Other Minimal WM that allows resize/fullscreen

Zare

Zare

I've been trying to make some X11 single-app fullscreen 'environments', borderless, no WM.

With XTerm or normal, resizeable applications it works to use xdotool with windowsize arg to 100% and --sync option to catch XTerm after it runs.
But programs such as emulators which are my reason to do this setup, tend to have a fixed window, or fullscreen. It is the fullscreen I can't get to be full, it is only in the corner, probably because there is no WM to catch the hints.

So is there any sort of smallest WM possible to enable this?
 
Openbox does run programs without any decoration. The configuration can be long. I'm at 900 lines of XML. Not sure anymore which setting this was. I run fullscreen xterms without anything of window top bar or edges for focus.
 
I'm not sure about smallest. With openbox you can maximize a window to take the full screen. With a tiling window manager like dwm, if you only have one thing open, it will take the full screen. I feel like I'm missing something in your question though, but if you, say, want a terminal to take the full screen, dwm will do that by default if said terminal is all that's open.
 
In reply to MG, it's ToggleDecorations. I do that with key shortcut, but also had a setting for app whatever, to have no decorations.

At the end of my rc.xml (the open box config file) I would have
Code: 
<application name="uxterm"><decor>no</decor></application>
which would, by default, open up uxterm without a border or other decorations. I use different terminals now, there's a lot of cruft in my default, customized, $HOME/.config/openbox/rc.xml
 
scottro said:
In reply to MG, it's ToggleDecorations. I do that with key shortcut, but also had a setting for app whatever, to have no decorations.

At the end of my rc.xml (the open box config file) I would have
Code: 
<application name="uxterm"><decor>no</decor></application>
which would, by default, open up uxterm without a border or other decorations. I use different terminals now, there's a lot of cruft in my default, customized, $HOME/.config/openbox/rc.xml
Click to expand...
Found it back, that was it. Too bad I don't get the Openbox source. I want to change things but it's complicated
 
Openbox is a no go it is not even a light WM but a full fledged one.
I think I might try tiling ones such as dwm.
 
It's less than 2MB as installed package...
There's probably almost nothing left if you don't count the themes image data.
 
Any WM that is not a windowing environment should suffice, i.e. twm, mwm, fvwm, ctwm, etc. Use them to reduce the WM footprint. KDE, Gnome, Xfce, LXDE, mate, and other windowing environments include a lot of extra baggage above and beyond a window manager. CDE, though a windowing environment, has a small enough footprint so as not to bring smaller systems to their knees. It is smaller than the other windowing environments because it was written at a time when large systems were smaller than today's small systems.

A windowing environment includes a lot of additional apps (baggage) you may not need or want. A window manager is just that, a window manager.
 
Zare said:
But programs such as emulators which are my reason to do this setup, tend to have a fixed window, or fullscreen. It is the fullscreen I can't get to be full, it is only in the corner,
Click to expand...
To which emulators are you referring to exactly? Perhaps those have options to fullscreen you are not aware of.
 
To everyone that doesn't understand what's going on,

Execute startx /usr/local/bin/xterm

You can clearly see the default window geometry on the black background.
Right click on xterm and select fullscreen. What do you get?
 
Zare said:
To everyone that doesn't understand what's going on,

Execute startx /usr/local/bin/xterm

You can clearly see the default window geometry on the black background.
Right click on xterm and select fullscreen. What do you get?
Click to expand...
You already have a window manager or some UI-related programrunning? My xterm does a text selection from the top to mouse-y on a right-click. There's also still the 'legacy' X11 menu that appears when control is pressed down while clicking on it with 1 of 3 buttons..
 
MG said:
You already have a window manager or some UI-related programrunning? My xterm does a text selection from the top to mouse-y on a right-click. There's also still the 'legacy' X11 menu that appears when control is pressed down while clicking on it with 1 of 3 buttons..
Click to expand...

It is ctrl + left btn to get the main menu and ctrl + right to get the fonts menu. Fullscreen option is in main menu.

bda65 said:
Zare : Can you take screenshot? With scrot for example.
Click to expand...

Screenshot of what?
Hinted fullscreen does not work without a WM. I am merely pointing to XTerm to try that out for yourselves if you still don't get the gist of the problem.

Applications that have built-in fullscreen, browsers, IDE, games, emulators, everything that has "Fullscreen" option somewhere won't work without a WM.

I am not here to contemplate and explain that. All I'm asking is a bog minimal WM that can hopefully run something from argument line and that can serve enough of WM stuff to make app full screen work.

In the end I'll probably make something myself or modify tinywm.
 
xterm -geometry 1920x1200+0+0 work for me.
Milkytracker save the window resolution if it's used in fullscreen with a WM, it start in fullscreen without WM.
blender -W also work
 
Windowmaker can do what you want. Right click on titlebar, then you can choose window attributes and have options to switch off all window decorations including borders, and you can set 'start maximised'. The next time you start the program it will fill the whole screen with no window decorations, so the client area fills the entire screen. Just make sure you have a way to kill it, or a couple of virtual desktops so you can switch to the next one to get out of the modal lock. I do that myself to run the 'links' browser fullscreen without any WM window decorations, or a fullscreen xterm with no window decs, mimicking a VC.

screenshot_2026-03-03_at_19:17:57.png
 
Zare said:
I am not here to contemplate and explain that. All I'm asking is a bog minimal WM that can hopefully run something from argument line and that can serve enough of WM stuff to make app full screen work.
Click to expand...
What WM stuff do you need/think you need? If the app is already full screen, it should always have focus so should always receive events.
Do you need a "WM-way" to exit the app (like clicking X on a titlebar)?
Do you need a way to pop up a WM-ish menu that says at a minimum "exit"?

I understand the desire to have "full screen with no window decorations so I have all the pixels" but beyond that?
I think for Xorg Ctrl-Alt-Bkspace still kills the xserver so if that's good enough...
 
Ok let me first depict what is the target. The program 86Box is an emulator that has a static non resizable window with a menu, toolbar, and virtual machine graphics output - the window size will be at the resolution of the emulated display * scale factor + whatever is needed for menu and toolbar.

Once you hit fullscreen Ctrl+alt+pgup, or from menu, obviously the virtual display gets streched as much as possible to fit the display and nothing more is shown.

Getting in and out of fullscreen is important, so one can mount virtual disks and perform other VM mgmt tasks.

So what happens when you run it without any window manager, is obviously a static non-resizable 'window' in top-left, but once you go fullscreen inside the program, it just loses the menu and toolbar, there is no full screen stretch.

I use a .xinitrc script to engage my GUIs. I wanted to use this approach to kick off virtual machine session from the CLI. No WM, no frills, not needed there. The reason to do this all is hunting top perfomance out of the emulator with minimum running stuff on the host OS, and also having a seamless simulated DOS computer that I can kick off from the console.

I appreciate the Windowmaker recommendation by blackbird, but as I've said I don't need a WM and I already use Windowmaker - and I have already established I get a tad better performance by using 86Box under wmaker than plasma.

I've got idea from bda65 to run Blender, and Blender works. So we can safely assume it is down to the application to implement something, or 86box guys implemented something wrong. Also bda65's xterm line is exactly how I kick "fullscreen" Xterm in my setup. But it is not fullscreen hence the quotes - it is maximized, and borderless, with nothing else to take its focus, but it is not fullscreen per se. Because if you kick off xterm without the geometry line, or don't set it externally as I do, its internal fullscreen option doesn't work - just like 86box.

Code: 
#!/usr/local/bin/bash
xrdb -merge ~/.Xresources
case $WM in
        xterm)
                xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off
                xdotool search --onlyvisible --sync xterm windowmove 0 0 windowsize 100% 100% &
                exec /usr/local/bin/xterm
                ;;
        dos)
                xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off
                #xdotool search --onlyvisible --sync "P54C - 86Box 5.4" windowmove 0 0 windowsize 100% 100% &
                exec /home/z/Files/projects/86Box/build/optimized/src/86Box -F "/home/z/.local/share/86Box/Virtual Machines/P54C/86box.cfg"
                ;;
        blend)
                xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off
                exec /usr/local/bin/blender -W
                ;;
        wmaker)
                xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off
                exec /usr/local/bin/wmaker
                ;;
        cde)
                xrandr --output HDMI-0 --off
                exec env LANG=C /usr/local/dt/bin/Xsession
                ;;
        *)
                exec dbus-launch --exit-with-x11 ck-launch-session startplasma-x11
                ;;
esac
 
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