, bash readline all work correctly)
• Full mouse support – click to focus, drag title bar to move, drag bottom-right corner to resize, double-click title bar to maximise/restore, click [x] button to close, click status-bar entry to switch windows
• Borland C++-style dialog boxes – Ctrl-A c opens a shell-chooser dialog; Ctrl-A Q asks for confirmation before quitting
• Ctrl-A-prefix key bindings for all WM operations (nothing captured during normal typing)
• Move and resize windows with arrow keys
• Maximise / restore individual windows
• Status bar showing open windows, active indicator, and a live clock
• Auto-closes a window when its child process exits
• Handles terminal resize (SIGWINCH) gracefully
• Runs on any colour terminal: real TTYs (TERM=linux), xterm-256color, screen, tmux, …

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Building

make

Requires gcc, libncurses-dev (≥ 6), and libutil (part of glibc on Linux). These are available on every major distribution:

# Debian / Ubuntu
sudo apt install build-essential libncurses-dev

# Fedora / RHEL
sudo dnf install gcc ncurses-devel

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Running

./ncwm            # uses $SHELL, or /bin/bash
./ncwm /bin/zsh   # use a specific shell
./ncwm --help
./ncwm --version

To use ncwm as a login session on tty1, add to /etc/inittab (SysV) or create a systemd getty override, then exec ncwm from ~/.bash_profile when $XDG_VTNR == 1.

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Key Bindings

All WM commands are entered via a two-key sequence starting with Ctrl-A. Outside of a WM command, every keystroke is forwarded directly to the focused terminal window.

Keys	Action
Ctrl-A c	Open a new shell window (shell-chooser dialog)
Ctrl-A x	Close the focused window
Ctrl-A n	Focus the next window
Ctrl-A p	Focus the previous window
Ctrl-A m	Enter move mode (arrow keys + Esc)
Ctrl-A r	Enter resize mode (arrow keys + Esc)
Ctrl-A f	Toggle fullscreen for focused window
Ctrl-A Q	Quit ncwm (confirmation dialog)
Ctrl-A ?	Show in-app help overlay
Ctrl-A Ctrl-A	Send a literal Ctrl-A to the active window

In move / resize mode, press Enter or Esc (or Ctrl-A) to return to normal mode.

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Mouse Bindings

Mouse support is enabled automatically. All actions operate on the window under the pointer.

Action	Result
Left-click window	Focus window, bring to front
Left-click + drag title bar	Move window
Double-click title bar	Maximise / restore window
Left-click [x] (title-bar)	Close window
Left-click [M] (title-bar)	Restore maximised window
Left-click + drag ◿ corner	Resize window
Left-click status-bar entry	Focus the corresponding window

Dialog boxes accept mouse clicks on their buttons in addition to keyboard input (Tab/arrows to switch focus, Enter/Space to confirm, Esc or N to cancel).

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Project layout

ncurses-wm/
├── Makefile
└── src/
    ├── ncwm.h      shared types, constants, prototypes
    ├── main.c      entry point, signal setup, ncurses init
    ├── vt100.c     VT100/ANSI terminal emulator
    ├── window.c    per-window PTY, drawing, move / resize
    └── wm.c        event loop, focus, status bar

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Install

sudo make install          # installs to /usr/local/bin/ncwm
sudo make uninstall

Set DESTDIR for staging:

make install DESTDIR=/staging/root